Overcoming Obstacles On The Way To Succeeding

Many people have great potentials of greatness, but are stopped by some forces. You have some inner battles you need to get away with before you can succeed. Let me put it this way, you need to let go of some things by unlearning/ doing away with them and picking up some new skills to overcome stops along your journey.

There are many reasons why people may still not be great but I will be addressing five of this reasons which I see so important and majorly impede people from succeeding.

1. Fear
2. Cynicism
3. Laziness
4. Bad habits
5. Arrogance.

Fear

There is an old saying, “Faint heart ne’er won fair maid.” And there is another, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Giving in to fear makes you fearful, while acting boldly makes you courageous. Your actions create your beliefs, and your beliefs create your realities. Each time you feel afraid or nervous for any reason, the only solution is to “Do the thing you fear.” An old man once advised his grandson with these wonderful words: “Act boldly, and unseen forces will come to your aid.” Truer words were never spoken. Most people fail to secure themselves a job even when they are embedded with the required skills and potentials. They fall out majorly at the point of interviews due to the fear that the employer may not like their clothes or might have some sort of preference over them. Most salespeople are selling far less and earning far less than they are capable of because they have an exaggerated fear of rejection. Even though they have never met the prospective client or customer, they have an inordinate fear of that person, and worry whether that person will like them or approve of them. Do you want to be a public speaker but you are scared of talking or contributing to discussions when you have more than two persons? When you actually dissect the fear of rejection by prospects or strangers, it seems kind of silly. But for salespeople faced with the need to develop new prospects, it can, and often does, paralyze them in their activities and hold them back.

One of the very best ways to develop your ability to take intelligent risks is to consciously and deliberately do the things you fear, one step at a time. You don’t have to leap out of an airplane without a parachute. That is simply being foolish. What you do have to do is to resist your natural tendency to slip into a comfort zone of complacency and low performance. Take any fear that you may be experiencing and treat it as a challenge and as an opportunity to grow and to become a better person.

Face the fear, control the fear, master the fear, and continue to move forward regardless of the fear. This is the mark of the superior person.” Nothing kills faster than fear of failure”.

Fear and the desire to contain it

We learn about limits at a very young age. As babies, parents prevent our access to stairs and rooms with sharp objects and chemicals. For many of us, the word no is our first, because we hear it so often as our parent try to control our actions and environment. While this kind of limitation is normal and healthy for defenseless children, it creates a strong sense of fear and trepidation in us that can keep us from exploring concepts and activities outside the invisible box of “safety” that our collection of life experiences builds around us. One exercise that can help you bust through this invisible barrier is to understand the obstacle for what it is a manifestation of your fears. What fears? Heck, all of them. Fear of failure making you feel bad, fear of success making you feel alienated, fear of looking silly or getting hurt, and fear of disappointment. Fear is a natural and healthy part of life, but many of our fears are based not on self-preservation so much as on limiting our emotional pain. This can be to our detriment, especially when we are overprotective of our psyche, which is not as delicate as you might think. Limitless thinking does not involve an absence of fear; it involves the courage and conviction to move past it and not allow it to control your destiny. If you visualize limitations simply as fears, you have a much better chance of busting through them and conquering life. It seems like a difficult prospect, but really it’s more frightening than it is hard. It’s like that first time you rode your bicycle without the training wheels, or the first time you drove a vehicle without a parent or other adult sitting in the passenger seat. If you’d told yourself you couldn’t do it, you’d still be driving back and forth to work with one of your parents today and wouldn’t that put a major kink in your life? As an adult, you now know exactly how dangerous driving can be, and yet you get in that car every day and navigate traffic, road signals and inclement weather with barely a thought of what could go wrong and with no other trained driver to mentor you. You worked through that fear, and now the process is routine — even though the same risks exist.

Cynicism

Cynicism is an attitude characterized by a general distrust of others’ motives. As defined by Oxford English Dictionary, cynicism in a very enlightening way, a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions. Cynicism extends that distrust to include a component of malevolence. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter what the “experts” say about the cause of cynicism. The real task is to look inside yourself and find out why you are a cynic. Why do you think it came about? When did cynicism become a personal trait of yours? Why do you continue to think in a cynical way? A single moment of genuine introspection will teach you so much more. For example, a cynic finds and degrade another person because they have become so jaded and lost hope in themselves, that they project their insecurities and extreme neediness onto those around them. A cynic is a disappointed idealist. Look into your own mind and find out why you are a cynic and always in the other side to kick against what seem right. It is best not to be afraid of been honest about oneself when carrying out this plan even if it hurts.

How to defeat cynicism and become a positive thinker

1. Identify the problem

As with all problems the first step is in the recognizing. Before you can deal with anything in life you need to know a little bit about it. For example, if you want to know how to lose weight you need to learn what fat is, how you come to gain it and then methods for getting rid of it. You need to learn what it is, where it comes from and then take the necessary steps to defeat it.

