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Barriers, obstacles, challenges, problems, hurdles, difficulties, road blocks, impediments, hitches, snags or drawbacks. Whatever you call them, we all face them in many aspects of life and they often appear when we attempt to achieve our weight loss, health and fitness goals.

So what can you do about them? How do you get over them? Or round them, through them or even under them! What happens if you moved them out of the way instead, or got someone else to help you push them to one side? 

The truth is, there are many ways to overcome the challenges you face and achieve your goals. Hopefully this blog will provide you with a few ideas to help you get past yours and onwards to what you want.

First things first, you need to identify what the challenges will be, or may be when working towards your goals. How can you know this? You’re not psychic, you don’t have a crystal ball or a time machine, well it’s unlikely you do! So how do you identify these barriers?

          1) Think about things that have got in the way if you have tried to achieve the same or similar        goals in the past, what were they?

          2) Think about your life, what things take up your time? This doesn’t make them bad things, it just means that they may limit your ability to focus all of your efforts on you and what you want.

          3) Look forwards. Imagine yourself doing your new exercise routine, eating more healthily, getting to bed early, drinking plenty of water. What situations, scenarios, times and places might make it challenging to do these things?

Hopefully now you have a list of at least a couple of things that may get in the way. These may be common barriers like lack of time, work or family commitments, financial constraints, motivation and times of temptation or something more personal to you.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

Now you have your list of likely barriers, you’ve taken the first step towards overcoming them already! Just knowing that they might happen means that when they do you can say ‘I knew that was going to happen.’ Maybe you are psychic after all?

But the best thing about knowing what could go wrong is that you can plan in advance some methods for getting around, over, under or through these obstacles and challenges. And now is as good a time as any to start planning so you will need:

• A piece of paper and a pen (or an iPad, laptop or you’re phone if you’re more technologically minded).

• Lots of positivity and creativity!

• A cup of tea.

The three things method

For each of the barriers that you have identified, write down at least three ideas for how you can overcome them. They can be absolutely anything at all, it really doesn’t matter. If you have more than three ideas then fantastic. If you struggle to think of anything, ask yourself if you have ever had a problem. What did you do to overcome it? What skills or tactics can you take from it that you may be able to use here?

Once you have your methods, number them in order of preference as to which you think is best. If you have more than three that’s fine, just keep numbering them from favourite to least favourite.

You are now armed with a raft of solutions, so when those challenges come this is exactly what they will be, not problems, as you already have solutions. You have the ladder to get over the wall or the sledgehammer to knock it down. You have the raft to get across the river and you have the rope to climb your mountain.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

It’s important that your perception of challenges changes to. You can see it as a threat, something that will come along and defeat you or you can see it as an opportunity, something that will make you rise to the very best you can be, performing amazingly in the face of adversity. A sportsperson may see a big event as a scary thing where they could get beaten, or they can see it as the chance for them to show just how good they are on the biggest stage. It’s time to find your very best you!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Enjoy the journey.

balance your life, balance your scales