This is a guest post by Sarah Williams.
We have all heard of the phrase that life is not a bed of roses.
To be honest with you, it actually is something similar to that.
Think of roses in particular. These red luscious flowers are embedded with prickly thorns.
Each thorn in the rose represents an obstacle that you face in life.
The influx of obstacles in your life will never cease.
You can however limit them to a certain extent.
The best possible way of doing so, is by eliminating the obstacles that you create for yourself in your mind.
These are called mental obstacles, and often times they prove to be the biggest hurdles in your road to success.
There is very little that we can do to prevent others from imposing challenges on us.
However, removing mental obstacles is a very real possibility and it should be done in order to achieve goals and lead a happier life.
Before you can go into your juggernaut mode and start bulldozing these obstacles down, you need to be acquainted with them.
Here are 7 mental obstacles that will make your life miserable if you don`tdo something about them.
1. Craving Societal Approval
We live in a time where our actions no longer stem from our principles and beliefs. Instead, our actions are catered for societal approval. Without the acknowledgement and approval of society, our actions seem invalid.
If you tread this path, you will end up being a people pleaser. Sure, impressing your boss or your colleagues may get you a small promotion, but it is never going to put you on top of the ladder.
Sometimes, the things that society disapproves of are the very things that drive us towards our goals and get success under our bag.
2. Being Mediocre
Gone are the days when people would strive for excellence in whatever they pursued. The sculptor struggled to chisel his stone to perfect. The artist struggled to master the perfect stroke of his paintbrush. The singer struggled to present the perfect tune to the audience.
This need for excellence has been replaced with an inclination towards mediocrity.
If you continue to think that excellence is not required in your life, then you will never reach your true potential. It’s like a tree cutting off its own branches and stunting its own growth.
3. Translating Failure into Weakness
The way you interpret failure will determine how easily you can acquire your goals. If you think that you failures are an indication of your weaknesses, then your road to success will be clogged with even more obstacles.
This is because every time you fail, you are telling yourself that you did not have the strength to succeed. The more optimistic approach would be to see each failure as a learning curve that prepares you for success the next time.
At the end of the day, the people who can get themselves up, dust themselves off and carry on like nothing had every happened are more likely to succeed in life than people who linger on in their pothole of failures and misery.
4. Being Uncertain
You don’t have to be a fortune teller to predict your future. All you have to be is a visionary.
The moment you are not sure of where you are heading towards, is the moment when you have left your life at the mercy of external forces. Uncertainty can creep into your mind for a number of different reasons.
The best approach is to always have a plan for everything that you do in life. The more uncertain you are at any point in time, the less productive you are likely to be. Besides if you do not know where you are going, then you will lack the true motivation to complete a challenge in life.
Doing something for the sake of doing it will be a total waste of your time.
5. Lacking Flexibility
Change is something very personal. It is almost as personal as religion. If you are unable to change when needed, you will lag behind in life.
A fixed formula or a strategy may get you far, but it will certainly not get you across the line.
You need to always have a plan B. Most people stick with a certain approach in life, and do not change it even when it is quite obvious to them that it needs immediate change.
This lack of flexibility is a dangerous mental obstacle. As the saying goes, you either adapt or you perish.
6. Doubting Your Credibility
Doubting your own ability and accomplishments will have a negative effect on them. It is always good to be humble, but it is foolish to believe that you are not deserving of the acclaim or the opportunities that you have in your life.
Your ends should justify your means. Even if you know that there are better and more deserving people than you out there, don’t just leave your place vacant. That will not be an act of nobility, but rather an act of sheer stupidity.
7. Being Over Competitive
A little bit of competition is always healthy. However, too much of it pulls you down.
Not everything that you do has to be a competition with somebody else. Life is not about racing ahead of others. Instead, it’s about simply making it to the end of the road.
Sometimes in lieu of trying to get somewhere first, you end up tripping and falling far behind in life. Just because your friend has a BMW does not mean that you have to afford one even if you cannot to keep up with him.
Most of the ills that cripple you in your life originate from your mind. Coming back to the rose analogy, if you can nip the flower in the bud, then you will be able to streamline your road to success.
The idea is to purify your mind before you can set itself toachieve your goals.
