Remove the Roadblocks

“The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process getting to the top.” By Joyce Brothers

How many times do you think that people try to achieve their new goals before they give up? The average is less than one time. Most people give up before they even make the first try. And the reason they give up is because of all of the obstacles, difficulties, problems and roadblocks that immediately appear as soon as you decide to do something that you have never done before.

The fact is that successful people fail far more often than unsuccessful people. Successful people try more things, fall down, pick themselves up and try again, over and over again before they win through. Unsuccessful people try a few things, if they try at all, and very soon quit and go back to what they were doing before.

Temporary Failure Always Precedes Success

You should expect to fail and fall short many times before you achieve your goals. You should look upon failure and temporary defeat as a part of the price that you pay on your road to the success that you will inevitably achieve. As Henry Ford once said, “Failure is merely an opportunity to more intelligently begin again.”

Once you have decided upon your goal, ask yourself, “Why am I not there already?” What is holding you back? Why haven’t you achieved that goal up to now?

Identify all the obstacles that stand between you and your goal. Write down every single thing that you can think of that might be blocking you or slowing you down from moving ahead.

Think In Terms of Solutions

Remember, “You become what you think about – most of the time.” In the area of problems and difficulties, successful people have a particular way of thinking that we call “solution-orientation.”

Successful people think about solutions, most of the time. Unsuccessful people think about problems and difficulties most of the time. Solution-oriented people are constantly looking for ways to get over, around and past the obstacles that stand in their ways.

Problem oriented people talk continuously about their problems, about who or what caused them, how unhappy or angry they are and how unfortunate it is that they have occurred. Solution oriented people, on the other hand, simply ask the question, “How can we solve this?” and then take action to deal with the problem.

Between you and anything you want to accomplish, there will always be problems or obstacles of some kind. This is why success is sometimes defined as the ability to solve problems. Personal leadership is the ability to solve problems. Effectiveness is the ability to solve problems. All men and women who accomplish anything of importance are people who have developed the ability to solve the problems that stand between them and their goals.

Problem Solving Is A Skill

Fortunately, problem solving is a skill, like riding a bicycle or typing with a typewriter, which you can learn. And the more you focus on solutions, the more and better solutions will come to you. The better you get at solving problems, the faster you will be at solving each subsequent problem. And as you get better and faster at solving problems, you will attract even bigger and more expensive problems to solve. Eventually, you will be solving problems that can have significant financial consequences for you and others. This is the way the world works.

The fact is that you have the ability to solve any problem or to overcome any obstacle on the path to your goal, if you desire the goal intensely enough. You have within you, right now, all the intelligence and ability you will ever need to overcome any obstacle that could possibly hold you back.

The Theory of Constraints

One of the most important breakthroughs in thinking in the last few decades was described by Elihu Goldratt in his book The Goal as “The Theory of Constraints.” This theory says that, between you and anything you want to accomplish, there is a constraint, or limiting factor, that determines how fast you get to where you want to go.

For example, if you are driving down the freeway and there is traffic construction that is narrowing all the cars into a single lane, this bottleneck or chokepoint becomes the constraint that determines how fast you get to your destination. The speed at which you pass through this bottleneck will largely determine the speed of your entire journey.

In accomplishing any major goal, there is always a constraint or bottleneck you must get through as well. Your job is to identify it accurately and then to focus all of your energies on alleviating that key constraint. Your ability to remove this bottleneck, or deal with this limiting factor can help you move ahead faster than perhaps any other step you can take.

Internal Versus External Constraints

The 80/20 Rule applies to the constraints between you and your goals. This rule says that 80% of your constraints will be within yourself. Only 20% of your constraints will be outside of yourself, contained in other people and situations. To put it another way, it is you personally who is usually the major roadblock that is setting the speed at which you achieve any goal that you set for yourself.

For most people this is hard to accept. But superior people are more concerned with what is right rather than who is right. Superior people are more concerned with the truth of the situation, and what they can do to solve the problem, than they are with protecting their egos.

Look Into Yourself

Ask yourself, “What is it in me that is holding me back?” Look deep within yourself and identify the key constraints in your personality, temperament, skills, abilities, habits, education or experience that might be holding you back from achieving the goals that you have set for yourself. Ask the brutal questions. Be completely honest with yourself.

The primary obstacles between you and your goals are usually mental. They are psychological and emotional in character. They are within yourself rather than within the situation around you. And it is with these mental obstacles that you must begin if you want to achieve everything that is possible for you.

Two Major Obstacles to Success

The two major obstacles to success and achievement are fear and doubt. It is, first of all, the fears of failure, poverty, loss, embarrassment, or rejection that hold the average person back from trying in the first place. This is why the average number of times that a person tries a new goal is less than one. As soon as he thinks of the goal, these fears overwhelm him and, like a bucket of water on a small fire, extinguish his desire completely.

