What's Holding You Back?

Whether your dream is to lose weight, or to buy your dream home, or to double your income, or to learn the ins and outs of soccer so you can coach your daughter's soccer team, you will find that there are things that hold you back.  

Ninety five percent of people, look at their obstacles and all they see is a reason why they can't make their dream a reality. They look at the obstacle, get discouraged (they lose heart), and they quit. Winners look at the obstacles, get mad and then become determined to overcome them.

When I decided to take up the sport of luge and train for the Olympics four years away, I knew I had two major obstacles to overcome. Two things that HAD to happen or else I would be watching the Olympics on TV: first, I had to be ranked in the top 50 lugers in the world to qualify. In order for THAT to happen, I would only have only two luge seasons to learn how to slide, because the last two seasons I needed to race internationally to work on my world ranking. 

Here's the rub... since I was pioneering the sport of luge for my native Argentina, in order to race internationally, I had to get the Argentines to create an Argentine Luge Federation, and have that federation be recognized by both International Luge Federation and by the Argentine Olympic Committee. 

How do you do that when: one, you live in Houston, TX (10,000 miles away from Argentina), two, you have not lived in Argentina since you were 6 years old, three, you have absolutely no credibility since you are just now taking up the sport, and four, they could not care less about the luge because Argentina is a soccer-crazy nation? 

If you really want to know, the rest of that story is in "The Courage to Succeed." What's more important than the rest of the story is how YOU can develop the mental toughness to look at an obstacle and become fired up and excited about the challenge ahead.

Many times all you have to do to overcome your roadblocks is to simply learn some new skills. Other times, you might have to refine some skills. You might have to enlist the help of other people. I did! Big time! You might have to create a team. Most of the time the roadblock is internal - lack of belief and doubt that you can pull it off. 

The roadblocks are not a bad thing. They are simply road signs that tell you what you need to work on next. Where your focus needs to be. Your roadblocks help define what your goals need to be. 

What's keeping you from realizing your dreams? What's the one thing that's slowing down all your progress? Your job is to identify the roadblocks and focus all your energy on doing whatever it takes to remove them. Once you do that, your dreams will be there for the taking.

Make it an Olympic Day!

Ruben Gonzalez