The other day, when I was having a chat about life with a friend of mine, he complained about "being back at the same spot" where he was over a year ago, just as if, instead of moving forward, he had gone round a circle just to end up in the same place. Does this ring a bell?

For, as the old saying goes, man is the only animal that trips over the same stone twice. And when we say twice, we could say three, or ten, or twenty... Sometimes there are stones we keep on tripping over for our whole lives.

But, what if we took the opportunity to learn from each of those trip-ups? What if, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves or cursing the stone, we observed what happens around us (and more importantly, inside of us) every time it reappears?

The day we get to master this skill, we will discover that, in reality the path is not a circle, but a spiral: with each lap we get to go deeper and become a little bit wiser, and even though the same old challenges will reappear once in a while, they will not be exactly the same anymore, because we will have acquired new resources and tools to tackle them differently.

(Photo of a decorative paper spiral, which looks very much like a circle when it´s folded, but once you stretch it, you can clearly see that it´s not)

Do you get the idea? I think this poem by Portia Nelson also illustrates it really well:

 Autobiography in five chapters

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

Circle, or spiral? Your choice.