ACTualized Living W/ Erik

All right, we are live here this afternoon, December 8, up here in Minnesota, where we got a little bit of a warm streak. So excited about that. I find that for whatever reason, when I hop on these live streams, I end up talking about the weather. That seems rather minnesotan to me. So, if you're not from Minnesota, welcome to the culture where we open conversations with talking about the weather. And if you're not from Minnesota and you relate to that, well, I have something to learn, I guess. I hope you're all doing well here today.

As you may hear in my voice, I'm just getting over a bit of a cold that seems to have been making its rounds in a lot of people's households. So if that's you this week, I hope you're resting up and. And feeling good. But I think it's. It's a good segue into the focus of this live here today. And if you read the description in this live, if you're showing up this afternoon, I want to focus on something that comes up in everyone's life. And often we, very quickly, without thinking about it or giving ourselves some patience, label these things in our lives in certain ways.

And these things I'm talking about are obstacles, struggles, the things that come up in their life that are maybe unpredicted or maybe are very predicted. What's going on? Luke, thanks for joining me this afternoon. These obstacles that come up in our lives, we often just kind of see, right. It could be a loss of a job, marital stress, mental health struggles, financial difficulties, know fill in the blank. And often we put these obstacles. What's up, Evan? Watch by yourself. Thanks for joining.

We see these obstacles and have a preconceived idea of what they're going to mean to our lives. And what I want to introduce to you today is that obstacles are the very things that open the door to the growth that we want to see, the steps that we want to take towards what's important to us, the lives that we want to be living. And when the obstacles arise in our life and they're met as indications of ourselves not being enough or good enough, they become brick walls in our path. And so here's my encouragement today is whatever obstacles you may be facing, see them as opportunities, opportunities for growth.

And here's why I say that if we think about the theory of evolution and where. Wherever you stand with that theory is where you stand, but just the theory itself, which is species, animals, plants, you name it, go through a process of evolution that is entirely crafted by the obstacles that species faces. There's no reason to change or grow something about a species genetic coating until something comes up in its environment that demands its survival. It's need to change in order to continue. When we bring that back to ourselves, what that really can highlight is often our obstacles are just information of areas of needed change.

And when we can see those things as they come up in our lives as opportunities, as information for the directions in which maybe we need to reconsider, instead of them becoming disappointing examples of how our life is going to pan out, they become opportunities to change. Now that doesn't mean that they all of a sudden get really easy and all the pain of going through obstacles magically disappears. But now the pain and the difficulty and the vulnerability of being at a place of problem has a value and that value contributes to what lies beyond that problem.

And that's where we find satisfaction with life is in the many small problems that we solve towards an uncertain future. I hope something here stuck with you today. I thank you all for for joining me. And so this week I want you to find just what's one obstacle that's really been causing you some stress this time of year, especially around the holidays. I'm sure there's plenty of obstacles that come to mind. And acknowledging that obstacle, much like holding a maybe like mini sculpture in your hand, turn that obstacle many different directions and see what perspectives open a new door for approaching the obstacle in a new way and be open to how that action, that new perspective may incite change in those areas of your life.

Thanks again for joining me. I hope you all have a great weekend and rest of your week and it's good to see you. Bye.