Let’s talk about removing hidden obstacles. This is the one subject when I’m working with anyone – To be honest, I don’t know what they are for the individual. And a lot of the time, the things that we actually uncover, the person has no idea that these obstacles actually existed for them, first of all. So how do you get about these and what do you do?
The first thing is that you need to do that internal work of actually stopping and reflecting for yourself about who you are, what you stand for, looking into your real personal strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, getting some real independent support to really challenge you on that is absolutely key.
The second thing is that we’ve got our own personality preferences but under pressure what tends to happen is that you extenuate your personality preferences when you’re in the first level of distress. On the second level of distress, what actually happens is you flip and be the opposite. An example is, say you’re an extroverted person and you’re put under pressure, what happens first of all is you become even more extroverted. And then if that doesn’t work, the pressure comes even more, you can then flip and become introverted, or maybe if you’re a feeling person then you start to over-analyze and think things.
So there is clearly, even though that is an external factor causing it, It could be for instance you just have a load of work happening at that moment in time, and you’re blaming that external world. But foe me that’s an indicator of a hidden blocker that’s internal. An example of what that might be – let’s say you’re really busy at work and you’re going through those levels of distress and getting more extroverted and then going introverted and then feeling the pain, what it can actually be is, yes your external world is extremely busy but internally what’s going on is probably is a fear of not getting everything done which could be an internal confidence issue. That’s an internal thing so what we need to focus on is the skill and the focus on how you can improve your overall confidence level. So even if you’re outside world is busy, internally, you could stay calm and collected.
The second area that I really find with people is that when working on people in a career transition, one of their biggest obstacles is that they don’t actually know what they really want. And they don’t actually see their purpose in work. And so again, they get frustrated with the external world in their existing career and everything else like that. But actually, the work that they really need to do is actually just to work on is what is my purpose, who I am and what do I stand for and there are structured thinking processes that you can go through.
So I would love for you to take some time out and think what are some of the hidden obstacles that you think that you need to get through?
