How To Face Life’s Intersection Points

Earl Nightingale said that the majority is always wrong, especially when it comes to money. He shared that regardless of your goal, if you didn’t know the correct strategy to use you could deduce it by watching the way everyone else went and then go in the opposite direction.

Moving forward often takes seeing what others can’t see, and believing what others have given up on. It also means taking chances that many simply won’t because of fear.

Consider the story of Agnes. A wealthy teacher who lived in a well-to-do neighborhood, one day she heard a cry that forever changed her life. Driving home past a run-down section of town, she heard a scream for help from an alley. Many people would have ignored the plea, Agnes chose to investigate.

What she found was a woman dying. She rushed her to the hospital, only to be turned away. She took her to a second hospital in another town, only to be turned away again. It turned out both places felt the woman wasn’t worth helping. At this point many would have given up, assuring themselves they did all they could do.

Agnes however didn’t give up. She took the woman home and cared for her in her final hours. Then she determined that she would do everything possible to ensure that all people, no matter how far out on the fringe of society they found themselves, deserved to be treated with dignity. The world would know her as Mother Teresa, and in the end she walked away from her teaching job to live her life as a healer.

We all have intersections in our lives where there are paths before us. Sometimes the best path to take is the one no one else is brave enough to go down.

Consider again Nightingale’s belief that the majority is always wrong. One reason is because so often people take the path of least resistance. As Anthony Robbins asks during his live seminars, “How many people like surprises?” Almost every hand goes up. He then continues, “Bull! You like the surprises you want, the ones you don’t want you call problems.”

In truth, we need problems, because it is when we are faced with challenges that we grow. So when the problem shows up it is a chance for us to show up, not hide from it or ignore it.

So don’t resist intersection points. The intersections require a decision that will also require a new part of you to develop. That is how growth happens, embrace it!