Nature has many ways of showing us how to we might choose to respond to such things in our day to day life. Things like our emotions or other peoples, a change, different opinions or ways of doing something, obstacles we might face etc.  Sometimes when we watch moving water, like the flow of a river,  we can see how it meets a rock or boulder in its path. Does it resist? Try to change the boulder? Push at it? The water flows around it, this “obstacle” that is harder and denser than it is. The water stays in its flow and is hardly impeded or slowed down as it moves around the obstacle and continues on its path.

As humans we can find ourselves resisting an obstacle. We might get stopped in our tracks by a situation thinking we need go over it or through it, change it or be stopped. But what if we let the obstacle or “boulder ” stay where it is and just go around it? Even dealing with other people an obstacle might feel like a difference of opinion. What if we chose to let it go, and kindly flow around it? Allowing that there are many things  we might see as obstacles or that get in our way, how we approach it may be the difference between getting wound up and feeling relaxed enough to better assess the situation.   What if we breathed through that feeling, instead of getting stuck, angry, confused or overwhelmed?  We could take a breathe, relax our body, and choose to go with our own flow, focusing on what needs to be done in a positive direction, letting go of the habit perhaps, to resist, fight or get sidetracked?

If we are flowing towards something positive we seek, or just living our daily life, we focus our energy on what we want more of rather than the obstacle. And when we can act like water, maybe that can help release the power of the obstacle for us.