Donʼt Allow Challenges to Stop You!

I love to read biographies and see the challenges people have had to overcome to accomplish great things. One thing I have noticed is very few people ever succeed in life who haven’t faced great obstacles along the way.

Booker T. Washington, in his autobiography “Up From Slavery” wrote, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”

I read a biography of a man whose father passed away when he was eleven years old, who had the modern day equivalent of a grade school education, whose mother never extolled or even acknowledged his public triumphs, and was estranged from her in the later years. Who was this individual? The first President of the United States…George Washington!

Washington could have made numerous excuses. He could have said, “I didn’t have a father present in my life.” He could have said, “I donʼt have a great education.” He could have said, “I didn’t have a great relationship with my parents.” He could have had a victim mentality. He could have had a bad attitude and simply viewed himself as a pawn on the chessboard of life. Instead, he became the first President of the United States! Even all the great men of the era: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, etc…all considered him their superior!

What challenges are you facing? What obstacles are you confronting? Get rid of the victim mentality and get a victor mentality! Refuse to be a pawn on the chessboard of life! Some succeed because they are destined to, but most succeed because they are determined to!

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

Blessings!