How to Break Through Barriers When Feeling Stuck (Part 2)

Why should you bother learning how to effectively solve problems and blast through your barriers?

In my opinion, there are two things that truly matter in our lives… the JOURNEY and our EXPERIENCE throughout that journey.

In order to sweeten and enhance the flavor of our experience while on our journey, we need learn how to smoothly maneuver through these barriers that tend to continuously come up.

Let’s face it, new challenges will accompany you and me for the rest of our lives, because we are never static. We are always moving forward and creating new experiences every step of the way.

And like any interesting or worthwhile creation… it presents its own challenges. They will only vary in sizes: smaller or bigger, meaner or friendlier.

That is just the way it is.​

Knowing How To Break Through Barriers Will Benefit You

As you grow and develop new skills in your personal and professional life, you’ll always be presented with some new challenges, which we tend to call challenges or problems.

Embrace your challenges. Every one of them will teach you something and help you grow, as well as become wiser. The key is to not throw in the towel and give up once you are challenged. There is always a solution or a workaround.​

Knowing how to deal with barriers is a good skill to have, because it puts you in the driver’s seat and allows you to be in control. And when you are in control, you usually don’t get carried away thinking that most problems are above and beyond you.

Besides, it is not the challenge, itself, that affects you the most and makes you fail at achieving your desired result. Most of the time, it’s the perceived (or exaggerated) barrier that you create in front and around you that get’s you stuck… and that mental barrier puts you in the so called “stuck state” (as discussed in Part 1).​

This brings us to our brief discussion of two principles that are key to any problem solving approach or resolution.

The two principles are:​

1.  Letting go of misleading perceptions and associations.​

2.  Focusing and creating effective solutions.​

Now, let’s dive into each principle individually.

Let Go of Misleading Perception and Association

There is a very powerful engine that drives us on daily basis. That engine is called -thought. We fail to realize that a simple thought can either motivate us or stop us in our tracks.

You might have heard of the Iceberg model used by various behavioral sciences. Imagine a big iceberg, which has two parts to it: the visible and the invisible.

The visible part (the tip) represents your results and some of your behaviors. The invisible part of the iceberg resides under water and represents your emotions and thoughts.​

The Iceberg model clearly shows how our performance and outcomes are directly driven by our sets of behaviors and habits.

If we dig deeper, we see that our behavior is driven by our emotions/feelings, which in turn are driven by our thoughts.

As you can see there is so much more driving our performance and results than just the few habits that we see here on the surface.

In other words, what we achieve in life is initially driven by what we think and how we feel about it.​

Yet, many of us will focus only on the surface of the Iceberg and try to “fix” the behaviors that are visible to the naked eye. But this is how you set yourself in this trap of getting stuck and never fully solving the real problem.

When you try to fix a problem on the surface and not at its roots, the problem never gets fully solved, and it will keep showing up over and over again, and drain you emotionally until you give up. And that is a perfect trap for a stuck state.

You must pay close attention to your thoughts and carefully filter them. As you can see, your thoughts impact your emotions, your emotions impact your behavior, which turns into habits and your habits produce mirror-like reflection results.

It is a full-blown chain reaction. So now, you see how one little thought of “I can’t do this…” can lead to a full blown avalanche and effect so many levels of your being.

Keep in mind that your way of thinking and your emotions combined - are what causes your overall and daily EXPERIENCE towards life, towards yourself, towards everything that surrounds you, including your barriers in life.​

Takeaway from the First Principle

We’ve understood that the real cause of your performance, results and barriers lies not on the surface of the Iceberg but deep underwater, deep within… where it all begins with a thought.

Your goal is to become aware of your thoughts and where they initiate from, because usually that is the place where your mind gets stuck in the first place.

In other words, any strong belief in a WRONG context can be a weakness… and eventually become your stuck state.​

Now, let’s cover the second key principle.

Break Barriers by Generating Effective Solutions

The fastest way to any success is to have a laser focus and know in which direction to point it.

Therefore, when you face a new challenge, try to focus your thinking on a solution, rather than a problem. It might sound obvious, but take a look around and notice how many people choose to sit and dwell on their problem(s).

Take a look around and become aware of it. Listen to some conversations around you and notice how many of us waste time complaining, dwelling, as well as wasting, our pressures energy on problems… Versus, a few of us who move forward at the speed of light while continuously generating solutions in order to get to our goal.​

This is exactly why some people are able to accomplish so much!​

Go out there, listen to some conversations at work or at home, and compare the notes. You’ll be surprised.

I remember when I was working in one of the startups where I was surrounded by such behavior every day. Challenges would come up quite often, and in order to grow fast, as a company, we had no time to spare, but solve problems quickly and move on. However, some colleagues would not let go and waste time by digging deeper and deeper into the problem rather than generating solutions and later settling on the best one.

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with focusing on problems. In fact, it can be quite “entertaining.” Some of us are simply addicted to the drama of it all.

However, focusing on problems leads us back to the past and on something that can’t be changed. It leads us to blame, excuses and justifications. It complicates things even more, slows us down and often drains us on emotional and physical levels.

Problems are like nagging children. If you give them too much attention, they’ll stick around and nag some more.​

On the other hand, when you focus on solutions, you immediately generate new energy in your body and mind, and by snapping out of that negative playing field, you open yourself up to new and creative ideas.

My point here is that focusing on solutions is a choice we make in the moment; it’s a habit we either already have, or can develop.

Let me illustrate this by comparing PROBLEM FOCUS vs. SOLUTION FOCUS in the question format. From you’ll see how easy it is to shift your attention from one to the other:​

• PROBLEM FOCUS would sound like this:

Why did this happen?

VERSUS

• SOLUTION FOCUS:

What do you want to achieve here? Or What shall I do about this next?

• PROBLEM FOCUS

Why isn’t this working?

VERSUS

• SOLUTION FOCUS

What do we need to do to make this work?

These kind of SOLUTION FOCUSED questions will give you a jump start in generating new ideas and keep that momentum going for you to keep getting closer to your desired goal.

Takeaway from the Second Principle

Instead of becoming preoccupied with your problem, you should focus on generating the best fitting solutions that get you closer to your goal.

Keep developing this skill until you no longer need to think about it. You just do it… on autopilot… and don’t have to pause and think… “oh, poor me.”​

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