Have you ever had a goal that you started to make some progress on, but hit an obstacle, got stuck and ultmately never reached that goal? I know I have! How valuable would it be if we could learn to overcome these obstacles quickly and get unstuck, so they don’t disrupt the achievement of our goals and ultimately our overall success?
Firstly, it’s really important that we are aware that as soon as we set a goal, there are also going to be obstacles by default. It’s inevitable; and knowing obstacles will always be in our way is important. Why? Because we can then mentally prepare ourselves to not get too discouraged when they come up. Instead, we can learn to get excited, as we know once we overcome the obstacle we will make progress and keep on moving steadily towards the achievement of our goal. So then:
Step 1: Accept That Obstacles Are Always Going to ‘Happen’
The first step of dealing with obstacles, is accepting that they will always be there. This gives us an instant advantage over the obstacle. This first step helps by taking the power we would normally give to the obstacle away and instantly puts us in the power position instead. Now that we are aware that obstacles will always pop up, we’re ready to attack them head on. So step one is very fundamental – understand that when we have goals there will also be preexisting obstacles that we will inevitably need to solve in order to move to the next step of our plan.
Step 2: Dealing With Your Self-Talk
We have all had an important goal in mind, but for some reason or another, we start having reservations of whether we can really pull it off. When we initially thought of this goal we were really excited and ready to go for it! However, a little while after, these little voices inside our heads start to go at it. “You know you’re going to have to work twice as hard right?”, “He’s going to argue I can’t do it!”, “I’m not going to have any time to watch TV.”, “It’s going to cost too much to start up.” Why is this happening? This Self-Talk is totally disempowering and echoes the fears of not being accepted, loved, failing or even looking foolish or embarrassed if we fail. Thus, we have to find a way to take action despite these little voices inside our head. Why? Because these little voices will usually cause us to hesitate and not take any action at all. When this happens, do the chances of achieving a goal without any action increase or decrease? You’re right – they decrease! Is it any wonder why so many of us don’t make much progress on our goals and thus never achieve them? So, how do we deal with our negative Self-Talk? Dr. Helmstetter, a pioneer of self-talk audio says, that listening to pre-recorded positive self-talk audio can transform our negative and disempowering self-talk that usually leads us to failure, to the empowering self-talk and self belief of success!