HOW TO GET TO NEXT

In school, two pieces of gym apparatus were my nemesis: the climbing rope and the monkey bars.

To this today, I still cannot climb a rope. As a kid, I tried different techniques to mount the rope. First, I tried jumping onto the rope with enough height to get ascendancy and then attempting to pull myself. Next, I tried it with my legs horizontally, leveraging my body weight. Finally, I tried it with my legs wrapped and hand over hand but to no avail. Coming home and explaining the rope burns to my parents was always interesting.

Now the monkey bars, I was determined, would never get the best of me. It used to frustrate me to see my peers swinging from bar to bar and get to the end so easily. All while I was stuck, both figuratively and literally. I couldn’t figure out why I could only make progress so far - halfway, to be precise, and then it was over.

Then I figured out what was stopping me from making progress. I didn’t want to let go of the last bar, and it was hindering my forward progress.

Sound familiar?

So much of how we move forward depends on letting go of what is holding us back. Like the monkey bars, making progress requires us to let go and swing onto the next “bar” using a sense of both strength and agility, with faith that we don’t fall to the ground. And even if we do fall, being motivated to get back up either from where we fell or at the start and try again.

The joy of completing the bars far outweighed my misery when I fell off. But mostly, it was learning that I had to let go to move on. And that was how I got to next.

What’s stopping you from getting to your next?