Heroic Struggle

The human struggle is such an interesting one... it's one often misunderstood and maligned.  But, even humans we may find less than admirable, for whatever reasons, have what my mentor, Keith Raniere, has aptly named a Heroic Struggle.

Each day I find myself in the midst of mine - and so do you, whether you're aware of it or not.
Mr. Raniere created a structure for the company, Executive Success Programs, Inc., that encourages transforming our struggle from one mainly internal to one that is external.  What does this mean?  Most of us thrash about daily with objectives that would have gone well if it weren't for the interference of other people.  Right.  While some of this may be "true", most of it is our own failure to factor in the variables of human behavior and the fact that the real world, reality if you would, rarely matches the picture we have in our head of how we would like things to be.  We don't just prefer this picture.  We're vested and attached to it.  The greatest discrepancy between the two pictures typically falls into the sector of human behavior.  Including, obviously (not?), our own.  We aren't really struggling with the external world, we're struggling with our own beliefs of how we believe the world should be, rather than how it is.

The structure he designed, and the path those of us who have chosen to work with it follow, is merit and value-based, it's predecessor being the martial arts system of earning your way up a hierarchical ladder to higher and higher designations of improvement.  I am fortunate to include these people amongst my close friends - the community of people with whom I work and play.

I love the quote below and find it relative.  Thank you, Tom.

Those of us who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening our own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. We will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of our own obsessions, our aggressivity, our ego-centered ambitions, our delusions about the ends and means.
-Thomas Merton, philosopher