Some people go their whole lives not realizing that they are horrible people with miserly outlooks and cynical views of the world. Thank yourself lucky that you have had the good fortune to recognize the problem and do something about it. This is the first step. It might take a while for you to recognize that you are a negative thinker. It might even take one of your friends or family members to tell you what they see about you. So seeking opinions of what they see about you is a good idea to begin with. Why not walk up to your friend whom you feel knows better about you and even gives you the privilege to have your way even when you are wrong. Ask for his/her opinion about you when it comes to believing and taking risks on life determinant issues. When you finally see it just sit back and think to yourself.

2. Consider each cynical thought

Once you have realized that you can be a cynic the task is to start realizing it more often. Think of this as a bit of a mindfulness meditation. The idea is to become attuned to your own mind and thoughts and start to become aware of every cynical thought that you have.

For example, you met someone talking about his accomplishments and escapades the person doesn’t stop talking and even wants everyone to pay attention. Now, the cynic in you will probably start to say internal things like “I don’t believe this guy” and “I wish he would shut up”. Try to become aware of those thoughts. Don’t do anything with them just yet. Merely becoming aware of them is enough. This is mindfulness.

3. Debate Logic with cynicism

Logic helps to overcome destructive emotions and other negative things in your life. It allows you to be critical enough and not even let your emotions and feeling drag you. Why? Because most of the time the reason for your depression, anxiety, hatred or other negative feeling is illogical. If you debate the negative feeling using logic you will often find that the negative feeling gets weaker and later on off.

Cynicism, in my opinion, is usually illogical. People who are cynics seem to think the worst about a certain person or situation not because they have evidence for doing so, but because they are in the habit of thinking cynically. For example, assuming that all herdsmen are extremist terrorists is a cynical thought that is not based in any shred of logic. Just because a couple of unstable idiots blew up the World Trade Center in the name of Jihad, it does not mean all Muslims are like that.

So the task is now to use logic to debate your cynicism. When you see a cynical thought arising in your mind I want to ask yourself where it is coming from, why you are thinking like that and whether it is going to help you be happy. That is the main things ask yourself whether this cynical thought is going to make you happy. Ask yourself whether living a cynical life has made you happy so far. Ask yourself whether being cynic causes other people to like and respect you. When you use logic in this way you will almost always find that cynicism doesn’t pay. It isn’t helping you or anyone else to by cynical.

4. Make a definitive choice to be positive

Life is a matter of choice and every good thing are made from a considerable number of choices. When you make a choice to do something you do everything that you can to make that thing come true. If you make the choice to get a thing you save money, do research and possibly get a loan. The same is true for positive thinking – when you make the choice to be positive you will do all that you can to be positive. We have discussed about having a positive mental attitude which is a prerequisite for success. The best way to make a choice is to make a firm promise to yourself. You need to find a quiet place to sit down and tell yourself that from this day onward you are going to do everything you can to be a more positive person. You are going to avoid cynicism and look on the bright side of life. Make a promise to do this and don’t only sit with the promise, make it a daily confession too.

5. Look at positive people for inspiration

Sometimes it takes a little bit of inspiration to move away from cynicism and negativity. For example, take a look at people like Tony Elumelu, Elizade Michael and Seun Osewa. These people are renowned for having positive outlooks on life even in our stressing country. They are happy and they love helping people. They choose to see the good in those around them and inspire other people to do the same.

The same is probably true for your circle of friends. There will be positive folks and negative cynical folks. You will know the negative folks when you sit and gist, they talk about people and won’t even stop making jest of people. They keep a slogan of mockery and argue a lot. They see most successful people as lucky ones and would boast of what they would do if they find themselves in those shoes. Try to become aware of how you view these different people. Now which side of the fence would you rather be on the side that inspires people and makes them happy or the side that is constantly complaining, being negative and “hating” on others?

6. Find and focus on people’s qualities

The last method I want to give you is the one that has worked the best for me. It is the simple art of choosing to look at people’s qualities instead of their negative attributes. This is one of the best ways to turn yourself into a positive thinker.

After you have mastered step one and two you will become more aware of your negative thoughts. Once you can do this you will be able to start focusing on people’s positive qualities. For example, if you are talking to someone who has bad body odor it is tempting to start thinking about them in a negative way. But once you become aware of those thoughts you can turn them around. Instead of focusing on the bad smell why not focus on his nice smile, friendly conversation manner or gentle eyes? Why not focus on the fact that this person is probably a great father, brother or son? If you can focus on the positive things in people you will soon start to see your cynicism float away.

Cynicism can sometimes be good too, but must not be excessive. To finish off on cynicism, I want to quickly mention the fact that cynicism is not extremely bad. There are situations and times when a bit of cynicism can get you out of a lot of trouble.