What To Do Next…
Which mental obstacles are keeping you from achieving your goals?
What is your experience with overcoming those obstacles?
Sarah Williams is a Berlin based blogger and entrepreneur who specializes in dating advice. She believes we can take a lesson from every encounter. You can check out her thoughts on men, dating and love at Wingman Magazine – her blog for men.
I help online entrepreneurs NETWORK with influencers and position their BRAND so they can attract the right CLIENTS fast. Award-winning blogger.
Very good article Sarah!
Knowing what are our obstacles on way is like a road sign of steep curve ahead, it does help make the right decision to avoid disaster.
I loved “Craving Societal Approval” and “Translating Failure into Weakness” two major detrimental things to our action-approach. We would be never be able to fly with our own developed wings if we always seek external approval, it’s like living our life on support system.
And each failure tells us what’s right thing to do and what are things not to do or to avoid. Failure are the greatest teacher and sign post dictating the right direction to move.
Keep writing great posts like this many more in 2016. Good luck and best wishes!
Bharat
Hey Bharat, thanks for your great commenting.
Yes, Sarah did a great job 🙂
Have a super day!
Tor
Hey Tor,
thanks for inviting Sarah to share, I’m in Germany as well, glad to see us make some noise 🙂
Number 4 is my biggest obstacle at times. I just started a new project writing book summaries. I read some blinks on Blinkist every morning and share my learnings (it’s called Four Minute Books) online.
I have no idea how it will turn out or if it will be successful, and this uncertainty sometimes makes me want to quit not just this, but a lot of other things (like my main blog or my trade in my freelance career for “a proper job”).
Today is one of those days, I needed this.
When I just sit down and work (the best productivity hack still), I can forget about it and by the time I finish my spirits have lifted.
Does anyone else suffer from uncertainty as much as me?
Thanks for you great comment, Niklas.
Germany in the house! Woop woop!
In my experience there is only ONE way to find out if an activity works.
Are you ready?
Apply massive action, so you can have data to judge if it really works.
That is exactly what I did when I was building a network of 1500+ distributors in under two years, part time, while working for one of the biggest companies in Norway earning six-figures.
You might think: “Okay, Tor. But it was probably easy for you.”
No it wasn`t.
I probably didn`t mention that I was taught completely wrong, and I got my first 40 no`s in a row.
Most people would have quit after 3 no`s. But I decided that the harder it became for me, the more persistent I was to succeed.
I told myself: “If I can succeed in this, then I can succeed in anything.”
And I am glad I did.
I earned enough money to buy my first car, a BMW, I spoke in front of 3000 people in Nice and I met the better half and future wife, Sara.
In addition, that path also lead me to an event in London where I was exposed for the first time to Internet marketing…
…and that lead to me starting to blog.
If I had quit, I would have achieved none of the above.
I also used the exact same strategy: massive action when I started blogging.
Which lead to me getting featured on 85 blogs in my first year of blogging and connecting with some of the biggest names in the blogosphere.
I don`t say that you should commit to do a specific activity no matter what.
That is stupid.
However, at least put in enough massive action, so you can make a sound judgment whether you should keep following the path or change.
Good luck!
Tor
Hi there,
Thank you for your warm words about my article!
The new year just started so the memories from that one glorious night when we were pumped full of champagne and big resolutions are still very fresh… As well as our resolutions. I am sure that with a bit of an effort this can be the year when you accomplish all your goals!
To all what I wrote before, I would like to suggest you the very first step on your way:
**Write down your goals and look at it.**
Visualize yourself accomplishing your goals. Writing down and visualization is a favorite technique of mine, which I high recommend to all of you. Furnish your imagination with as many details as possible. Try to feel the joy of accomplishing your goal! The goals that you can actually see are massively more powerful than the goals you just write down on a checklist.
All the best for 2016! I am sure you will manage to accomplish all what you desire.
Hi Tor,
The first point, couldn’t agree more with that one, everyone was and is telling me you won’t succeed online, its not gonna work, its way too tough, you no expert in online market space…
But that kind of reminds of Biz Stone, one of twitter owners, said something along these lines that you need to try at least, don’t give up, keep trying, all you need is one formula to work … ;p
So no, if I go by what people think of me or what I should do then, definitely that would mean doing nothing, because everybody has his,her own subjective opinion and so nobody is objective and so you won’t be doing anything in the end….
