In the last lesson, you learned how to overcome obstacles with a variety of strategies. This is a crucial skill to learn, as there are obstacles everywhere. They’re unavoidable. This lesson takes the next step and lists the most common obstacles you’re likely to face. If you know what might be in your future, you can be prepared.

Having goals will help you achieve your dreams. Some of the most satisfying experiences are those that involve staying focused on a goal until you achieve it. Yet you’ll likely experience times when, no matter how hard you try, you’re stymied by obstacles blocking the way. 

Obstacles come in all shapes and sizes. Here are some typical blocks to goal achievement:

1. Lack of creativity. You might have your struggles determining how to best work toward attaining what you want. Perhaps you’ve run out of ideas to make it happen. 
2. Negative thinking. We’ve all been plagued by negative thinking. You feel you’re just not going to be able to achieve your dreams. Negative thinking is a potent block because it tends to escalate once it begins and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. Lagging confidence. Following closely on the heels of negative thinking, sagging confidence is the bane of goal achievement. You begin to question your skills and abilities seriously to complete the work required to reach your goal. 
4. Issues focusing. Who among us can claim we’ve never lost our way on the path toward our dream life? We want to reach that milestone, but we keep getting thwarted by distractions. How can you work on an important project when your wife keeps asking you why you aren’t painting the house or spending time with the kids?
5. Refusing to put in effort. It goes without saying that every goal requires you to work and persevere to reach success.
6. Deadlines. Making your way toward goals is challenging enough without having the irritation of not enough time to do it. 
7. Vague aspirations. If you’re unsure about what you want, it’s a challenge to continue steadily toward your goals. Vague aspirations equal unmet goals.
   

Navigating Obstacles

Now that you have a good idea of blocks you might encounter on your way to goal achievement, use these tips to overcome them:

1. Take responsibility to keep the creativity going. Draw pictures of what you hope to achieve. Make a storyboard of your plan of action. Design a vision board of what your goal pathway looks like and include how your life will differ after achieving your goal.
2. Arrest negative thoughts. As soon as they creep in, think, “Stop it now,” and mean it. Then, replace that negativity with an “I will persevere and achieve” message. Tell yourself, “I can do it.”
3. Review past achievements. Give yourself props for the goals you’ve achieved before. What were those goals? Use these reminder techniques to find and connect with your confidence.
4. Commit to goals. Remind yourself daily about why you want to reach a particular goal. Perhaps you’ll earn more money, get a better job, live in a place you prefer, or protect your family’s future. Stay the course by re-committing to goals each morning.
5. Work. Along with committing wholeheartedly to goals, you’ve got to put in the work. Tell yourself your effort will, in the end, be worth it.
6. Use your schedule. No matter what your goal, consistently schedule the time to work toward it. If you don’t keep a calendar now, start. Look at your entire week or month and what’s scheduled with a glance. Write in when you’ll work toward goals. 
   • Maybe it will be Tuesday evenings from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. or Saturday mornings from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Follow your schedule consistently.
7. Clarify goals. Write them and place copies everywhere inside your house, desk, and phone. When you’re sure about what you want, then you can diligently work toward those goals.

There will be obstacles to block the pathways toward your goals. But if you can identify the sources of the blocks, you can develop solutions or use these time-tested strategies to navigate those obstacles and claim your success.

Our upcoming lesson takes a look at fear and the problems that fear creates. You’ll learn that you don’t have very many obstacles left in life if you can successfully manage your fears.

Here’s what you need to do today:

• Choose three of the common obstacles in this lesson.
• Make a list of examples from your own life where you faced those same obstacles.
• How could you use the tools in the Navigating Obstacles section to have overcome or avoided those obstacles?