Barriers to Success

Along your journey, there will be those potholes, hills, and valleys we talked about in the module overview. You must be able to see far enough down the road and have a predetermined action plan in order to gain the agility to maneuver swiftly around barriers.

There are two fundamental barriers to success, outer barriers and inner barriers.

Other Barriers

External blocks are those things that are outside yourself that may or may not be within your control. Examples are economic fluctuations, lack of others’ skills and knowledge, time management, the responsibility of/for others, working technology (cars, internet), time limitations, etc. Leaders typically respond in one of two ways to outer barriers: 1) Navigate and manage- learn a new skill, delegate to someone with experience, purchase a support service, 2) be paralyzed- through avoidance and denial or ignore and move forward anyway.

ACTIVITY: My Outer Barriers

Click here to download “My Outer Barriers”

Instructions:

Step 1: Brainstorm all of your current and potential outer barriers and list them below.

Step 2: In the column marked Action, list several steps you can take to prepare for when this barrier shows up.

Step 3: List the specifics around your action plan such as date, location, times, resources, persons, titles, and websites. The more specifics you list the more likely it is you will gain the agility to maneuver the barrier.

Inner Barriers

According to Dr. Aaron Beck, the pioneer of cognitive therapy, there are eight patterns of limited thinking that present as barriers to accessing your highest level of energy and going as fast as you want towards achieving your goals. These barriers are:

• Filtering. You focus on all of the negative details while ignoring all of the positive aspects of a situation. “ I could have had a really good day, but my first patient was difficult.”

What does your filtering statement(s) sound like?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Polarized Thinking. This is the kind of black or white, good or bad, right or wrong type thinking. There’s no spectrum of achievement, so it comes down to perfect or failure or perfect or not at all. There is no room for mistakes. “They are either loyal to me or not.”

Where is your thinking polarized?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Overgeneralization. You reach a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. You exaggerate the frequency of problems and use negative global labels and absolutes. “Ever since my first office manager burned me, I don’t trust anyone anymore.”

What kind of overgeneralizations do you make?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Mind Reading. Without saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. Specifically you have certain knowledge of how people feel about you. “The patient sits there nodding but I know they won’t accept treatment.”

How do you mind read?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Catastrophizing. You anticipate, expect, and even visualize disaster. A go-to process is to ask, “What if…” and continue until you draw a clear, negative, conclusion. “That patient hasn’t called back to schedule his appointment for almost a week. I knew he was going to go somewhere else.”

What do you catastrophize?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Magnifying.  You exaggerate the degree or intensity of a problem.  You interpret things  out of proportion to their actual importance. “Leadership is way too far out of my comfort zone. There’s no way I can complete this leadership program.”

How is magnifying holding you back?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Personalization. You assume things people do or say is a reaction to you. You put yourself down and heavily criticize by comparing yourself to others and seeing them far superior. There is also the act of relating everything around you and taking the blame for what goes wrong. “I know other affiliates are doing better than I am.”

What does your personalization sound like?  

How can you change this thinking?

• Shoulds. You live your life by an exhaustive list of inflexible, ironclad rules and feel guilty when you break them. You expect others to act within the boundaries you set and when they don’t you judge them. “ I should be further along than this and my team should care more!”

Make a list of your should statements. 

How can you change this thinking?