It happened about 20 years ago when I came from South Korea to the United States to start teaching Body & Brain Yoga, the mind and body training method that I developed. I boarded the plane with great hope and expectation, crossed the Pacific Ocean, passed over the American continent, and then finally arrived at JFK International Airport in New York City. I had collected my bag and loaded it on a cart, and I was walking to meet the person who was supposed to pick me up.
That’s when someone suddenly came up and started talking to me. I didn’t understand a word he was saying because I couldn’t speak English well. He got right in my face and was going on and on about something. I had the feeling that he was asking me for directions, but I didn’t know the area and couldn’t explain that to him, so I could only stand there looking frustrated.
I got a weird feeling, though. If I couldn’t answer him, he should have asked someone else. But there he was, continually smiling and trying to use body language. I thought, “Wait a minute!” Then I turned around and saw someone else taking off with my bag. I looked back the other way, but the person who had been speaking to me was already gone.
Only then did I realize, “Oh, man, I’ve had my bag stolen.” The bag contained the uniform I was going to wear when teaching classes, my books, and $5,000 in seed money. I met up with the person who would come to get me and filed a report with the police, but I had no way of recovering my bag.
How would you have felt in that situation? As you can imagine, I was upset. “How could something like this happen as soon as I arrived in the land of America? Did I make a mistake in coming here? Is this a bad omen for my future? Should I go back to Korea?” All kinds of negative thoughts came to mind.
I couldn’t go back to Korea because of that, though. “I’ll pioneer the work in America,” I had told my students in Korea when I left. “You all handle things in Korea.” So I couldn’t even think of going back. It was also difficult for me to tell anyone that my bag had been stolen. It seemed to me that people would whisper, “An enlightened Tao master got his money stolen? Shouldn’t he be able to just look at someone and know that he was a thief?”
I had come full of hope, but in an instant I had fallen into despair. It seemed like it would be hard to begin my activity in America with such an unpleasant feeling. Emotion is a kind of energy that affects the energy of the mind and body, so I was not starting off well. With that kind of energy, I felt like I didn’t have the strength I would need to start such an enormous task. I might have been justified in giving up right then and there, but fortunately I already knew I didn’t have to stay in that state. I realized I had to put myself in a new mood somehow, even though problems just kept developing.
So, I decided to find a positive message I could give myself. I thought about what it might mean that I lost my bag as soon as I came to America. This message came to mind: “I haven’t lost a bag and money. I came to America and donated $5,000 to New York. That guy’s situation must’ve been pretty bad for him to have taken the money.” I felt a little better after changing my thinking in this way. “I’ve donated $5,000, so I will be blessed in the future. A thousandfold blessing will come back to me within 10 years,” I said, giving myself a concrete message.
My mood really improved after I thought about it in this way, and an unstoppable ambition welled up within me. Nothing in my external environment had changed. Only one thing had changed: my thinking. All I did was change my thinking about one thing, but I gained the strength to face reality with an attitude that was 180 degrees opposite of what it had been. The future I had hoped for really did become a reality 10 years later. Changing your ideas, giving your brain a good message — this is a first step that can change your environment.
We all encounter obstacles great and small as we live our lives. Reactions differ from person to person, though, even for the same obstacle. Some are blocked and make no further progress, while others boldly break through and continue on their way. The individual who has successfully dealt with a setback has experienced that opportunities and blessings are waiting beyond it. Obstacles are there to be overcome; we are trained and grow stronger in the process of overcoming them.
Don’t fear obstructions. It’s difficult to break through a barrier if you think it is a thick wall. Based on the experiences of my life so far, obstacles are not thick walls; they are merely thin paper curtains that look thick on the outside. Push through, and they open up. Many people, though, are afraid and don’t even think about breaking through those walls.
When an obstacle appears, when you’re faced with a difficult situation, don’t give up in despair. First try to think that there is a reason for everything in the environment you’re facing. Try switching to the idea that it’s an environment capable of developing the power of your soul. With such a mindset, you can see everything as something to be studied, as grist for the mill of your growth.
You become capable of changing the environment, as the creator standing at its center. Then you can live your life not waiting for happiness to come from the outside — but creating and sharing happiness yourself.
This passage is excerpted from Ilchi Lee’s “I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years: The Ancient Secret to Longevity, Vitality, and Life Transformation.”
