Don’t let your obstacles overcome your goals

Don’t let your obstacles overcome your goals. Seems simple, right? Let look at it a big deeper.

Have you thought to yourself, “That too hard” or “I’m too tired” or “I just don’t feel like it”?

That’s one form of an obstacle. Or if you’re in sales, have you heard, “no” before? That’s another obstacles.

Last example, you’re planning for a new car and you have a medical emergency. Damn. Gotta put that car on hold.

These are all things that “get in the way” of our goals.

Let me give you a story about my Great-Aunt Carol.

Carol contracted polio when she was 7 or 8. I think 8. After the hospital, the iron lung, the surgeries, she was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. But don’t think FOR A SECOND that it ever stopped her.

She went to school and was the first home schooled pupil in the Ritenour School District. She went on to college where she had to be CARRIED up steps to get to her second floor classroom (elevators weren’t a thing back in the 50s).

After college she worked for a little while.

Now, don’t forget this is the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The ADA didn’t happen until the 90s. Life was different for the handicapped.

She hitchhiked through Africa, hitching rides with her friends. They would fold the wheelchair up into the bed of a truck, and climb up, and off they go.

She island hopped in Greece. She spent so long away that when they came back to the embassy in Athens the flags were half-mast. They had no idea that JFK was shot weeks ago.

She ended up finding her long lost cousins in Italy, where our family is from and they kept a close connection for decades. Carol and Grandma would call Italy and Italy would call here. They would exchange emails and snail mail cards.

Carol ended up moving to a hand-built cottage on 40 acres in southern Missouri with an old college friend, Kathy. Carol helped Kathy raise her daughter in that old cottage where the daughter became a lawyer and a municipal judge.

All of this happened because one person decided that no obstacle would prevent her from reaching her dreams. All of this happened because one day some told her she couldn’t do something because of her disease.

If Carol can do all of this, what can do you?

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