The second mental obstacle, closely aligned to fear, is that of self-doubt. We doubt our own abilities. We compare ourselves unfavorably to others and think that others are somehow better, smarter, and more competent than we are. We think, “I’m not good enough.” We feel inadequate and inferior to the challenges of achieving the great goals that we so much want to accomplish.

Negative Emotions Can Be Unlearned

Fortunately, if there is anything good about doubt and fear it is that they are both learned emotions. Have you ever seen a negative baby? Children come into the world with no doubts or fears at all. And whatever has been learned can be unlearned, through practice and repetition.

The primary antidotes to doubt and fear are courage and confidence. The higher your level of courage and confidence, the lower will be your levels of fear and doubt, and the less effect these negative emotions will have on your performance and behavior.

The Keys To Courage and Confidence

The way that you develop courage and confidence is with knowledge and skill. Most fear and doubt arise out of ignorance and feelings of inadequacy of some kind. The more you learn the things you need to know to achieve your goals, the less fear you will feel on the one hand, and the more courage and confidence you will feel on the other.

Think about learning to drive for the first time. You were probably extremely tense and nervous and made a lot of mistakes. You may have driven erratically and been a danger to yourself and others. But over time, as you mastered the knowledge and skills of driving, you became better and better, and your confidence increased.

Today, you can quite comfortably get into your car and drive across the country with no fear or worry at all. You are so competent at driving that you can do it well without even thinking about it. The same principles apply to any skills you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself.

Powerful Versus Powerless

Doctor Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania spent more than 25 years studying the phenomenon of what he called “Learned Helplessness.” What Seligman concluded, after interviewing and studying many thousands of people, was that more than 80% of the population suffers from learned helplessness to some degree, and occasionally to a very high degree indeed.

A person suffering from learned helplessness feels that he or she is incapable of achieving his or her goals or improving his or her life. The most common manifestation of learned helplessness is contained in the words “I can’t.” Whenever the victim of learned helplessness is offered an opportunity, possibility, or new goal, he immediately responds by saying, “I can’t.” He then goes on to give all the reasons why a particular goal or objective is not possible for him. “I can’t move ahead in my career. I can’t get a better job. I can’t take time off to study. I can’t save money. I can’t lose weight. I can’t start my own business. I can’t start a second-income business. I can’t change or improve my relationship. I can’t get my time under control.”

Whatever it is, he always has a self-limiting reason that immediately slams on the brakes of his potential. It short-circuits any attempt or desires to set a new goal or to change things in any way. Another famous observation of Henry Ford was, “If you believe you can do a thing or you believe you cannot, in either case, you are probably right.”

Unlearning Helplessness

Learned helplessness is usually caused by destructive criticism in childhood, negative experiences growing up and failure experiences as an adult. The way you get over this natural tendency to sell yourself short is by setting small goals, making plans, and working on them each day. In this way, you gradually develop greater courage and confidence, like building up muscle. As you become more confident in yourself and your abilities, you can set even larger goals. Over time, your doubts and fears will weaken and your courage and confidence will grow and become the dominant force in your thinking. Eventually, with a record of success behind you, it won’t be long before you become unstoppable.

The Trap of the Comfort Zone

The second mental obstacle that you need to overcome is the “comfort zone.” Many people become complacent with their current situations. They become so comfortable in a particular job or relationship, or at a particular salary or level of responsibility, that they become reluctant to make any changes at all, even for the better.

The comfort zone is a major obstacle to ambition, desire, determination, and accomplishment. People who get stuck in a comfort zone, combined with learned helplessness, are almost impossible to help in any way. Don’t let this happen to you.

Set Big Challenging Goals

The way that you get out of your comfort zone, and break loose from learned helplessness, is by setting big, challenging goals. You then break these goals down into specific tasks, set deadlines and work on them every day. Like an ice flow breaking up in the spring, soon the sluggishness and lethargy of learned helplessness and the comfort zone break up and you begin moving faster and faster toward accomplishing more and more of what is possible for you.

Organize Your Obstacles By Priority

Once you have made a list of all the obstacles that are standing in the way of your achieving your major goals, organize the obstacles by priority. What is the largest single obstacle? If you could wave a magic wand and remove one major obstacle from your path, which one obstacle if removed, would help you the most in moving ahead more rapidly?

Management consultant Ian Mitroff has an interesting set of observations with regard to problem-solving and the removal of obstacles. He says that “Whatever the problem, define it several different ways before you attempt to solve it. Beware of any problem for which there is only one definition or only one solution.”

When you ask the question, with regard to your goal, “why am I not there already?” what answer comes to mind? What is holding you back? What is standing in your way? It is at this point that you have to drill down to determine the correct obstacle before you begin taking steps to remove it.

You do this by asking the question, “What else could be the problem?” after each definition of the problem.

Conducting A Sales Analysis

In my work with corporations, or with individuals, we start off with the goal of doubling our profits or doubling our income. I then ask, “Why is it that our profits or our income are not twice as high already?” By repeated questioning, we often come up with an answer that is quite different from the obvious answer.

