The latin phrase, Impede, literally means “hold the feet.”
I have noticed something lately, and I thought I would pass it on. Many of us are able to figure out what we want, or where we want to go. We can set goals, and perhaps even come up with a path to get there. That is hard to do, sometimes, making a decision as to what to focus on. However, most of us will come up with something to set as a goal and might even make great strides in that direction. However, there is always something that halts our progress, impedes us. This is natural, and we need to recognize that. When you start on a new path, it is inevitable that you are going to encounter obstacles. You work through them, around them and you continue on your merry way. What is usually the most frustrating is when you seemingly get multiple obstacles, which require frequent fighting and that can feel like you are really slowing down. Your progress will come to a slow crawl as you meander your way through this new obstacle course.
However, here is a bit of a revelation that I have had this year. It is very important to recognize that you rarely have multiple obstacles at any given time. If your progress is slow or has completely stopped, then most of the time you will discover that you actually do not have many obstacles, but rather only one. You will say in your mind, “oh there are so many things in my way!” When in reality, there is only one. You will get frustrated, upset, full of anxiety thinking about all these things you have to fix in order to make progress. This is a misconception created by your primal brain to avoid work, to avoid the real problem. We all do this, it is human nature. What is almost always the case is that you actually only have one serious impediment.
Once you figure out what is exactly in your way, and resolve that one thing, then all the other obstacles will go away quickly. It seems that human progress is always stopped by one singular impediment rather than many. So if you find yourself in the predicament where your progress has ground to a halt and it feels like you are crawling through mud, then ask yourself this very important question. What exactly is in my way? What is the one thing that is holding my feet? Usually if you really stop and think about it, this one thing will be painfully obvious. In fact I have hint for you. The one thing that is your impediment right now is the one thing that you are avoiding!
So here is my advice for this Friday, November 6th. Stop avoiding the thing that is stopping your progress and fix it already!
Guy Reams
