It’s all in Your Head
We create invisible barriers to our goals with every decision not in alignment with this direction. Small, seemingly insignificant choices build up over time and before you know it you have a mental hurdle bigger than Mt Everest.
You can overcome your invisible barriers by following these 7 simple steps…
- Identify your number one priority dream.
- Become Conscious of your Decisions
- Keep a Journal
- Give a Conscious Answer
- Be Consistent
- Regularly review your progress
- Celebrate your achievements and keep going
Every day we create or blast through invisible barriers which ultimately lead us to achieve success or stagnation. Some of these barriers are the creation of our own actions and decisions, which reinforces a certain pattern of behavior. So let’s dive in and see what this is all about.
What is an Invisible Barrier?
Invisible barriers to success can be created by you or can be a factor of the environment in which you live and work.
The invisible barriers that are created by you include the fear of failure, impostor syndrome, pride, arrogance, ego, a lack of vulnerability when required, a lack of assertiveness, and the voice that says I can’t.
Likewise, there are invisible barriers in the working world where politics, hierarchy, favoritism, finances, and familiarity play a role in who succeeds and who doesn’t. This is frustrating, but this is the reality of life. (Want to learn more about external forces that can stand in your way to success? Read this!)
Identifying your Invisible Barriers
It is through patterns of behavior that we allow barriers to form. Behaviors that generally exist to ‘protect’ us from getting hurt actually can produce these barriers.
When we listen to others more than we do ourselves we begin to create the environment in which invisible barriers are created.
Sometimes this is called a lack of assertiveness, but really this is about more than a word. This is about you not believing your dream is worth it, that you are worth it. When you lack confidence in yourself the things you want or prefer become secondary to what others say you want.
This lack of assertiveness can happen with how we decide to spend our time and how we consume food.
Some Examples
An example of this is succumbing to the offer to go get take-away instead of eating that home-cooked meal because you want to improve the status of your health, your wallet, or both. Another example of this is when you have planned on spending time on your dream to learn French and you’re asked to help your friend move or fill in for someone who called in sick at work. You say yes, which seems harmless enough, until all you’re saying is yes to other people and no to yourself. And voila you have created an invisible barrier to you reaching your dream.
How an Invisible Barrier becomes a BARRIER
Maybe saying yes to junk food one time isn’t going to break the bank or add that extra kilo of weight you’re trying so hard to lose. However, those seemingly inconsequential split-second decisions that don’t seem to matter at the time have consequences. Especially when you layer the invisible barriers one on top of the other. Then the invisible barrier you weren’t even aware you were creating can become very real indeed.
You begin to think that getting to where you want to go is difficult and your barrier then grows. With each additional choice to ignore your dreams your barrier soon becomes a BARRIER. This BARRIER is something your mind finds hard to even contemplate tackling, it’s a mountain that you’re not sure you can climb even if you wanted to. If you had excuses before, you have bigger and better ones now that even could become insurmountable if left unchecked.
But hope is not lost – there is something you can do!
How do we overcome our Invisible Barriers?
The easiest option is to stop the invisible barriers layering up and becoming barriers. Your next level of defense is to stop the barriers becoming BARRIERS, which is harder but not impossible. And so too is tackling the BARRIERS and taking them apart layer by layer.
In order to dismantle these barriers, we have to work at replacing the unhelpful habits we’ve developed over time and start to identify the patterns of thinking and behavior that are preventing you from building the life of your dreams.
7 steps to overcoming your invisible barriers.
1) Identify your number one priority dream.
Ideally, you should tackle one area of your life at a time in order to increase your effectiveness, chances of success, and improve the visibility of results. We don’t want to spread your efforts so thin that you start forgetting the end game and lose motivation.
So, decide on a goal, pick one priority area of your life, something you’re aiming to change in order to focus your efforts in the next steps.
Need help narrowing down? Download your free Dream Building Manual!
2) Become Conscious of your Decisions
First, you need to increase the importance you place on those little decisions, the ones you make without thinking out of habit. To do this need to become conscious that you’re even making these decisions that are building barriers toward you living the life of your dreams. You cannot change what you cannot see. You can do this by keeping a journal.
3) Keep a Journal
Keep a journal noting in as much detail as you think is necessary the instance that the decision occurred. By documenting your habits you will start to become more aware of your decision making patterns that are stopping you from progressing.
Write down your challenges and successes each and every day. You’ll gradually become aware of how many small decisions you make which turns an invisible barrier into a BARRIER.
4) Give a Conscious Answer
Once you know what your instinctive automatic decisions are you can assess how well they align with your goal. It is likely that you will see a gap between the decisions you are currently making and the direction they are taking you when compared to the direction of your goal. Armed with this information you can start to change in the way you react to situations. When you do respond in an alternative way feel the power and note your success.
I’m going to keep using the food example to demonstrate because this is a pretty common issue for people.
Say for example you’re offered a piece of cake. Now, normally you say yes without thinking or questioning if you A) really want the cake, or B) whether the cake is something that is helping you toward your goal of losing a dress size.
When you become conscious of your decisions you can work through the process of determining if you should in fact be saying yes to that cake or whether you should instead you say no thank you.
Just think, every time you say yes to the eating out you’re saying no to yourself and your dreams. Realize, how important each and every one of your decisions is in building the life of your dreams and achieving your goals.
5) Be Consistent
As they say “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and BARRIERS aren’t built in a day either. Some of these BARRIERS have developed over a number of years and have become habitual. Changing these habits is HARD and it takes being consistent and patient. Slowly but surely you will start to see progress.
While you’re trying to change and break these habits both physical and mental you have to be consistent. Really make a decision once you notice the pattern to give a different more thoughtful answer.
For eating, if you’re always saying yes to the cookies and cakes, determine to ALWAYS say no. Don’t allow yourself a ‘cheat day’ not until you’ve been at this a while, and then still a bit longer.
Consistency is key here, if you aren’t consistent, you’ll waiver from the tightrope and end up falling off it.
6) Regularly review your progress
If you’re trying to lose weight, ensure you get a start weight and measurements. Then incrementally measuring your progress. Depending on what habit you’re trying to change this will alter but the approach is the same. By regularly reviewing your progress you’ll see that you are removing the invisible barriers to your success, and one by one you’re starting to push forward instead of tread water.
If you want to win at achieving your goals, tracking your changes is also super important! Here’s why…
7) Celebrate your achievements and keep going
When you achieve a goal or an increment in a larger goal celebrate! Give yourself a pat on the back, enjoy a bubble bath, take the night off. Do something that tells you that the sacrifices have been worth it.
Then after celebrating, if you’ve still got a mile to go before, you’re where you want to be – Keep going! Be kind to yourself!
And if you’ve made it, well guess what, you still have to keep going because your change in behavior is what got you to this point. If you revert to your old ways, the sad fact is you’ll be rebuilding those invisible barrier layers quicker than the first time, because you’re an expert in that way of doing things. This new way is, new and it will at least for the foreseeable future be something you have to continually be mindful of.
A Caveat
Not every barrier is blastable. Some are not only invisible but highly indestructible too. Some barriers realistically you won’t be able to circumvent but many of the ones you think are indestructible aren’t. Perhaps you need a second and unbiased opinion before you give up completely. If you think this is you, why not consider a Dream Coach?
This invisible barrier thing is a concept I’ve just started realizing the power of. It’s a huge breakthrough for me and I wonder why I haven’t used it to its fullest potential sooner! Remember you are more powerful than you give yourself credit for!