The 5 Types of Success Blockades You Might Experience – Part 1/5

A

blockade is something that might be in place without you knowing. In other words, you might be limiting your progress and success directly due to a blockade but you might not be aware. Part of the reason is that probably you are satisfied with the results you are getting. Probably you are comfortable with where you are, or perhaps there is no pressure on your life warranting you to act.

Comfort

So you stay put, enjoying the days of your life as they come and go. You find yourself obeying a particular routine in life without lifting your head up from them to question what you are getting. It is only when you start asking questions relating to purpose and meaning that you start seeing the patterns of blockades in your life.

In the previous article, we shared the five major areas where you might be experiencing a blockade. These are:

1. Culture
2. Knowledge
3. Vision
4. Reality
5. Ambition

In today’s article, let’s examine at length the first of  the different types of personal blockades that you might most likely be experiencing.

1. Mental Blockade

There is no succeeding without the participation of the mental faculties. Of all the blockades that people experience in life, perhaps this is the biggest of them all. A mental blockade has power enough to instruct the body to shut down and it does without question.

Someone famously said:

If you think you can, and if you think you can’t, either way, you are absolutely right.

I agree.

We have other faculties that we use in conjunction with the mind in order to operate. The mind though is the engine of it all. The thing with success is that you will not attain it without the participation of the mind. The mind though is a mountain that has to be conquered.

How The Mind Operates

In your mind, there are several things that shape its operation. First, the mind will protect you from danger by advising you strongly to shun things that are outside of the norm…even if it is fun and adventure. Fear is normally in the mind. The mind paints for you the worst possible outcome of venturing in an area unknown so you would make a decision to stay put in what is familiar, what is known and what is tested.

• You eat the same three types of food all your long
• You run the same route all your long without changing
• You have fewer adventures in your life all year long
• You do the same work this year like you did the last, and you are not planning to change but you are hoping that it changes.

How Adventure Breaks a Mental Blockade

Perhaps one person that espouses a great control of his mental faculties is the author of The Last Arrow, Erwin Raphael McManus. I read about how he was asked to attend the soccer world cup in Brazil…only 5 days before it started.

• He did not have a visa there
• He did not have a plane ticket
• He did not have any accommodation
• He had other things that he was doing at the time of the invite

However, sensing the need for adventure, he dropped everything he was doing and processed his requirements, against so much odds. He made it to Brazil. All the things that were against him were real, but the greatest power that made him through was the obliteration of his mental blockades.

Shrinking from life…

Naturally, as humans, every time we have reasons enough not to do something, we end up not doing it purely because of a mental blockade.

• We don’t kiss our wives in public
• We don’t play with our kids
• We don’t take a week off to relax and be with family
• We don’t seek adventure
• We do not go out of our comfort zones

Lying Mind

For the most part, we do not do these things because we are under heavy mental blockade. The nature of a mental blockade is interesting. Let me tell you something: For the most part, what your mind projects to be the worst case scenario seldom ever is. However, we are more inclined to believe our minds because we want safety and comfort.

The following are some of the things to do in order to break our mental blockades:

1. Be Ok With Losing, Failing, and Retrogressing:

Someone said that what you resist, persists. The only thing that we need to be persisting with is breaking the normal way of doing things daily.

• If you are spiritual and you love praying 30 minutes a day, why don’t you go for one hour?
• Why don’t you change the course of your jogging route?
• Why don’t you change the way you are relating to people: For once just go all out and be jolly, hug people have fun and adventure in relationships.

Here is the catch: If you lose, you lose. Be OK with that from the word go. If you are OK with losing, that is when you are open to learning. I am not talking about losing because you did not give it your all. I am talking about losing after giving it your all. Be thoroughly OK to fail if you tried to be romantic and it backfired. The problem is that you have been playing it safe and that is why your relationship has been so dour and lacklustre.

2. Prepare  and Train Your Mind

Train your mind to be tough. Question your mind instead of accepting everything it is telling you hook, line and sinker. Tell your mind things instead of just keeping quiet. Instruct your mind. You see, at all times, your mind is always telling you something. And here is the thing: Not all the things that your mind is telling you are correct. Perhaps you are not going to die. Perhaps you are not going to be a failure. Perhaps you are not going to be a pathetic lover. Perhaps you are not going to end up on the wrong side of the relationship.

Shut up!

Well, perhaps you will…but here is the thing: Ending up as a failure once does not mean you are a failure forever. The mind is just half right. So teach to tell the mind and yourself some things. A long time ago as a teenager, I used to have a very bad attitude about my father. The mind would set up a meeting and didn’t even care to invite me, but they would discuss it so loud that I would not fail to hear. I learnt those days the power of one word: Shut up!!

Incantations

Those who have encountered me know that I use that word a lot. Little do they know that it one of those mechanisms that I used to instruct my mind not to go wayward. It works. Apart from that, you should have well-crafted themes, inspirational anecdotes that you can use to speak out loud to yourself like an incantation. This is most especially when it seems that everything else is dark and gloomy. “I am blessed!” you might be shouting even when you are being chased out of your rented house.

Open Your Mouth

Let me tell you, the worst thing you will ever do is to stay silent in the moment of crisis. IN the moment of despair, instruct your mind. It is weird but instructs your mind. Go on a frenzy so much so that what your mind is telling you is fought against by your incantation. Instruct your mind at all times.

3. Prepare Other Faculties

That is why training is important. A man whose mind tells him that he can never run 10km under one hour can sit at home and accept defeat, or he can start training his muscles, his joints, his abdomen and prepare them. At times, the mind has to catch up with the body. You do this by training your body. BY the way, when the mind realizes that the body can do it, the mind adjusts its stance there and then and starts communicating to you circumspectly…but not before the mind tells you that you must be able to consolidate your gains. Nevertheless, prepare your other faculties that are involved: your body, your emotions, your intellect, your relationships, your ambition and so on.

4. Seek Inspiration

A thimble of inspiration is able to quench the fires of discouragement. Learn at all times to expose your mind to stories of people who went against all odds and did it.

• Watch the documentary or Lindberg
• Watch the documentary of building the Panama Canal
• Listen to inspirational speakers
• Read stories of grace to grass, David vs Goliath and woes to wow

The more your spirit is instructed to be positive and to stay inspired, the more you are dealing with your mental blockade.

5. You Do Not Have Time

Nothing inspires you when you realize that you have a few years left. Indeed you do. Listen, before someone else can tell you this, let me tell you that you are dying, and so am I! We have little time to waste seeking and staying in comfort. When you realize that time is not on your side, you will swing into action at most against all your mental faculties. You will embrace the unknown with a dare, not wanting to know what it holds, but just doing it because you must and you have to.

To be continued…