Crossing Bridges - moving on through life's challenges

One more bridge to cross is what my mother said  as we were coming down the west coast of Florida on one of our annual mother-daughter Florida winter trips..  Many rivers and streams flow into the Gulf of Mexico so there were a lot of bridges!  This got me thinking.  How many bridges have we already crossed in life to get to where we are today?  There always seems to be one more bridge to cross to get to our destination.  Will we never get there?

Where or what is it you are trying to get to?  Are you always looking for the next bridge?  And what is that bridge keeping you from?  Will you even know when you've crossed the last bridge?

Lots of stuff came to mind when she made that statement, especially since I am in the midst of some big things in my life again.  At the time of that trip the house that we have been planning for the last 20 years was finally into the final stages of fruition and we kept crossing tiny bridges to get to the end of that road.  Now I at another "bridge" so to speak as I mull over what the next step will be in life.

In life we cross many "bridges"; experiences that get us to the next phase of life.  But how often do we put up emotional "bridges" that keep us from getting to the next phase or the level?  Too often the things that are keeping us back are self made.  We sometimes set ourselves up to fail or be held back by building an imaginary bridge that we think we need to get over to move on.  I have often told clients and students that if you can't get home the way you normally go because of an accident or impasse on the road, wouldn't you find another way?  A detour?  That is what happens in our thinking and the end result of a goal that we have set.  If the first method doesn't work then it is time to find another way.  Another route to get over the bridge.

The other way of thinking about bridges is that they are way to get over something that you wouldn't normally be able to get across or that would be hazardous or impossible to get across without the bridge.  So the positive side of a bridge is that it is there to help you overcome obstacles.  So no matter how many bridges you have to cross, they are there to get you safely around or over the obstacle.

As with any of our issues in life, there is always another way of looking at them.  It is true that sometimes bad things do happen; things that we have no control over.  That doesn't mean that we need to let the bad thing keep us from staying on course.  There is always the next bridge to cross.  The bridge that gets us over the defeat or inconvenience.

Think of the bridge not as one more to cross but as a shorter path to get to where you want to go.  A way to meet challenges and move on to the next step.