“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
There comes a point in your life when it becomes clear that you are responsible for charting your own course. Circumstance may require that this comes sooner than ideal, but in most cases the moment is lost upon young men and women who are distracted by less important, but undoubtedly pressing issues.
When this time comes, you realize that the advice of your parents, friends, family and other elements of your support network is helpful, but not the final word. As you emerge out of your teen years and into the early years of adulthood, authority and control should rightly shift from being externally provided to being internally generated. This transition is rarely comfortable and for good reason. The former you is passing away while the new you is being born into the world for which you are responsible.
While we’re on the topic, I firmly believe that you are born with a great promise that is only yours to fulfill. No one can reveal the promise to you, for it is not an external thing pasted on, rather, it emerges from within each time you decide to think, speak or act with integrity, dignity and radiant blessing. Many never gain acquaintance with their great promise. They remain stymied by familial patterns as well as larger social constraints that impose unwritten yet deeply influential control over what you feel is or isn’t possible in and through you.
To reveal your promise you must find a way out of the restrictive patterns that form naturally around you, just as a bird must take flight out of the familiar and relatively safe confines of its nest. The key to doing this is to fill the limited situations you are in at any point in life to overflowing. Give everything you do your all. Don’t hold back. When you live this way, the apertures you need to move into a greater and wider revelation of your great promise appear naturally, graciously and in sequence.
Gregory Hake 
Excellent post – much for me to think about. Thank you.
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What great points. If only most of us would realize that the box that we may have felt we were in is of our own imagination. Once we can stop seeing life as limitation and see it as possibility, our scope of influence and understanding will naturally increase. Thanks for your thoughts today.
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There are imaginary boxes and real ones, but both can be met in the same spirit. When you take responsibility and refrain from blaming, bemoaning and whining you find that you are empowered to handle life’s temporary limitations with agility, dignity and wisdom.
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I think that a point where many people stick here is when they fill out their circumstances to a certain point, they begin to feel constrained (which they are being, actually). But here’s the trick. You can either stop growing, rebel, or continue to grow and overflow (like you described). In the first example, you stay stuck in the same world forever. In the second example, you break out of your current situation, but you will end up repeating this unfulfilling scenario over and over, drifting through life with tue wreckage of burned bridges behind you. The third, and ideal, scenario is marked by a natural growing and maturity, and you are able to retain old relationships while not being constrained by them. This growth will also repeat itself, but it will be a repetition of success, and will result in continuous growth.
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Well put, Colin. You should write a post on my blog sometime!
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A great day for plotting the course, and continuing to move in the direction of fulfilling that Great Promise!
I am with you in this and will do my best to ensure everything be made new.
Let the past be just that……Passed Away.
Thanks Gregg, “So poignant in what is working out now”
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Great quote by Lincoln!
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“I am the master of my fate. The captain of my soul.” These word are the ones to remember. They fit everyone, every moment.
Great piece today, thanks.
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You’re very welcome.
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Most people live their lives in an imaginary world. They see constraints that live only in their own minds, passing up every opportunity to grow and blossom due to the fact they can’t really see themselves as the victor. As we grow older it’s fairly easy to target someone or some circumstance from our past that limited our success and happiness and some could be valid. BUT today is a new day and all the promise we can imagine is possible but first we must believe that for ourselves.
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A wonderful piece for both my husband and I to read, and to share with our graduating teen. Inspires empathy on both sides for the exciting process of maturity at hand. Perfect timing!
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