Facing a Boulder in Your Path?

Scaling down makes most things doable

Sometimes, obstacles can seem like immovable boulders in your path. The more you want what’s on the other side, the more you have a stake, the bigger, harder, and more solid the boulder appears. Yet, what often seems impenetrable may be conquered if we bring it down in size.

Have you ever seen a film where the protagonist is painstakingly slogging their way up a rugged mountainside? Their handholds crumble, the sweat beads on their forehead, and the wind whips around them dangerously. In reality, they may be 10 to 12 feet off the ground on a Hollywood backlot. Appearances are deceiving; perceptions can be distorted.

How you view an obstacle, to a large extent, affects how much of a challenge it will pose for you. Instead of viewing it in its entirety, what happens if you scale down your perception of it? The boulder you see and feel blocking you is composed of many, different things. NOTE: You don’t need an understanding of mathematics, chemistry, or geology to scale it down because it’s your perception that needs to be scaled down.

Every obstacle you face can be scaled down into its parts, and then each part can be further scaled down until you’re left with parts that are small enough to be more easily addressed. For example, facing a financial obstacle with too little income and too many expenses can seem like an insurmountable challenge. Yet if you identify each incoming amount and each outgoing expense, you can being to see areas where you can scale down. I recently did this for myself.

I started in a state of overwhelm and fear that I could never get everything paid, especially since I had an unexpected, costly dental bill for myself and a hefty vet bill for my diabetic cat. My income had been slashed 40 percent due to Covid-19, and it hasn’t recovered. I felt myself careening toward a boulder with no way to stop the collision. However, as soon as I identified each income item and each outgoing expense, I discovered where I could shift funds, scale down, and meet my obligations, if not with ease, with resolve. My financial boulder crumbled into a pile of baseball-size rocks.

Few obstacles can be handled as long as you view them as impenetrable boulders that block your path. The only way to conquer obstacles and challenges is to scale them down and conquered them bit by bit.

What boulder are you facing?

Scale it down into its composite parts, and scale those parts into their composite parts.

Keep scaling until the parts are small enough for you to begin tackling them.

You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem.” — Tim Cook

Thanks for reading, Patricia

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