Book Review: "Obstacles Welcome" by Ralph de la Vega

We all have and will experience obstacles in our life.  Any journey seems to inevitably have obstacles inserted somewhere between the start and the finish.  Maybe it is a twist or turn.  Maybe it is a landslide. What the obstacle is for you is not important, just understanding that they will be included in your unwritten itenerary. 

Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, presents us with this book titled, "Obstacles Welcome".  It includes some of his biographical background, coming from Cuba in the 1960s to the United States, alone.  He came alone, not by choice.  His parents had to make the choice of whether one family member could go or none.  They chose Ralph.  He made his way to the southern part of Florida, to be there three years without his father or mother or siblings.

He includes this to say that he had obstacles in his life toward the goal of "success" from the very beginning.  He didn't know English. Obstacle overcome.  He learned English.  He went on to college.  He worked.  He did things that some people would give up on.

One of my favorite chapters was titled "Obstacles in Disguise".  What I enjoyed was the reminder that things which show up in life may present themselves as an obstacle, but, in essence, they are disguised as opportunities - to learn, to launch, etc.  It seems that I have had different obstacles in my life that were disguised as opportunities.

One criticism is that Ralph puts too many "lists" of improvement in the book.  In the latter two-thirds of the book, there are ___(blank) number of ways to do certain things.  The difficulty with this is that it is hard to remember all of them, for there are so many.  Coming from a ministry standpoint, when I give a sermon, to have so many acronyms or scripture references in the message, people will forget them by the end.

There are definitely good things in the book, and I could see it being of benefit to business-minded people, as that is who it is targeted.  It was interesting to see where AT&T and Cingular have been prior to where they are now.

So, as you go through life, remember "Obstacles Welcome"!