If you’re not getting what you want out of life right now, there’s probably an obstacle that’s stopping your natural flow forward. This obstacle is highly likely to be some kind of limiting belief or assumption, but it may also be an unhealthy habit of some kind.
Once you identify what is stopping you, you can work to get rid of it and replace it with something much more productive.
Here are the five most common obstacles in achieving goals and your dreams. Which one do you think might be stopping you from achieving the success you deserve?
When we were children, we were incredibly susceptible to taking on messages from our family members. This is sometimes called “parental programming” but it can actually come from any significant adult in your family of origin.
Often, you might not notice these blocks at first because they can be installed in subtle ways. For example, your parents might have fought about money and thought you couldn’t overhear them, or they may have told you that the rich are bad people.
These are just the sorts of messages that make you associate abundance with fear and negativity and can stop you from attracting wealth in adulthood.
Just as our families have a huge influence on what we believe, so too do our cultures and religious contexts. Regarding religion, in particular, there are a lot of harmful claims about (for example) how relationships should develop, whether money is “the root of all evil”, and why you shouldn’t desire anything material.
Any of these types of teachings can leave you feeling ashamed and uncomfortable with what you want, creating an internal conflict that stops you from manifesting the things you’ve identified as your dreams.
Even if you weren’t raised as part of any particular religion, messages in secular culture can also be damaging. You might have been told at school that “power corrupts” or that “money can’t buy happiness”.
While there’s perhaps some truth to these claims, context is key; if taken to be universally true, these messages can stop you from maintaining the positive frequency you need to create career success or financial abundance.
As you may have noticed, the two types of blocks described above are blocks coming from the influence of other people.
Although getting rid of these blocks is a long process, the first step should be getting rid of the toxic people in your life.
Draw a “map” of all the people in your life. Divide them into 3 circles. The first one would be the people you are spending the most time with + those who are influencing you the most. For many people that would be their partner, best friend, work colleagues and parents whom they see rarely, but who are still a very important part of their life.
The second circle is people who you “hang out with” in your free time. Your friends, friends of friends, teammates and so on.
And put everyone else you can think of in the third circle.
Now take a different color pen and highlight everyone who makes you feel bad about yourself or your life and those who spread negativity in general. (Anyone on this list here: 8 Toxic People You Should Just Get Rid Of). Done?
Now here is a rule of thumb for you:
Of course, not all blocks come entirely from the outside world. Some of these obstacles are primarily caused by low self-esteem. Do you have an underlying sense that all challenges you experience are actually personal slights, or that you don’t deserve good things?
You may be your own worst enemy at the moment; a part of you wants success, but another part doesn’t believe that’s the kind of thing you can have. Love, wealth and joy are for other people.
One small but powerful thing you can do to fight against blocks from low self-confidence is to start seeing everything as a learning opportunity.
Try to recognize that no matter how many of your endeavors turn out, you’ll be acquiring vital new skills, experiences, and pieces of knowledge that will ultimately help you figure out what does work.
There’s another whole sub-category of blocks that you might call “inability to receive” blocks.
The key thought here is that although you might be wonderful at giving to other people, you haven’t cultivated the ability to receive what others (and the universe) will try to give to you.
An often-overlooked fact is that you need to be a giver and a receiver if you’re going to achieve true success. You might be asking the universe for help while at the same time refusing to take anything it hands you!
There needs to be an ebb and flow; you must be able to give compliments and take them, love and be loved, and share your resources while accepting those of others. Once again, look inwards to see where this negativity is coming from, and start practicing “Thank you” and “Yes please” instead of “You don’t need to do that” and “Oh no, I couldn’t take that”.
The final most common type of block involves being blind to all the openings that constantly surround you. You may have been trained to ignore or discount your intuition or the messages from your subconscious mind, and this can leave you with an inability to spot opportunities.
To find the path to any form of success, you need to be tuned into your gut feelings and retrain your brain to see signs from the universe.
One of the best things you can do is remind yourself of times when your intuition has led you to happiness. Think of people you just “knew” you should approach, or a day when you had a hunch it would be better to go a different way (and ended up seeing an advert for something that led you to a new partner, new job, or something else). Teach yourself that your gut can be trusted!
When you find yourself entertaining a negative belief about your success, ask these questions to help yourself replace these beliefs with better ones: