Hitting A Wall And Breaking Through It

 

As a young boy growing up in Nebraska, my family always had a stock of Kool-Aid packets ready to go. The powdered drink was cheap, came in multiple flavors, and it was also something that could easily be made by myself and my sisters if we had sugar and water. Additionally, Kool-Aid was created in Hastings, Nebraska and Nebraskans like to support their own. Whenever I think about Kool-Aid, the nostalgia of my childhood comes flooding back, including memories of the Kool-Aid Man, or KAM for short, breaking through walls using his signature tag line of "Oh Yeah!" It is this nostalgic point that has got me thinking about my personal and professional life right now.

First things first. Could a mythical glass pitcher of Kool-Aid actually break through a wall and not shatter? Fortunately, in the age of the internet, you can find all sorts of information about the feasibility of this feat. It is possible, but a lot of variables need to be in place for it to happen. Now that we have that overarching question out of the way, we can really dive into what we can learn from KAM and his countless wall breaking feats.

In our lives, we will inevitably have barriers in front of us. These proverbial "walls" are sometimes created by external forces outside of our control and at other times, are barriers we place in front of ourselves because of our own perceived limitations. No matter how the wall got there, we ultimately have a choice to make. Are we going to stop and accept that the wall is the end of our journey in that direction or are we going to break through it and keep moving forward. Just like a choose your own adventure story, your decision can have a tremendous impact on your own personal narrative.

Case in point. When I began the process of wanting to become a school administrator, I applied for countless numbers of jobs. Some of those applications led to interviews, but many more did not. When I did get a call for an interview, I would prepare for them by learning about the school, the community, the staff, and anything else that I felt would put me in a position to earn the job. I committed myself to being the most informed and prepared candidate in the field, but it didn't seem to ever work out. I would end up getting a rejection phone call telling me that they had found someone that was a better fit for the position. With every call, I felt as if another wall was being put up in front of me and I began to question whether it was ever going to happen. Finally, after 13 rejections, I had a decision to make. Was I going to accept defeat and discover a new path or was I going to break through that wall? You all know what decision I made and that has made all the difference in my story.

The thing is, we all have our own stories of when walls were put up in front of us and how we overcame them by busting them down. Unfortunately, each time we bust them down, we get bloodied in the process because it is hard work and it sometimes carries with it a great deal of pain. For most of us, hitting a wall and breaking through it is an exception and not the norm. We have preconditioned ourselves to pick and choose the walls we are going to break down because we have done a cost/benefit analysis of breaking through the barrier in place. For many of us, the path of least resistance is the best option because it shields us from facing some pretty tough circumstances and we are too exhausted to put the effort into breaking down the wall. What we fail to realize is that if we don't break through the wall, pretty soon we are going to be boxed in and have nowhere to go.

The challenge is clear. Take inventory of the walls that you have placed in front of you based on your own perceived limitations and fight like hell to break through them. Some of the walls will be paper thin drywall while others will be brick walls fortified with steel. No matter the barrier, each present an opportunity for you to #OwnYourEpic and your choice to break through them will make all the difference.

#OwnYourEpic #FORGE