Here is an example of the questioning process:

“We are not making enough sales.” What else could be the problem? “Our individual sales are not large enough per customer.” What else could be the problem?

“Our advertising is not attracting enough customers.” What else could be the problem?

As you can see, whichever of these obstacles turns out to be the correct problem will require a completely different course of action to solve it. If we don’t have enough sales, our solution is to increase the number of sales. If our sales are not large enough per customer, our solution is to increase the size of sales per customer. If our advertising is not drawing enough customers, our solution is to improve the quality of our advertising in some way.

Keep Drilling Deeper

You could say, “Our customers are not buying enough from us.” What else could be the problem?”

“Our customers are not buying frequently enough from us.” What else could be the problem?

“Our salespeople are not selling enough to our customers.” This could lead to totally revamping the quality of the sales force through better recruiting, training, and management. What else could be the problem?

“Our customers are buying too many of our products from our competitors.” What else could be the problem?

“Our competitors are selling too much of their products to our customers.” This answer forces you to ask, “What value or benefit do our prospective customers see in purchasing from our competitors? How could we offset this perceived benefit?”

What else could be the problem? “We are not making enough profit on our sales.” What else could be the problem?

“It costs us too much to make each sale.” What else could be the problem? And so on. Each new definition of the problem suggests different ways that the goal of increased sales or profitability could be achieved.

Apply the Right Solution to the Right Problem

In the business book, The McKinsey Way, describing the management consulting practices of McKinsey and Company, the authors point out that one of the greatest wastes of time and money is in applying the wrong solution to the wrong problem in the first place. This can apply to your problems and obstacles as well.

By identifying the constraints or reasons that you are not achieving your personal income goals, each definition leads to a different set of solutions. They require that you think in different ways.

In your personal life, it is the same. The accuracy with which you identify the obstacles or bottlenecks that are holding you back will determine the appropriateness of the various steps that you can take to remove or alleviate those obstacles.

Increasing Your Income

You could start off by stating the problem in this way: “I’m not earning enough money.”

What else is the problem?

“I’m not contributing enough value to be worth more money.”

What else could be the problem?

“I’m not good enough at what I do to be capable of getting results that are worth more than I’m earning today.”

What else could be the problem?

“I don’t use my time efficiently enough during the work day.”

What else could be the problem?

“I spend my evenings watching television, my weekends socializing and I seldom read or learn anything that would help me to be better at my job.”

Aha! Now you have found the real problem. Now you have a clear idea of what you have to do differently if you are going to solve your original problem, which was to earn more money.

Define the Obstacle As a Goal

Once you have determined the major obstacle that is holding you back, rewrite that obstacle as a positive goal. For example, you could now say, “My goal is to continually upgrade my skills and abilities so that I am in the top 10% of money earners in my field.”

You then make a list of all the things that you could do to upgrade your knowledge and skills, improve your time management, increase your efficiency and effectiveness, and make more sales for your company.

You set deadlines and measures next to each step in your strategy to achieve excellence in your field. You then select one key task and take action on it immediately. From then on, you hold your own feet to the fire. You become your own taskmaster. Your discipline and drive yourself to do the things that you need to do to become the kind of person you need to become in order to achieve the goals that you have set for yourself.

This exercise of identifying what is holding you back and then setting a clear, written goal to remove that obstacle puts you back in control of your own life.

By following through on your resolution, you virtually guarantee your ultimate success and the achievement of almost any goal you can set for yourself.

Strive For Accuracy

If you have any questions or concerns about the accuracy of your problem definition, discuss it with someone you know and trust. Put your ego aside. Invite honest feedback and criticism. Be open to the possibility that you have fundamental flaws and weaknesses that are standing in the way of your realizing your full potential. Be brutally honest with yourself.

Once your problem or obstacle is clear to you, ideas, opportunities, and answers will come to you from various sources. You will begin to attract into your life all kinds of resources that will help you to overcome the obstacle or difficulty, either within yourself or within the situation around you, and move you more rapidly toward your goal.

Almost Every Problem Can Be Solved

Remember the old poem, “For every problem under the sun, there is a solution or there is none. If there is a solution, go and find it. If there isn’t, never mind it.”

For every problem or obstacle that is standing between you and what you want to accomplish, there is a solution of some kind somewhere. Your job is to be absolutely clear about what sets the speed at which you achieve your goal and then to focus your time and attention on alleviating that constraint. By removing your major obstacle, you will often make more progress in a few months than the average person might make in several years.

Remove the Roadblocks:

1. Identify a major goal and then ask, “Why aren’t I there already? What is holding me back?” List everything you can think of.

2. Look into yourself and face the possibility that it is your own fears and doubts that are your biggest roadblocks to success.

3. Identify the constraint or limiting factor, in yourself or the situation, that sets the speed at which you achieve your goal.

4. Develop several definitions of your major problem or obstacle. Ask, “What else is the problem?”

5. Define your best solution as a goal, set a deadline, make a plan of action, and then get busy on your plan. Work on it every day until the problem is solved or the obstacle is removed.