Personal Finance

Obstacles are creations of your mind, overcome them

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No matter how many times you’ve failed, been embarrassed and humiliated, the best is meant for you too. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH

Too many of us unknowingly place obstacles between ourselves and the circumstances that we would like.  Why don’t we have the jobs that we want?  Why can’t we get our team working with us more willingly?

Why wont our clients not just appreciate our unique propositions at the first presentations and pay us what we are worth?

While it is excruciatingly frustrating to encounter stumbling blocks whenever we make spirited attempts at making real headway, there are no real obstacles.

At the risk of having you write this off as some motivational mambo-jambo, the hitches we experience are more imagined than real. Yes, I realise just how vivid obstacles can be. 

Obstacles to anything are only figments of our imagination. Imagination is one of the most powerful mental faculties that we possess. It can be as tame or as mild as we want it. 

With this same faculty, we have the ability to create near tangible visions of the ideals we seek and progressively start working towards them until we achieve them. 

It really is about how we choose to use our imagination. Some of us will use it to conjure up the more embarrassing scenarios of failure at even the simplest of endeavours that then renders us totally unable to even consider taking the first step.

What if something goes wrong? What if I fail? What if they do not buy into my idea? What if they do not think I am worth what I’m charging?  Fear then sets in and seals our fate at the gate that leads to the starting point of the goals that hold the key to our ideal futures.

Same mental capacity, different applications and consequent results. Look, there are not real obstacles. Our imagination is very active. When it creates images in our minds, those images are just as active.

Our imagination either keeps us actively reaching into the deepest unlimited reservoirs of our abilities or forever scratching on the outer surface of our best possible results in life.

We must want the ideal in every situation so much that we will our minds to only focus on the best possible outcomes in every undertaking.

Yes, we could fail but there’s also the chance that we could succeed. What profitable purpose can focusing on the possibility of failure serve other than despondency? I suggest that you desist from focusing on a pre-determined destination and direct your attention to navigating the ups and downs.

This is when you can say that you experience life fully, allowing it to grow you in the process.  Living fearfully means attempting to constantly protect yourself from life’s downs by not every sticking your neck out to try much or anything.  This may seem like a good strategy to protect yourself. 

Good that could profit you

Maybe so. It also is a good strategy to prevent others from getting into your life.  Sure, some may get in and do some damage but there are those who get in with all the good they have.

Now you will not know or benefit from them unless you let yourself experience them. The majority of persons that you will come into contact with are with you for what they can gain from you.

Granted, we are all very selfish. It is the way we are created but there are those select few who are aware of Anne Wilhette’s concept of “Givers gain”. These are the rare people who genuinely care about others’ welfare.

They make it their mission in life to ensure that every person they come into contact with has benefited from them in one way or another. 

No, they will not usually fill your bank account to the brim but what you gain from being in contact with them however briefly may very well do that twice over. 

They are not overtly philanthropic so recognising them requires a very balanced perspective on your part.  You must be in a position to decipher their intention for you even when it is not obviously clear. 

The good people are not that many.  You will not bump onto them too frequently but when you do, it never is a coincidence. 

It always is for your benefit but that only comes to be if and only if you have developed the presence of mind to recognise them from the onset and let them in.

Stop imagining the worst. No matter how many times you’ve failed, been embarrassed and humiliated, the best is meant for you too. It just will not come unless you make room for it.  Will you? 

Ruligirwa-Kamara is an expert on Attitude & Human Potential. [email protected]. @SRuligirwa