What was the last thing that left you stuck? Do you remember how it felt to not know what the next move was? Did you give up on what you were working on or did you find a way through/under/over/around it?
I don’t like not having the answers, especially when what I’m working on is really important to me. Feeling stuck leaves me feeling frustrated and often angry with myself for not knowing how to get un-stuck. I might walk away from the challenge for a while, but it’s rare that I give up.
The answers don’t often come quickly or from me, but they do come. There was a time when I thought I had to figure everything out on my own. Asking for help wasn’t something that came naturally to me, talk about stepping outside my comfort zone!
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” When you feel like you’re banging your head against a wall, no one wants to hear that (at least I don’t!). The good news is that it’s not just a cliché it’s the truth. We can all think of a time when we thought there was no way we were going to make it through something and we did. When we’re going through a challenging time we often forget those times. I think that it’s important that we remind ourselves that we’ve been there before and we can do it again.
I’m not quite sure why it’s so easy to forget what we’ve overcome in the past. It’s as if we don’t give ourselves enough credit for our past accomplishments. Maybe it’s that we don’t see overcoming life’s challenges as a success. If it’s a given, then we shouldn’t stress out when life presents new challenges. If we overcame those challenges because we did what we needed to in order to keep going, then we should definitely give ourselves credit. Whether we had help or not doesn’t matter. We took the steps necessary once and we can do it again 🙂
You might have heard me say this before, but I think it’s worth repeating – I believe that the difficulties we encounter aren’t a sign that what we’re working towards isn’t meant to be, it’s a test of how bad we want it. When we want something bad enough we find a way to make it happen. Giving up is not an option because what we’re working towards means that much to us.
That’s why I recommend to my clients that they make list of challenges that they’ve overcome and keep it somewhere where they can access it easily. Challenges are an inevitable part of any journey. We need to find techniques to deal with them in a way that doesn’t paralyze us. Obstacles present themselves. I don’t believe they happen as a punishment or because you’re not worthy of the life that you want.
Challenges present themselves and they provide the opportunity to see what you’re capable of. You get to see how resilient and resourceful you can be when the circumstances require it. The important thing to remember is that no matter how serious the situation is, you can get through it and you don’t have to do it alone.
I’m hosting a webinar on Thursday August 20 where I’ll be talking about 5 Challenges to Achieving Your Goals (and how to overcome them). Submit your email below to get the call details.