Overcoming the Invisible Obstacles: 4 Barriers That Are Holding You Back

Overcoming the Invisible Obstacles: 4 Barriers That Are Holding You Back 

Hello and welcome to In the Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown, and this is the platform I have chosen to talk to you about living alike that is really in alignment with your hopes, your dreams, and your version of success and your vision of success. And leaving behind what does not belong to you, and that shame, blame game that many of us have, unfortunately gotten very used to, but it just does nothing for us.

So I start off every show by saying that I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or a counselor. But I am a student of life and I am a healthcare professional. In fact, I'm a physical therapist and trained to not chase the pain around, but look for the source. And the longer I have been a physical therapist, the more I've realized many of our physical ailments, they don't start from physical problems.

A lot of them start with these internal issues, these internal. Barriers, I guess, for lack of other word, that just seem to hold us back. Now, I often say that it is through conversation that I get these ideas of what I'm gonna talk about in the next podcast show, and that is exactly the case again today, where last week the idea of internal and external barriers kept coming up through, conversation after conversation.

And so I decided to talk about it today. In fact,

in fact, I wanted to talk about what is stopping us from getting the opportunities and the success that we wanna achieve? What is really stopping us from focusing on our goals? And those can be relationship goals, like getting in a relationship, having a better relationship, getting on a better diet, having more self-control with regards to food and exercise or even, you know, enjoying our time, reading, meditating, gardening, traveling.

But what is stopping us? And from time to time it can be pretty hard to answer this question because what is stopping us can be. An internal thing or an external one. So I decided to break up this topic into two podcasts, and today I just wanna talk about the internal barriers that we have, the internal issues that we're feeling and seeing, and what are they really all about and how do we kind of move on?

So, One way I've heard this phrased is that sometimes our internal barriers transform into our internal vows, and we all know what vows are. You know, we say them at our marriage, we dedicate one another and de what? You know, what we honor to do what we, you know, want everything to happen. We will. This is our oath.

And how is it that an internal barrier can become our own oath to ourselves? But we don't even realize when that can happen. And because it happens so slowly, it happens little by little, by little by little. And that's why habits take, you know, so much effort to change because we put so much big effort into changing something that just took a little bit of effort every day, or a lack of a little bit of effort every day to form.

So, What are four ways that these barriers or inner vows or inner oaths can come about? Well, first and foremost, it can start with our mindset, our thought process, and I am almost tired of hearing mindset, and I am almost tired of saying mindset, but that's just the fact that our brain is where we go.

It's like when you're bowling. You have to have a plan and a direction of where you want to go. You have to have your eyes focused on where the goal is for the ball to go. You don't focus closely. You focus on the further out point. I know this is not the only sport. I'm a bowler clearly, but there are other sports and other things.

You have to look further away to see your destination. But it's almost counterintuitive, right? Because if the ball is in my hands or the ball is very close to me, why would I look further away? Why would I, why would I think the other way around? Because to me, it's pretty obvious you should look a little closer because if I put my little bowling ball on one of these close little arrows, it'll go where I want it to, and it sure will.

It will hit that first little set of arrows, you know, five or six feet away from me. But does it hit the arrows that are all the way down at the end of the lane? So I have to think differently. I have to think about doing something that's counterintuitive, but how did I start thinking the other way around?

So where I'm now saying something as counterintuitive, how did that become counterintuitive? Well, some of our thought processes begin when we're very early, and one of those first mindsets or views or oaths that does nothing for us is I am not good enough that I am not good enough to have a great relationship.

I am not good enough to earn this money. I am not good enough to be a mom. I am not good enough to have this job. I am not good enough to write that book. I am just not enough, and this one's hard. This one's hard because I have heard it from so many of my clients and I have said it myself, where I have just believed wholeheartedly that I was not enough and.

Not being enough does not mean you don't have a list of accomplishments behind you, but they never satisfy. They are just never a representation of you and what you've accomplished. They only represent what you still have not yet achieved, and that I am not good enough. Just continues to trickle into every part of your life.

