obstacles

[pilot754]

Everyone faces personal and professional obstacles throughout his or her life, whether the obstacles are financial, physical, emotional, or based in gender, class, or race. Sometimes you are your own biggest obstacle, when you allow your fears and self-doubt to stand in the way of your success.

Obstacles are like mountains; they’re not going to move themselves. You have to scale the mountain or go around it, reduce it to a molehill with dynamite, or dig a tunnel straight through it. You must take action to overcome it, not sit at the foot of the mountain passively hoping it will suddenly vanish so you can get on your way.

Obstacles are more than just giant problems; problems “occur” whereas obstacles are “there.” Obstacles may have always been there, or they may crop up. A problem is more finite than an obstacle. Rarely does a problem last forever. You seek to solve problems to achieve the best possible outcome, but, even if you take no action, a problem will reach some resolution eventually, though it may not be the outcome you’d like. But an obstacle won’t change itself or go away unless you do something about it.

No one has a magical formula to deal with obstacles (no dynamite except in metaphors), but you can adopt and implement some good practices when you’re faced with obstacles that can help to reduce a daunting mountain into stepping stones to success:

Believe in yourself. The great Norman Vincent Peale said it best: “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture...Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.” The first step to conquering obstacles is to realize that the answer lies within you. Maturity and experience will give you the confidence that you can overcome any impediment. In the same way, when you and your team encounter an obstacle, you must lead the team to believe in its ability to overcome it.

Seek help. Ask for guidance and support from a mentor, team, classmate, or teacher. You don’t have to overcome any obstacle solo. If a key executive leaves your organization at a crucial time, even if the loss is devastating, you should realize you have many resources to help overcome that obstacle, within and outside the organization. If you are a member or leader of a team, seek the help of appropriate experts on that team, or bring together everyone you can think of -- people in your organization, among your colleagues, throughout your sphere of influence -- and form a sort of task force to overcome the obstacle together.

Setback? Or catastrophe? When you encounter an obstacle, seek perspective and stability. How big is the obstacle, really? When you calmly and thoroughly examine the problem, you may find you are imagining the obstacle is larger than it actually is. It may only seem immovable. For example, if an important, long-term customer is dissatisfied with your organization and making noises that they might defect to the competition, you may have a lot of work to do to keep them, but it’s not a catastrophe unless you do nothing.

I'll become an airliner or corporate pilot soon and see some or all on the line! For those who doubt me so be it. Will not allow adversity to strike me down. Would even bet that after all I had to go through to get to my point today be better off in IOE/Initial training the some of the others before and during me.

[Stone Cold]

Mark,

Stop posting the same stuff on FI.com as on here...I'm getting confused as to which site I'm on and how mean to be .

[BoilerPilot2007]

Thanks for the insight! I'll print it out and give it to my students.

[nwa_contrails]

STOP PLAIGIARIZING AS WELL...

Link of same article written by someone else

Geez, you think you would have learned the first time that if you get caught plagiarizing over on FI, you'd stop, but NO. You gotta go an post it again, no credit given to the author...not too bright dude.

Good luck to you...you're gonna need loads of it.

[JEP]

Originally Posted by pilot754

.....
I'll become an airliner or corporate pilot soon and see some or all on the line! For those who doubt me so be it. Will not allow adversity to strike me down. Would even bet that after all I had to go through to get to my point today be better off in IOE/Initial training the some of the others before and during me.

Wholly Crap Dude. It takes a huge set of GoNads to post that and not give credit where credit is due. Can we assume that you wrote the last paragraph.

Very Blatant ......Since you didn't give credit where it was due, the article was written by:

Winston Scott is a speaker, consultant and retired astronaut who has logged a total of 24 days in space. A retiree of NASA and the U.S. Navy, Winston shares his knowledge of motivation, teamwork and leadership with organizations. He is author of the new book, “Reflections from Earth Orbit,” based on his experiences in space. In addition, Winston is currently a Research Professor in the Department of Aeronautics at the Florida Institute of Technology and is executive director of the Florida Space Authority at Cape Canaveral. For more information on his speaking or consulting, visit www.winstonescott.com or email jazzairllc@aol.com.

[eta71]

Thanks for the insight. I appreciate it. I also appreciate those who let us know who wrote it should we want to read more.

[Coney]

Oh my gosh. Busted. I imagine Pilot754 crawled under the closest rock to hide after reading all those replies to his post. Still, the message is good. Thanks to the original author and to Pilot754 for sharing it with the rest of us.