What are the biggest obstacles when it comes to sustaining success in life?
A simple answer to that question is attachment and limited awareness. Attachment is the great brake because, by definition, it always involves a a static picture of what's desired. Therefore, an experience of failure or success relative to that picture is going to be time bound. And, because that experience is time bound it is by definition the result of limited awareness.
What happens with people and organizations is that we will tend to look at our successes and failures almost always within the limited awareness of a very discreet time frame. I either succeeded or I failed within this narrow time frame. This is where the context of time becomes a very useful tool for sustaining success in life.
An awareness of the effect of time frames on my experience of success in life is why I want to continuously consider the question “for the sake of what?” Any event in my life can be looked at as a success or a failure. But if it’s looked at within a larger context of time that holds this long-term “for the sake of what,” both the seeming successes and failures in my life become learning opportunities. They are simply milestones on the path toward the realization of a greater for the sake of what. It takes a lot of inner strength for people to say, “I didn’t fail here, I am actually on the road to success. Others may view this as a failure, but in the way that I’m looking at my life, and in the way in which we’re looking at what we’re doing, this actually was a learning experience that is invaluable to my next steps and I’m going to be leveraging it."
Therefore, an increase in awareness is a way — the most workable way — to overcome the inevitable obstacles that life tosses at us. Very simply stated, because a perception of failure (or success) is the result of limited awareness, an increase in awareness is going to increase my choice-making capacity. When I increase the number of choices I have available to me I will increase the power that I have. By “power” I’m talking about my ability to effect change. Increasing my ability to effect or cause change will ultimately result in expanding results. When it comes to the biggest obstacles to sustaining success in life, the truly big ones are attachment and limited awareness.