From cooking to relationships, friendships, family, I'm not good enough to paint that picture. I'm not good enough to drive that car. I'm not good enough and. A lot of that just has these continuous feedback loops. You know? Especially if we, we suffer with our relationships with certain people. They can be with a partner or they can certainly be with family members.

You know that person that you can never, ever, ever, please, ever, ever, ever, please. Now you always say the wrong thing. You're always dressed the wrong way. You always act the wrong way. There's a point when. Those other comments which are external, you just start to continue to drop little negative pieces on you every day.

And that goes along with I am not afraid to fail, which is really, I am afraid to succeed, which is a legitimate thing. And, and. It's again, one of those things that when you think about how can you be afraid to succeed, but what if your success separates you? What if your success separates you from your family?

What if other people believe you think you're better than they are? What if other people don't accept you? Success has a way of separating you from other people, even if that closeness is in a negative way, at least it's some closeness. Another oath in our thought process that is unbeneficial is that it's my fault.

You know what? The company went down. It was my fault. My relationship failed. It was my fault. My friendship we're not, you know, we're not talking so much. We don't talk on a regular basis. It's probably my fault. Everything is always their fault. They're the person who perpetually says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm sorry about this. Like, no, no. You don't have to be. Sometimes no one has to be sorry, but it, it's not that any one of us is always to blame, you know, these thought processes of, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy to succeed, I'm afraid to succeed, and it's my fault. They're messages that have gotten so comfortable in our psyche.

That they're now a part of our adult lives and we don't even recognize that they're different because they have become part of our, our character. And number two is not forgiving. So there is that saying, which is, I believe overs said, but the reason why it's overset is because it gets the point across so well.

You know, not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting them to die. Forgiveness is not about letting them back into your lives necessarily. It is not about walking right back into that relationship of any kind and say, you know what? It can just continue on the way it did. That is not what forgiveness is about.

Forgiveness is about letting karma do what it's gonna do. Forgiveness is about accepting that your decisions in the past do not have to be the foundation of every decision in the future. Forgiveness is about setting yourself free. Now. What it does to someone else is kind of not your problem, not your burden, not your concern.

What it is is your concern. To stop harboring this guilt. Guilt has a lot of negative energy. Nothing, nothing good. And you just say the word guilt and you, you can almost watch like everyone's shoulder come down a little bit. Like there's, there's nothing empowering about guilt and there's nothing empowering about holding it over someone else either.

Some things are just bad on both sides of the door. Some things are just bad on the upside and the downside. And just not forgiving is one of those. Number three is holding on to unhealthy patterns and habits. Sometimes these are an inner vowel that we don't even recognize. These are inner vowels of staying in our comfort zones.

These are patterns of pretending. Pretending that we're now different, pretending everything's okay, where they call it, mascara therapy, where you just dress all up and go out or dress all up and everything's just happy go lucky. And inside you are not fine. Not fine. What about the habit of blaming? Oh, this didn't happen.

Well, that's someone's fault. You know? That didn't happen. That's, you know, my mom didn't tell me, oh, you know what? Someone didn't let me know. It's my fault. But, you know, it's actually not really because this and this happened. I didn't get the check on time. There was always, you know, there's always traffic.

Well, I didn't have, there's always something to blame. And when you blame something else, like we, we take power in that victim stance, but do we really? Because when we are a victim, we're at someone else's whim in someone else's control. We don't have control over our own lives. So how is that helping us, you know, that little control we actually do have, you know, you wanna just give it away with blaming.

You know, sometimes things are other people's fault, but they're your dilemma and your opportunity, and it's your perception of what you're gonna do with it. So, yes, you know, I, I, I, I remember saying, you know, my mistake, your fault. There is still some power in your responses. Passivity and, and procrastination are some huge, huge, huge patterns and habits that are not healthy.

You know, procrastinating is back in that fear idea, but it's also in comfort zone. You may not like where you are, but where you are is familiar and familiarity is really the enemy. Of success and advancement and achievement and alignment with your vision. Familiarity has done more to hold people back than anything else, I believe.

