“It’s either an opportunity to grow, or an obstacle to keep you from growing.”

As I was sipping some really, really good coffee this morning mulling over today’s Monday Mantra, I came across this quote from Wayne Dyer and BOOM. That was it.

“It’s either an opportunity to grow, or an obstacle to keep you from growing.”

Some backstory: I’m the type of person that needs to justify things. That’s not without its downside sometimes, I’ll admit, because it can become a bit tricky to justify decisions when there’s no clear, “right” answer. I can go over and over (and over) a thought in my head until I’m blue in the face – and my fiancé, mom, and best friends turn blue, too – and still not be 100% sure of a decision. But I don’t even think I’m that indecisive of a person…I can just play both sides of an argument well. Heck, my law professor thought my calling was in a courtroom, so maybe I missed the boat somewhere down the line.

The whole point of this Monday Mantra series is because Monday’s can be hard. Every Monday is a new week that’s dawning, whether you’re ready or not, and you’ve got two options: you can rise to the occasion, carpe diem, and grow, or you can stay in bed a bit too long, drown yourself in coffee (although that’s not always a bad thing amiright?), and spend all day complaining about how Monday is – surprise! – here again and the weekend is gone and it’s gonna be a long week and there’s so much to do and yaddayaddayadda.

…Yup, Monday’s are hard. Having no more coffee in your mug when you’ve gotten four hours of sleep is hard. Deciding between two job prospects is hard. Breaking up with a significant other is hard. Hard decisions are hard. (Good work, Sherlock. HA!). Here’s the thing: life is hard. No one ever said it would be easy, clear cut, or universally justifiable – they just said it would be worth it. Now I don’t know who “they” is, but I think they were onto something with the whole “it’ll be worth it” thing.

Growing is worth it.

When you’ve got a hard decision in front of you with two clear(ish) paths, you know you’re supposed to spread your wings and choose the road less traveled. That’s typically the “hard” road. The high road.

You know what? Wayne must be one of “them”, because there might be clearer ways to think about hard decisions than we often think. It always seems like there are a million different possible outcomes to consider, a thousand paths to choose between, a hundred potential repercussions of our choices that need to be thought about before acting. (That whole “pause to respond, not react” comes into mind, eh?).

But it doesn’t have to be so difficult and complicated.

I’m going to hop on the Wayne bandwagon and give you two clear cut justifications for whichever choice you’re about to make in life, whether it’s a club to join (or quit), class to conquer (or drop), a bad relationship you know you need to end, or your third attempt at making a chocolate soufflé – because those things are seriously difficult and require some encouragement to master.

It’s either an opportunity to grow, or an obstacle to keep you from growing.

Simple. As. That. And that brings me to the name of this blog that you’re choosing to read because you’re a fabulous, inspired, passionate person who knows what’s good. (;

Coming Up Roses. We’re all roses, in a way. Beautiful, but not without our thorns. Perfectly imperfect, temporary beings. We want to blossom. Our whole life, sometimes, we’re on this quest to just keep growing, keep blossoming…we want to learn more, see more, do more, be more. Sometimes we get there, and for a brief moment, we’re this picture perfect thing. It ends, as all things good and bad do, and we eventually die – not to be ridiculously morbid on your Monday morning or anything. But it’s true – in the end, we die. So until then, we have two choices: we can view every hard thing before us as an opportunity to grow, or an obstacle to keep us from growing.

What’s it gonna be?

Now pin this and make it official: