We each face obstacles at times that prevent us from achieving our goals as quickly and effortlessly as we would like.
In your professional life, difficulties may result from factors outside your control: fierce competition, lack of customer demand, or a new well-heeled company entering your industry.
Hurdles can also result from factors a little closer to home: outdated skills, insufficient experience, or a weak reputation.
Obstacles may be unavoidable, but we do have a choice about how we respond to them.
One option is to search for excuses, stories that make us feel safe by allowing us to avoid the difficulty by giving up on the dream. “Success is impossible, I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m too busy, I’m too tired, I’m too inexperienced.”
If you are in the habit of searching for them then excuses will always be easy to find, but they come at a cost.
By adopting excuses you are making a choice to live in a more constrained world, to accept defeat in advance, and to rule out the most favorable versions of the future that are open to you.
There is another option.
By clinging to the possibility of success, however unlikely it may seem, you give yourself the chance to learn and grow from the experience.
What are you trying to achieve? What is standing in your way? And what steps can you take to bolster your position or move in the right direction?
A relentless search for solutions will keep you on the front foot and allow you to discover openings that may have remained hidden had you not taken the trouble to look.
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