Yesterday I talked about how we keep ourselves stuck in a rut by denying reality. Today I want to talk about another way we keep ourselves in the same patterns--compromising our vision of what could be. 

Robert Fritz, in his excellent book, The Path of Least Resistance, says that the energy for creation comes from the tension between our vision for what we want and the reality of our situation. When the tension between vision and reality is low, we do not have sufficient energy to create something new. When we deny reality, as I discussed yesterday, we are reducing the tension in the situation. But we also reduce tension and the energy for creation when we compromise our vision. 

I've found that co-workers, friends, family members, etc. are particularly good at helping us compromise our vision. They will tell us that we are not being "realistic," that our "expectations are too high," or that we need to learn to "compromise." Surrounded by this feedback, we will slowly whittle away at our creative vision for what we want in our careers or our personal lives. Eventually, it will be so close to the "reality" that we are denying, we will have lost all energy to make a change. And then we are stuck. 

To remove ourselves from this place, we need to be clear and unwavering in our vision for what we want to create in our lives. We need to ask ourselves, "What Results Do I Want to Create? and must be unstinting in describing those results. 

There are plenty of places we can compromise in our lives. Our vision for what we want to create is not one of those places.