Your apprenticeship to life provides you with the opportunity to discover your weaknesses and overcome them before the stakes are raised. It matters not if your apprenticeship begins at 15 or 50, for life is merciful to those who yield to its fortifying spirit.

Overcoming weaknesses does much more than simply fill in weak spots. In fact, every weakness you overcome permits a great alignment of your body, mind and heart. When you are out of alignment, the power of your being cannot flow safely through you, a sad state that greatly limits your ability to realize your full potential. When you are in alignment, however, your energies are united and your effectiveness is multiplied.

William George Jordan tackled this subject much more adeptly than I ever could and I feel privileged to share his thoughts on the matter with you this morning:

“Many of the alchemists of old felt that they lacked but one element; if they could obtain that one, they believed they could transmute the baser metals into pure gold. It is so in character. There are individuals with rare mental gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment who fail utterly in life because they lack the one element,―self-reliance. This would unite all their energies, and focus them into strength and power.

The man who is not self-reliant is weak, hesitating and doubting in all he does. He fears to take a decisive step, because he dreads failure, because he is waiting for someone to advise him or because he dare not act in accordance with his own best judgment. In his cowardice and his conceit he sees all his non-success due to others. He is ‘not appreciated,’ ‘not recognized,’ he is ‘kept down.’ He feels that in some subtle way ‘society is conspiring against him.’ He grows almost vain as he thinks that no one has had such poverty, such sorrow, such affliction, such failure as have come to him.

The man who is self-reliant seeks ever to discover and conquer the weakness within him that keeps him from the attainment of what he holds dearest; he seeks within himself the power to battle against all outside influences. He realizes that all the greatest men in history, in every phase of human effort, have been those who have had to fight against the odds of sickness, suffering, sorrow. To him, defeat is no more than passing through a tunnel is to a traveller,―he knows he must emerge again into the sunlight.”

Those who have not yet come into their own are forever bemoaning their circumstances and blaming others for their inability to attain what they hold dearest. Those who have are not taken aback by the setbacks. They thrive under pressure. They relish challenge and they rise to the occasion, no matter how dark the hour or how unfavorable the odds.