Facing Challenges?
A Powerful Experience for Achieving Clarity and Calmness

In terms of your finances, health, career, relationships, and other areas of your life, I am sure at least a few immediately come to mind.

I am also sure that, although the volume of such challenges may ebb and flow, whether I asked you that question five years ago or whether I ask it again five years from now, you will still have an answer. You will invariably be faced with some sort of challenges.

Bryce Canyon National Park, UT

My son and I recently took a trip to Utah, where we met up with my Mother, my sister and her husband and children for part of the trip. (Sidenote: with Bryce National Park, Zion National Park, Arches National Park, and the Moab desert alone, Utah is easily one of America’s most beautiful states, and one of America’s best-kept secrets. It’s also a very economical trip … don’t miss it!)

On this trip, my eighteen-year-old son and I got to spend a lot of time together, including driving many hours together in the car. With the conversations and experiences we shared, this was easily one of the best, and most important, trips of my life. His too, I believe.

At one point somewhere on Interstate 70 in the Moab desert, some words of advice to my son slipped out of my mouth; as our words to those we love often do, what I said came as a revelation to me as well, and at a gas station stop I wrote it down:

“So often people wait to pursue their goals and dreams. They wait for that day when they’ve cleared through all the challenges facing them, when there are finally no more barriers standing in their way. On that day, they tell themselves, they will finally do what they are meant to do … they will finally really start living their life. But there is not and never will be such a day. Those challenges are a constant part of life. Don’t let them become excuses for ignoring the rest of life. The only time is now.”

As no thought is, this is not a new thought. Not only have I heard it stated in many different ways before… from “carpe diem” to Ralph Waldo Emerson to John Mellencamp … but I have said it in different ways before myself.

Brian Vaszily & his son, Evihn, at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

In our rapid-fire-paced lives, though, we often forget the most important things we know.

We don’t always take the advice we give; more than that, we often don’t even remember, for our own sake, the advice we can so readily offer to others. In my case, after I delivered these words to my son, I realized there are some ways in which I still had been waiting for that all-clear signal – that impossible point where my life is clear of all issues and challenges – so that I can pursue certain goals and dreams.

I also realized, for the hundredth time, the importance of treating ourselves with the same respect and concern as we treat those others that we love. I again realized, for my own sake, the importance of routinely engaging in the following intense experience that I often recommend in coaching others … an experience I am certain will provide you some powerful self-revelations, just as it always does for these others, and for me.


Part II: How to Clear Through Your Dust Storms

So I ask again, what are the current challenges that you are facing in your life?

With those challenges in mind, find a quiet place to have a good conversation, and then take a giant step back from self-belittlement and self-neglect, and take a giant step toward self-love.

Step back from the emotions like worry, self-doubt, anger, self-pity and all the others that sabotage your happiness, and instead treat yourself as kindly as you treat those others you love by having a heart-to-heart conversation with yourself.

Arches National Park, UT

But OH YES, this being kind and understanding to ourselves can be quite difficult to do indeed. So ask yourself this question:

If I were my child, or grandchild, or best friend, and the challenges I was facing in my life right now were instead their challenges, what advice would I give them?

If your child, grandchild, niece or nephew is still very young, imagine now, for this experience, that he or she is an adult, with all of the very same challenges that you face.

Imagine that he or she has come to you to have a deep heart-to-heart about what they should do, and how they should feel, given the challenges they face.What advice will you give them?

What will you tell them about their worries, their sadness, their anger and whatever emotions they are encountering in the face of their challenges?

You care deeply about this person, so how will you suggest they proceed given they are encountering the very same challenges as you?

We are all far wiser than we typically realize. We can be exceptional guides. We are not lost.

But we tend to believe it is dust storms whipped up by the outside world that shield us from that path that we’re meant to be on, when in fact they are dust storms whipped up inside our own hearts and minds by forgetting to respect, understand, forgive and nurture ourselves the way we do for others we love.

Whenever your challenges seem overwhelming, confusing, or just downright depressing … whenever you find yourself waiting for that false “someday” that your challenges will all be resolved and you can finally start really living your life … take yourself on a metaphorical drive down Interstate 70 in the Moab desert.

Zion National Park, UT

Just you in the driver seat, and yourself minus the self-sabotaging emotions in the passenger seat. Visualize your passenger as someone else facing all the challenges you are, someone you care about deeply, if necessary.

And have that heart-to-heart with them, gift them with those profound insights that are already deep inside you.

You will be amazed at the answers for you that you already have. At how wise your self really is. And at how effectively, and lovingly, you can realign you for the journey you are really meant to be on.