# Chapter 165

Obstacles are the normal experience for everyone, but this is especially true when you are striving to achieve. And the more you strive to achieve something for the good of others, the obstacles seem to exponentially increase. You have to find a way around or through these obstacles, otherwise you are gonna be very disappointed in your results and success. The point here is not to get upset or frustrated by obstacles. They are the normal course of an eventful and exciting life. Notice too that I did not say anything about removing them, which is the typical language involved with obstacles. Because I don’t think you can, nor should if you actually can, remove them - they are an equal part of the landscape.

In other words, the process of overcoming the obstacles shapes the results of what you are achieving. If you removed them, rather than defeating them, your results might be . . . less. The important point here is that you see obstacles as a ubiquitous part of the whole. Yes they still have to be dealt with and worked around, but obstacles are a structural part of what you are trying to resolve, what you are aiming to achieve.

It is inevitable when explaining how trafficked girls and women are restored to their communities of origin, that Westerners are outraged that we don’t remove them from these communities permanently. These communities are the very places that allowed them to be trafficked in the first place, yet they are also the place they need to return to. The obstacles are key parts of the solution. Stop trying to remove the obstacles, unfailingly find the way to overcome them.