You know, if we only stay with what's familiar, we would certainly not be listening to podcasts, watching television, having cars. We'd still all be on our horses because it's familiar so. Yeah, and familiarity is kind of a, a stickler for me and procrastinating. It goes back to doing nothing every single moment.

You're doing nothing, and those are wasted moments when you could be doing something and that doing something can even be thinking about what you want about thinking about how you wanna change that inner oath that you've been holding onto. About thinking and recognizing those inner oaths and also enabling.

Enabling is another unhealthy pattern because it's, you know, we don't wanna upset anyone, especially our family, friends, relationship partners. We don't wanna do anything, but when we enable them, we enable them to stay stuck. It's like someone staying in quicksand. They're not going any further down, but we're really not helping them up either.

You know, it's like they're stuck there day after day in the quicksand and, and we're very faithful and we always come over with breakfast and we always come with lunch, but we never help them out the quicksand or we never tell them, you know, it would be helpful to you to stop adding water to the quicksand.

You know, you can do something. You're, you're sliding down in your own misery of blame. And shame there is self-control. And number four is all about fear. I touched upon it a little bit earlier with procrastinating. Somewhere inside there is a little bit of voice that says, you know, I feel comfortable with this, or, you know what, I'm, I'm scared to do it.

And there are some people that will say, they go out and do things. And when asked why, they're like, because I'm afraid of it. Some people say, I'm a little afraid and, and walk away. Now, there are legitimate fears and a lot of those fears are from experiences before. But what about if you decided to go to school and you had, you know, a really rough day, someone made fun of you.

No one sat with you. Overall, the situation was bad. You go to school, you go to university, you go to your job, whatever environment, and it wasn't healthy. It wasn't good for you, but you were so afraid of the repetition that you never go back. Well, who's really lost out on that? Or what about the fear of succeeding?

What about separating yourself from what other people hope and dream for you? What about staying closer to what your goals and dreams are? Because some people have some really outlandish goals, but you know what? Those people that stick to it tend to achieve 'em. And then other people call it lucky, but it isn't.

So it is so important to address these inner, these inner vows and oaths. And inner barriers because they are blocking us from really getting what we are meant to, to get, which is a more fulfilling life. Now that is, you know, a broad term. For some people that means, you know, living very minimalistic. For other people, they're like, the more, the better.

The shinier, the, the, the bigger, the better. But for each person, They have a different definition. So living according to your own definition is really when you put aside some of those internal barriers. So what's stopping you? Is it your thought process? Is it not forgiving people, yourself, situations higher.

Higher beings. Is it staying in unhealthy patterns and habits that really do nothing, but it's easy to blame the habit? Well, what is it about fear? What is it about fear that's really holding us back? I think there's so much that we can do to address our inner barriers because when we address what's inside, we can change what's outside.

And I'm gonna talk about what's outside in the next episode. But there's so much to just understanding how we feel, why we feel is when we go into counseling. But what we're gonna do with the future is where we have our control, where we have an opportunity to change our view, our perspective, and there's no one that can tell us any different because we are good enough.

And we don't need anyone's permission to know that we're good enough. So thank you again for listening to today's podcast. I really appreciate because you know what, everyone's time is important and you have given me your time today. I'd love it for you to just subscribe. I'd also love it if you left a review, send me some feedback.

I have my information below, and I also am attaching. This really, really, really awesome YouTube video and it's called The Faces of Dove or the Faces of Yourself. And it really is empowering cuz not everyone's gonna click on it. I'm gonna tell you it's about A F B I or police sketch artists who will sit down and have people describe themselves and he draws them.

And he has them meet other people. And then those people, these outsiders come and they describe the person, and then the person themselves gets to see the description of themselves drawn out and the description of themselves drawn out from, from another person's perspective. And every single person's sketch that they did themselves, the person looks more tired, more fatigued.

Less light in their eyes. And a lot of it's because we are viewing ourselves from these inner barriers and oaths that, that they don't, they don't mean anything. They're not there until someone can show us. The difference until we can see our potential through someone else's eyes. It's really a powerful YouTube.

It's about six minutes long, so I absolutely recommend you to watch it, but until next time, let's keep building one another up!