In my book Sacred Success, I issue a warning: When you commit to achieving Greatness, everything unlike itself will come up to be healed. Life gets in the way. Obstacles arise. Shit happens. Breakdowns occur.

To the masses, obstacles are like ticking time bombs, something to quickly defuse or avoid altogether.

But for those pursuing Greatness, obstacles are doorways to healing and growth. What seems to get in the way is the way to transformation.

“Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again” A Course in Miracles tells us, “So where you made a faulty choice before you can now make a better one and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought you.”

Difficulties are not diversions from Greatness but proof of dysfunctional patterns that are, thankfully, being brought into awareness so you can correct them. These patterns are precisely what’s been preventing you from achieving Greatness.

Every challenge, every obstacle, provides the chance to respond in a new way. Essentially your Soul is telling you: “Don’t act as you have in the past. Make a different choice this time.”

By responding differently you’ll invariably receive radically different, and hopefully vastly improved, results. Every ordeal—from the computer crashing to a spat with your spouse—is an opportunity to transmute your past into a better future by reacting differently than you normally would.

Oprah summed it up perfectly: “When you meet obstacles with gratitude, your perception starts to shift, resistance loses its power, and grace finds a home within you.”