Everyone has barriers in life, things that get in the way of us moving forward. You put boundaries around yourself, limiting what you allow yourself to be, to do, to have, and to experience. It’s like you walk around in life and then bump – you are up against something that prevents you from progressing down that particular path. So you turn around to avoid the barrier and take a different path. All of a sudden you hit another barrier. You could keep avoiding the barriers and keep searching for different paths to get where you want to go, but can you get there from where you are?
Barriers could be a fear of looking silly when you are trying something new, a fear of public speaking or even a fear of success. There is nothing wrong with barriers. They are simply the challenges that you must get past in order to stay on your path. But sometimes those barriers can limit your experience so much that you could get bored in life, sitting beside the path instead of following it. So it is necessary to deal with those barriers and move on.
You can pretend the barrier isn’t there, telling yourself that it doesn’t exist and things are just fine. But this just leaves the barrier intact, and you will continue to keep bumping into it. You can try to fight the barrier, struggling against it repeatedly. But this makes the barrier grow. For example, you probably know someone trying to lose weight. The harder they try the more weight they gain. They continue to struggle with the same barrier over and over. The barrier’s magnitude continues to grow.
The best alternative is to love your barrier. Experience it completely. Get involved with it, and tell the truth about it. Describe it fully, down to the last detail. When you acknowledge it and put it “out in the daylight,” your barrier loses its power. You can literally love it to death.
Loving in this sense does imply enjoyment. You don’t enjoy those barriers. Love in this sense is total and unconditional acceptance. For example, in admitting you have a fear of public speaking, you do your speech while acknowledging that you are scared. The fear barrier disappears when you finish the speech. Often you will find that in fully examining and experiencing the fear, the fear itself will disappear.
This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Michigan, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Michigan. We would love to connect with you on Facebook and Twitter @MarkWillDCT.
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