Our Greatest Challenge

The greater part of the challenges in your life is not through external events. The greater part of challenges is the unobserved mind. — Eckhart Tolle

What is your #1 biggest challenge?

Is it in fact a real challenge?

Or is it one we have manufactured in our own minds?

That our most significant challenges in life are not the result of something outside us but in fact internally created, is a notion that's quite profound to consider.

The greater part of the challenges in your life is not through external events. The greater part of challenges is the unobserved mind.

Even today, after accepting and living the truth of this idea (most of the time), it still comes as a surprise that prompts me to ask myself, "Is this really true?"

I think most of us can reflect on a recent or past event to validate the truth of the notion that we create the biggest challenges in our minds.

Take for example a canceled or delayed flight. Most of us have probably had the experience of arriving at the airport and suddenly discovering our flight is not going to depart as planned.

It's usually a great inconvenience with a lot of unknowns. We're in the dark. Nobody is telling us what's going on and there are angry people all around us.

How do we react?

What I have observed and participated in on several occasions is that there's a mad rush to the ticket counter to book the next available flight and to express our displeasure to the ticket agent who had nothing to do with the change in plans.

We're upset and outraged. Our plans to arrive at our destination in time to give a big presentation or relax on the beach are thrown completely up in the air.

You'll often hear people shouting or Tweeting out in anger that "I'll never fly on this airline again!"

Or in a recent case that was published on Twitter this past week, a well-known celebrity was caught on video shouting at the ticket agent, "You f*cking scumbag! You’re gonna lose your job!"

And it doesn't end there. It's the number one thing we'll be sharing with our family, friends, and co-workers for days or maybe even for weeks or longer.

The True Power of the Observed Mind

In the case of a delayed flight or any number of events that may happen to us, we are allowing ourselves to react based on the conditioned mind.

When we allow the conditioned mind to guide our actions, there is no wisdom guiding our responses.

However, as a conscious human being capable of observing our own minds, we can walk through situations like this more calmly and allow wisdom to guide our next actions.

Now it's no longer a problem in the conventional sense of the word.

It's an opportunity for intensified presence. You become actually intelligent for the first time. You access, as one could say, higher intelligence. And then, if a certain action is possible in that moment, you take action, and it'll be right. It's not reactive.

It's action but not reaction.

When a challenge arises, ask yourself, "What's my inner state at this moment?"

And then look at it and see where it takes you.

— Bill

P. S. Register for our next Space Beyond Boundaries workshop on May 4, 2022, right here where we'll be talking about leadership.