Today's Meditation:

Growing is so important to us--if we don't grow, we stay the same, and we're never able to come close to our potential.  We're also never able to give all that we might be able to give if we were to grow into a new and different person from time to time.

I see my life as a series of chapters, and my hope is that in each chapter I'm a stronger, more caring and compassionate person than I was in the previous one.  The only way that I can accomplish this is to take risks, to try new things, to make an effort to add to who I am as a person.

As a basketball coach, I often have a hard time convincing players that they never will get better if they don't stretch their limits.  Most of them like to play at the level they're at, because that's the level at which they think they'll make fewest mistakes.  That may be true, but their playing never improves, and their teammates never benefit from their new abilities or improved performance.  Sports are great because they give us a constant opportunity to grow and improve, yet most people who are involved in sports hit a certain level and then never dare to try to move to the next--that's why there are so few pros, relatively speaking, and many, many amateurs.

While there's nothing really wrong with being an amateur--not all people want to devote the time and energy necessary to be a professional athlete--Ronald's point of never growing past your current level of ability is very important, for if I back away from something because it may be difficult, I'm losing a great opportunity to develop an important part of myself.  Perhaps the difficulty will be in dealing with people, and I'll develop my social skills, or the difficulty will lie in the mathematics or research involved with a project; in that case, I'll learn a lot about mathematics or research.

Questions to ponder:

1.  What's difficult for you?  If you tackle this difficulty,
will it stay difficult for you?

2.  What opportunities have you passed on because they seemed too hard?
What might you have learned if you hadn't passed on them?

3.  Do you know someone who regularly passes on difficulties?
What are those people's lives like?  How could they change this?

For further thought:

If your life is ever going to get better, you'll have to take risks.
There is simply no way you can grow without taking chances.

David Viscot

Today's Quotation:

Undertake something that is difficult; it will do you
good.  Unless you try to do something beyond
what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Ronald E. Osborn

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