Everyone encounters obstacles in their lives. It’s the obstacles, not the opportunities, that build our character and make us resilient. There have been so many times I stumbled in my life and my career – and each time, The Colonel would pick me up, dust me off emotionally, and then tell me I had a choice. He’d say, “Is this gonna be a stumbling block or a stepping stone, kid? The choice is yours.” It was my choice to let it (whatever the “it” of the moment was) stop me or to use it as a reason to keep pushing forward.
The most recent of these conversations came entirely in my head after Dad had passed. When I was forced to rebrand for legal reasons. As obstacles go, this was a big one. Changing a brand is no simple matter. It involved changing all of my marketing materials, my website, my demo video, my brochures—everything. I truly thought my business would be devastated. I wanted to curl up in a corner and suck my thumb. That’s when Dad’s voice crept into my consciousness.
“Stumbling block or stepping stone? It’s your choice, kid. Are you gonna let this stop you from speaking? Are you gonna let this stop you from delivering a message you feel so passionately about?”
Making the transition was expensive and time-consuming, but processing this very formidable obstacle brought me to the real and genuine brand that wholly encapsulates who I am and what I teach: The Colonel’s Daughter.
Now, with that perspective, what seemed to be a mountain of an obstacle was really a molehill. Not a stumbling block but a stepping stone to so much more.
What are the obstacles in your life? What are the opportunities in those obstacles? How can you reevaluate your situation to look at them as stepping stones instead? The choice is yours.
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