Overcoming obstacles and setbacks.
Setting goals is very easy… actually achieving them is where most of us stumble and fall. We don’t tend to fail because the goal was too hard, we tend to fail because we get derailed by unexpected obstacles and setbacks that get in our way.
Basically there are three types of obstacles that we may encounter as we try our best to achieve the goal we set ourselves. These are personal, environmental, and social obstacles.
Personal obstacles are things that relate to our state of mind, psychology, and behaviour. For example, we may have limiting beliefs about our ability, unhelpful habits that we struggle to break or even overwhelming emotions that stop us from taking action.
These personal obstacles can stop us from achieving our goal because they heavily affect our ability to interpret what’s going on and the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can end up dwelling on the negative.
This negative mindset can prevent us from making objective decisions, finding solutions, and subsequently has us taking less optimal paths as we work toward our goal.
We wrote an article a few weeks ago on ‘the power of thoughts’, which you may find very helpful. We can lead our thoughts to be more positive, even in difficult times, all it takes is practice.
Social obstacles are things that related to other people’s ability to derail us. These are people who either actively try to sabotage our efforts, through their words or actions, or people who are not as positive about our ability to achieve our goal and can negatively affect our personal obstacles.
These people can try to prevent us from achieving our goal, by trying to get us to go out instead of going to the gym, smoking around us when we are trying to quit or simply by stating that they don’t believe we can do it.
This is a tough obstacle to overcome because it may involve us looking at our current environment and asking does it fit with our life goals and aspirations. If our friends and family are happy and content with where they are, they may find it very difficult to understand and support our goal.
Unlike the previous two types of obstacles, environmental obstacles are often unexpected situations and circumstances that we typically have very little control over. These can be small obstacles, like being unable to train due to an illness, or big obstacles that change our life, like being made redundant.
Because these are unexpected, it is very difficult for us to plan for them. We will definitely have to revaluate our goal timeline, and also understand what the actual impact on us is, rather than the perceived impact we first see when we allow our emotions to do the thinking.
The bottom line is that we must remember everyone will meet obstacles in their life and experience setbacks. However, we are in control of how we react to them, how we face them and whether we are defeated by them.
Every successful person, the ones we tend to look to for inspiration in our own lives, have faced their fair share of setbacks before, during, and after achieving something great. Steve Jobs’s story is well-known.
We need to give ourselves the time to succeed and remember that the ups remind us of where we want to go, and the downs push us to get there. Everyone fails, we need to be kind to ourselves in those moments, retake control of the new situation and keep moving forward.
I AM ENOUGH! Say this to yourself daily!
We would love to know if you’ve found this helpful, and please share it with someone you know who would benefit from reading this. Please comment below if you have any other helpful tips or ideas that could help the U perform family.
Basically there are three types of obstacles that we may encounter as we try our best to achieve the goal we set ourselves. These are personal, environmental, and social obstacles.
Personal obstacles are things that relate to our state of mind, psychology, and behaviour. For example, we may have limiting beliefs about our ability, unhelpful habits that we struggle to break or even overwhelming emotions that stop us from taking action.
These personal obstacles can stop us from achieving our goal because they heavily affect our ability to interpret what’s going on and the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can end up dwelling on the negative.
This negative mindset can prevent us from making objective decisions, finding solutions, and subsequently has us taking less optimal paths as we work toward our goal.
We wrote an article a few weeks ago on ‘the power of thoughts’, which you may find very helpful. We can lead our thoughts to be more positive, even in difficult times, all it takes is practice.
Social obstacles are things that related to other people’s ability to derail us. These are people who either actively try to sabotage our efforts, through their words or actions, or people who are not as positive about our ability to achieve our goal and can negatively affect our personal obstacles.
These people can try to prevent us from achieving our goal, by trying to get us to go out instead of going to the gym, smoking around us when we are trying to quit or simply by stating that they don’t believe we can do it.
This is a tough obstacle to overcome because it may involve us looking at our current environment and asking does it fit with our life goals and aspirations. If our friends and family are happy and content with where they are, they may find it very difficult to understand and support our goal.
Unlike the previous two types of obstacles, environmental obstacles are often unexpected situations and circumstances that we typically have very little control over. These can be small obstacles, like being unable to train due to an illness, or big obstacles that change our life, like being made redundant.
Because these are unexpected, it is very difficult for us to plan for them. We will definitely have to revaluate our goal timeline, and also understand what the actual impact on us is, rather than the perceived impact we first see when we allow our emotions to do the thinking.
The bottom line is that we must remember everyone will meet obstacles in their life and experience setbacks. However, we are in control of how we react to them, how we face them and whether we are defeated by them.
Every successful person, the ones we tend to look to for inspiration in our own lives, have faced their fair share of setbacks before, during, and after achieving something great. Steve Jobs’s story is well-known.
We need to give ourselves the time to succeed and remember that the ups remind us of where we want to go, and the downs push us to get there. Everyone fails, we need to be kind to ourselves in those moments, retake control of the new situation and keep moving forward.
I AM ENOUGH! Say this to yourself daily!
We would love to know if you’ve found this helpful, and please share it with someone you know who would benefit from reading this. Please comment below if you have any other helpful tips or ideas that could help the U perform family.