What stands in the way, becomes the way—Marcus Aurelius

Have you ever had an amazing opportunity come out of nowhere and blew it? Maybe you didn’t admit to yourself that you were afraid, but for some reason it felt like it was too much, you fumbled, and the opportunity was gone as quickly as it appeared.

As The Happiness Warrior, I like to look at life as a big game. I know the game’s going to be challenging and hard some of the time. But I also know that with the right mindset in place everyone is capable of “winning” and moving forward.] What we’re “winning” is subjective, but if we dig deep and use our skills, intuition, and intention, we can play at our best ability and move forward with self-confidence. Challenges give us the opportunity to learn to live our lives, gain wisdom, and learn lessons that make us happier.

Sometimes we can feel stuck in the game and find it hard to move when obstacles and challenges get in the way. We shut down, overstimulate ourselves, and go into survival mode. We can feel trapped and unable to progress until we can find the way to believe in ourselves and our right to be happy and free of our self-created bounds.

When I was younger, I had preconceived notions about myself and built a lot of defenses. I spent much of my first thirty years in some form of abusive relationship. This had a huge effect on my emotions, self-esteem, truth, and ability to confront my challenges head on. When confronted with a major problem I would look for an easy way out with the least damage to my self-esteem. It was “easier” but, I knew deep down that I wasn’t in alignment with the core of my being and often felt disappointed with myself.  After many hard lessons, I began to grow and realize my potential. I started to believe in who I am removing my protective shell. I knew that I deserved to be happier and true to myself. It was a starting point from which I could make my problems less personal and confront them like a warrior. With a warrior mindset, I began to see everything in my experience as a lesson and benefit to my personal growth. As the old saying goes “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, resonated strongly in my consciousness. If had a problem I vowed to myself that I would go under, over, or around it, but I would continue to move forward towards my goal. Nothing would stop me. My mindset changed, and I began to believe in my potential and my true purpose in life. I could see and feel the life ahead of me as a magical dream and nothing would stop me from seeing my visions unfold.

I believe that roadblocks in life are signs or signals that we are moving forward in the right direction. The next step always presents itself for us to choose. Sometimes I allow myself a couple of minutes to sort out my emotions, but I pull myself together quickly and confront my obstacles with clarity. When we learn how to cope and deal with our problems we can grow and be our best at all things. Every problem has a solution, and every problem provides us with the opportunity. When we solve our own difficulties, we create better choices and create a reality that we’re in control of. The universe provides us with an endless stream of signs from which to listen and learn from. The easy path is not an always option when we’re pursuing our dreams!

Try thinking of yourself at the wheel of ship that you’re navigating through life. Keep your hands on the wheel. There will be storms that will draw you off our track but keep steering in the direction of your intention and you will reach your destination. The power of intention is the source of our purpose, growth, and happiness. We can only move forward when we learn to quiet the anxiety that comes when we’re confronted with complex and unexpected events.

Obstacles are there to teach us and lessons are learned from pain and struggle. Our strengths grow and we learn to move forward with mastery of life’s skill. Obstacles are an essential step towards our final goal.

REFLECT

Reflecting on why the problem happened and trying to understand our role in its occurrence is the first step to forgiving yourself and finding solutions. To compartmentalize and solve the problem we need to shift from feelings of anger and victimhood to a more positive mindset for capability and mastery. Mistakes happen, but we can learn from mistakes and put processes into place to prevent similar instances from happening in the future.  Forgiveness is powerful and opens our minds up to be able to look at a problem from a healthier and more positive frame of mind. Make a promise to yourself to use better words to describe yourself and tell us who you are.

FIVE WAYS TO TURN OBSTACLES INTO TRIUMPHS

If we can change our mindset to see obstacles as gifts to help us learn and grow, we can do anything we set our minds to. With this mindset, we always move forward, we gain life mastery, and we’re happier and at peace in our minds and bodies.

1.       Perceive obstacles as merely a detour to the destination. Have the conviction that the goal is obtainable.  It’s easy to give up and make “justifiable” excuses. When we lie to ourselves, we give up on our dreams!

2.       Hope is not a plan. There will always be roadblocks and detours. Hope is a self-defeating word for people who don’t believe in themselves. Hope is a word we give ourselves when we give up. Hope is not taking action and letting life pass us by.  Hope stops us from believing in ourselves and our potential. Saying “I hope so” or “I hope I can” gives us permission to fail and not achieve our goals. This can create a spiral where we never feel that we are good enough for anything good in our lives.

3.       Words. I believe that words have spirt and never disappear. They are permanent with their meaning and intention. Our self-created negative thoughts make us succumb to our fear of success with externally created self-loathing. Remove vocabulary from your life such as “I’m my own worst enemy” and “I don’t have time”. Once we create a new dialogue with ourselves, we can harness our intuition and focus on our authentic selves.
 
4.       Focus on what you can do. Everyone is good at something and often just the process of taking action to help solve a problem can start us on a new path with better results. If you’re unhappy with everything in your life, find one thing that you like and start doing it. Eventually it will grow and spread to the rest of your life.
 
5.        We can’t control events, but we can control our mindset. External forces are there to distract us from our purpose. Learn to find your strength and decision-making from within. No one else can make our decisions for us. Other people will always have biases and preconceptions of their own. No one needs to rely on a mentor.
 
ADVERSITY CAN MAKE US HAPPIER

Anytime we face adversity we’re presented with choices that can impact our lives in different ways. We have choices and no matter how much we don’t want to admit it, the harder path presents the best solution. When we learn to slow our reaction patterns down, we can begin to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and face obstacles head on with courage. When we change our mindset and stop creating negative self-fulfilling prophecies we can begin to “win” and move forward. Obstacles can make us stronger and more resilient. They can help us accept that change is a natural part of life and without change we grow weak and lose our ability to adapt with the times. Say out loud that you “are grateful” for the challenge and be proud of how you handle it. We are in control of our destiny through our intention. When confronted with an obstacle all or any of these questions:

1.       Is the situation permanent or temporary? Don’t focus on what might happen, focus on your current situation, and know that there is a solution.

2.       Is this event going to force me to change when I wouldn’t have done otherwise?

3.       What’s something that I’ve learned from this from the beginning?

4.       How is my solution to the problem going to make me stronger and create wisdom?

5.       What’s one way that I’m going to be better than ever from this situation?

6.       How is the situation unique and how can I use it to my advantage to move forward with a sense of self-mastery?

7.       Will I be grateful for this challenge someday? Never take adversity personally, life happens and how process adversity makes us greater.

8.       Will I be proud of myself when this is resolved? (Try thinking of this first!)

Changing our mindset for success in everything we do takes time and self-awareness. We can all be better every day and the lessons we learn and how we process them makes all the difference in creating a happier life with more gratitude, purpose, and fulfillment.