In today’s post, I share with you how to overcome obstacles and what to do when things get difficult. It’s all nice and easy to follow through with your plans and take action on days when you wake up motivated. Those days when you get up on time, the weather is amazing, the coffee is perfect, your hair looks great, and everything is just fantastic.
It’s easy to feel motivated on days like those. Right? It’s easy to take action. But what about days when you don’t feel in the mood and you just want to watch Netflix? Or spend an hour watching reels? All you want is just to fast forward until it’s time to go to bed.
In this post, I talk about what to do when things get difficult and we’re just not in the mood to follow through with our plans.
Prefer audio format? Listen to my podcast episode on how to overcome obstacles below.
1. Acknowledge the fact that obstacles and challenges are a part of life
Obstacles and challenges are a part of our relationships, personal goals, careers, and other areas of our lives. Let’s normalize that, instead of giving up every time when an obstacle comes up.
Let’s say you want to lose 15 pounds and you decided that you want to work out 4 times a week and cook at home instead of ordering UberEats every other day. In the beginning, you’re excited and you feel motivated to take action.
But then a few weeks later you get a promotion that takes up more of your time. You start to lose the motivation for your weight loss goal. Or maybe you suddenly need to spend more time with your family or you need to travel for work.
Or maybe you break up with your partner and you feel awful about it and the last thing on your mind is working out and eating healthy. All the stress makes you want to treat yourself with some comfort food and you’d rather spend 45 minutes re-watching your favorite Netflix show than doing an at-home workout.
Whatever the case may be, the new circumstance takes all of your focus and you forget about a goal that just a few weeks earlier made you feel excited and so good about yourself.
You want to work on a certain goal, an obstacle comes up and you just don’t know how to deal with it. So you give up and you feel like a failure. Can you relate to this? Has this ever happened to you?
2. Reflect and gain awareness around what you usually do when obstacles show up
Write this question in your notes and the journal on it – How do you usually deal with obstacles and challenges?
Having this awareness makes it easier to improve things in the future rather than repeat your previous patterns. This is why I always like to start with self-awareness. I encourage you to journal on this – What do you usually do when obstacles show up?
If the answer doesn’t come up right away, think about the last 2 or 3 times when obstacles showed up. Write down how that affected you and what you did about it. Notice if there are some common things you do when challenges come up.
Download free resources:
Free Workbook: 5 Steps to Get Back on Track Today
Free PDF Printable: 70+ Journal Prompts to Create a Life You Want
More Video Trainings for Confidence and Motivation
3. Prepare for obstacles ahead of time
Preparing for obstacles ahead of time is something that I always do with my coaching clients. It’s is an absolute non-negotiable in my coaching and something I find is crucial when you’re planning the next action steps toward your goal.
One of my clients decided on the action steps that she needed to take to achieve her goal. At first, everything seemed perfect. But when I guided her through the process, which is all about preparing for obstacles ahead of time, she saw a potential obstacle that in the past always was coming up. Then, she was able to better prepare for that action step and do what she can to overcome that obstacle if it shows up. Instead of giving up when something unexpected happens.
The thing is, and I’m sure you’re familiar with this, when you encounter an obstacle without preparing for it it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel stressed and like you don’t have control anymore.
Oftentimes, when the obstacle comes up, we feel like we don’t have any control over it. And of course, often we don’t have control over the external circumstances, but you have all the control over how you’re going to deal with it.
Are you going to let the external circumstance limit you and hold you back? Or are you going to take back the control over how you deal with it and move past it?
What are you choosing? Are you choosing to stay stuck and feel powerless? Or are you focusing on what you can control and going after what you want?
By thinking ahead of time and preparing for obstacles, you will be able to overcome obstacles, know exactly what to do, and it won’t affect your desired result.
How good is that?
4. Weekly journal prompt to overcome obstacles
Next time when you’re planning the week ahead or planning for a certain project or goal, ask yourself – What could prevent you from taking action on that?
Let’s say you want to go for a run next Sunday. Well, what if it rains? What if some other obstacle shows up?
Or you want to work on your side hustle on Friday morning. What if your pet makes a mess in the house and you need to spend 2 hours cleaning it?
Or you want to do a workout tomorrow. What if you don’t feel motivated and in the mood to work out when the time comes?
5. Prepare for your feelings in advance
With this last example from the 4th point, you can see that it’s not just the external circumstances that hold us back. Oftentimes, it’s our lack of motivation or confidence that can sabotage us.
This is another thing I work on with my coaching clients, creating empowering beliefs ahead of time. We prepare for mindset blocks and disempowering emotions as well.
Being prepared for success doesn’t mean putting action steps in your calendar and hoping everything will go smoothly. Preparing for success has to include preparing for obstacles.
These obstacles can include your feelings. Maybe you’re not going to feel motivated and in the mood to get up and take action. Or you’re not going to feel confident and good enough to apply for a promption. That’s why you need to prepare for that type of obstacles, too.
Read next:
8 Things to Do When You Don’t Feel Good Enough
7 Tips to Overcome Your Fear of Failure
6. Overcome obstacles ahead of time
The next question to ask yourself when you’re making an action plan for your goal and preparing for obstacles is – What are you going to do to overcome that obstacle?
These last 2 journal prompts make a big difference once you start thinking about the challenges that are inevitable. Whatever goal you want to pursue, whatever result you desire, obstacles are inevitable.
And as I said, not just the obstacles and challenges that come up as external circumstances (weather conditions, rejection…), but also obstacles that come up in the form of your limiting beliefs.
What if you don’t feel motivated when the time comes to take action? What if you don’t feel confident enough when the time comes to have a difficult conversation?
Oftentimes, what I see online is that when people talk about setting yourself up for success or planning your week, they focus on making your to-do list the night before and organizing and scheduling things in your calendar.
But it’s necessary to plan and prepare for obstacles, as well. So often, we are held back by the lack of motivation and the feelings that we get in the moment.
Everything is all good and well until the time comes to take action. Then we start postponing things, procrastinating, pushing our goal lower on the list of priorities. Insecurities start showing up, fear of rejection, fear of failure, focusing on the worst-case scenario, and we just give up.
Setting yourself up for success also means dealing with your limiting beliefs ahead of time. That way, when the time comes to take action, you’re prepared and there is less resistance towards taking action and following through with your plans.
If you related to this blog post and you want help working on your mindset and overcoming obstacles so that you can achieve your goal, I can help.
Inside my coaching program, I help you create an action plan for your desired result, I coach you on the mindset blocks, insecurities, fears, and disempowering emotions that hold you back from achieving your goal so that you can stop sabotaging yourself and achieve the goal you’re dreaming of.
The next step is to book your free consultation here.
On that free consultation, we’ll talk about where you are now, where you want to be 6 months from now, and how to close that gap. If, by the end of the consultation, you decide to start the 6-month coaching process to achieve your goal – we can start right away.
P. S. This blog post with tips to overcome obstacles was first published as an episode on my podcast, called The La Ivana Podcast. You can listen to the episode here.
Until the next time,
Ivana
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I agree, working through your limiting beliefs before hand is such a major part of being able to overcome obstacles. Thanks for the post, very helpful!