The great barrier

It's seldom easy to achieve an important goal. A great barrier stands between you and it, an invisible force that pushes against you to keep you from beginning. You may desperately want the goal, but you're just not interested in doing what it takes to get there. You feel tired, distracted by a million other things. Your hearts desire lies far, far in the future.

This barrier affects you, no matter who you are. Whether you're a professional runner or a beginning hiker, the first quarter-mile is torture. If you're a student, it's the first chapter. At work, it's the first fifteen minutes of the project.

Those who achieve their goals recognize and respect this barrier, but they just tuck their chin and head into the wind. They know they'll shortly be into it - whether project or task - and that their interest in the work will carry them past the barrier.

Those who fail to achieve goals often never get started. Their view is limited to the first quarter-mile, the first fifteen minutes of pain or aggravation, and they decide not to begin. The anticipation of the discomfort keeps us on the couch, in our head, dreaming dreams. Pipe dreams, as it turns out.

Push through the barrier. The more you do, the easier it becomes. It will always be there, but if you've developed the habit to begin, you will often find you also have the habit to finish, to achieve, to win.

Are you willing today to spend fifteen minutes breaking through the great barrier to some goal you have?

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Rose Jonas, Ph.D.
The Job Doctor
jobdoc@aol.com
www.jobdoctoronline.com