And yeah having hope, vision plus perseverance in the long run, with passage of time will deliver you just need to have that positive focus, finding good things in bad situations, in hard times…
Nobody succeed overnight (though exceptions are there) but for majority of us, its hard work, toiling each and every day, every hour every second and then you reach where you want to reach, it takes time and good amount of hard work, but then, won’t you appreciate and love it if you get after much hardwork ????
That satisfaction, that amazement, that happiness, that peace you achieve when you do it finally ??? so hard work is essential not just to succeed in your goals but achieve peace of mind, happiness, joy!
Thank you Tor for such a great piece ! 🙂
Thanks for your great comment, Arshad.
I didn´t do that much, just published Sarah William´s post 😉
Tor
Thank you to too Sarah! that was a good one! 🙂
Yeah, Sarah did a great job on this one 🙂
Tor
Hey there Tor! Fantabulous article my friend. I really love the point that you touched on with doubting your credibility. It took me a while to “get over myself” and believe that I have something special to offer to the world.
Wishing you a great week my friend. Cheers!
Thanks a lot for commenting, Kim.
The article was written by Sarah Williams, and she did a great job 🙂
Thanks for sharing, Kim. Yes, we have all been doubting ourselves when it comes to sharing our awesomeness to the world.
Have a super day!
Tor
Hello Tor,
Well!! Sarah has done a great job undoubtedly by pin pointing these hurdles. Achieving goals is not an easy task, if it was that much easy then why would be there words like unsuccessful, failure in the dictionary.
I deeply believe in – “To achieve something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done before”.
I was recently watching a live show where Samsung talked about its 360 degree camera, Mark Zukerberg was also there as Samsung had a partnership with Facebook, from there I came to know he starting learning to code at the age of 11. He has come a long way to achieve this success.
Have patience, believe in yourself, be strong enough to face failure, work your butt off in the right direction, that’s all.
Thank you,
Karan
Thanks for commenting, Karan.
Yes, Sarah did a great job.
I like the quote your are mentioning “To achieve something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done before”.
That goes hand in hand with one of my other favourite quotes by Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Keep rocking!
Tor
Hello Sarah,
Nice post…after reading this post, i now come to realize how Doubting One’s Credibility can slow down achieving a goal. I will make sure to check your blog for more posts!
Thank you for having this helpful guest post Tor.
Thanks for commenting, Saminu.
Sarah did a great job.
Have a super day!
Tor
Hey Tor,
Thank you for inviting Sarah to share such an informative article with us. All the points treated on this article are superb but I think I like points 2, 4 and 5. Being mediocre, uncertain and lacking flexibility are obstacles that can drag you to failure even before you start setting out your goals.
This is my first time on your blog and I must admit that you are doing a wonderful job here. Enjoy the rest of the day.
~Chinedu
Thanks for commenting, Chinedu.
Yup, Sarah did a great job.
Have a great day.
Best,
Tor
Great post Tor.
Seeking external validation is indeed one of the greatest curses this generation has befallen to. By this, we are clearly are under the control of others. We lose our self. We should learn to not give not give a damn to what others think (to some extent!). That’s the liberation! That’s the real freedom. Actually, practicing not giving a damn, you will unlock many opportunities in life and start to enjoy things that you hated earlier.
Doubting credibility! Yeah a lot applicable for me. I always think like, I am good at blogging? That’s not a great thing. Everybody writes. Sometimes we overlook our own skills.
Best,
Akshay~
Thanks for your great comment, Akshay, and sharing your thoughts.
I think we all doubt ourselves once in a while. Then it´s all about telling ourselves that we are a work in progress, and that we can always become better, regardless of what stage we are at.
It´s the same with the ability to write blog posts as with any skill. You need to practice, practice and practice it 🙂
Keep up the good work, man!
Best,
Tor
Another mental obstacle, I think that people lazy to try maybe they fear of failure. But even if we tried and then we failed, at least we know, that way is wrong. And again, and again, until we find our goals
Good point, Nich.
Thanks a lot for commenting. I really appreciate it 🙂
Tor