All obstacles in life originate in the mind. It is your perception of an event that classifies that event as an obstacle. Reclassifying that event as a challenge or just a happening effectively eliminates all obstacles you may face in life.

The origin of a mindset that creates obstacles in life is the mind’s resistance to the nature of reality.

The nature of reality is change.

Everything is always changing. Things may seem the same day to day, but take a moment now to look back and notice that even the things you consider to be constant in life are subtly different.

There is a common misconception that change is a bad thing, but imagine your life if everything was always the same. Where would the fun in life be if everyone’s mood and personality was always the same, if no one ever changed their clothing or did anything differently?

What if you ate the same meal 3 times a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year? Had the same conversations with the same people every single day?

It’s like watching the same episode of a poorly made tv serial every single day, except you’d be living it.

A dynamic routine

It’s easy to settle into a comfortable routine and in fact, having a routine is so important for creating structure and familiarity in life, but there must be a balance. A balance of dynamism and routine will keep you comfortable, healthy and happy, the problem arises when your routine becomes a rut.

Maybe your routine looks like this: groceries early mornings on Saturdays so it’s out of the way, meal prep on Sundays for the week, going to bed on time and getting up bright and early for work so that everything else is timely. A time slot for television and movies and that too, only after you’ve eaten dinner, cleaned up and can truly relax for the night. Perhaps you prefer your movies to be enhanced by certain substances. You’ll go to the gym two or three times a week and then hang out with friends every weekend.

How does routine become a rut?

When you allow your routine to become inflexible, your dynamism begins to die down. I’m not saying that every time something comes up with a friend on a weeknight, you should be there until 4 am and then struggle to wake up the next morning, but if something does come up once in a while you should be able to move around your schedule and make time for life.

Apart from that, you shouldn’t say no to things just because they are foreign to you. Variety is the spice of life and this extends well beyond the kitchen.

In physics, there is something called inertia and inertia is an object’s resistance to change in motion. This means that an object at rest tends to remain at rest and an object in motion tends to remain in motion.

If you were to throw a ball, in ideal conditions (like space) where there is no gravity or air resistance to slow that ball down and bring it back to the earth, that ball will keep going in the direction you launched it.

Like this, if you guard your routine from changes, it slowly but surely becomes a rut.

Common Ruts

Let’s look at two common ruts that are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Usually, people have a lot of momentum coming out of school, this is because every stage before graduation was preparing them to move on.

You knew you would eventually graduate middle school and move on to high school. You knew you would graduate high school in a certain amount of time and then have to decide what your next step would be. If you decided to go spend the extra years in college or university, you also knew that in another few years time, you’d be on the move again.

Here is generally where paths diverge and inertia kicks in.

You could remain in this state of constantly moving. You’re constantly racing after the next step, the next certification, the next way to upgrade your skill set. The mode of constantly being on the move doesn’t wear off. You actively overcome any resistance and are a top performer. Unfortunately, in many cases, you burn yourself out because you’re unable to rest.

The alternative is that you are unable to make a decision at the end of your education and stick with what’s familiar, comfortable and readily accessible.

You settle into work life and with no end in sight, you create a routine and allow yourself to slow down. The longer you stay in this position, the more and more difficult it becomes for you to pick up the momentum again. So you don’t, you let yourself go and life stops being an adventure.

In both cases, you have led yourself into a rut or a self-limiting pattern created by the belief that this is how things have to be because this is how they’ve always been. One case is of always performing at the top of your game without letting yourself rest and the other is of slowing down and just being where you are with no motivation to ever deviate from your routine and try something new.

The rut formed is not just a physical rut, it’s a mental rut. It’s from this mental rut that happenings start to appear as obstacles in life.

Now, when life happens and asks you to change, you resist the idea. You’ve become so comfortable doing what you’re doing that you wouldn’t even begin to know where to start making this change.

Happenings as Obstacles in Life

When life happens, you make a minimal change and readjust what your life and daily routine looks like. In this case, the mental rut remains. Yes, you were able to make the simple switch from white bread to organic white bread, but the habit of eating toasted white bread every day for breakfast remains.

So what happens when the desire for change rises up in you? What if there is an insatiable desire to do something different?

Generally, after a few years in the workforce, you will begin to feel this craving for more. You pursued a career path in which you thought you’d be able to make a difference. You always wanted to work for the betterment of society but now that you’ve been here for a few years, and experienced the peak of this career path, you know that you need more in life and that you have so much more to give.

This is where inner conflict begins. In your heart, you know you’re capable to achieving all the things that you dream of. Your mind however, has been programmed for years to follow the same pattern and remain in shallow waters.

This journey, the journey of letting go of the concepts in your mind and embracing the wisdom of your heart is a spiritual awakening and is part of your overarching spiritual journey. In this journey, the goal is to burn through your karma, raise your level of consciousness and reach moksha or final liberation.

The things that appear to you to be obstacles in life are just things that challenge you to step out of your rigid mindset and change your ways. And the reason that these things appear so significant, is that deep down, you want to make the change, you just haven’t been able to overcome your mind and actually take the necessary steps forward.

The obstacles in life that appear to you to be obstructing your path forward are really just excuses that your mind creates to not follow through with something that your heart wants.

You either move forward despite the challenges or you remain where you are: comfortable but wanting more. You’re at a crossroads and you delay the inevitable decision.

At first, you try to ignore the inner conflict. When it doesn’t go away, you’ll make small changes to try to appease this feeling of stagnation. And if the things that you try, don’t bring you closer to your truth: this feeling – this disillusionment and unhappiness – won’t go away.

So what are your real obstacles in life?

Obstacle 1) Your own Mind

The first and foremost obstacle in life (and perhaps the most significant) is your own mind. Your mind barrages you with thoughts all day long in the form of the 5 vrittis and keeps you away from the present moment. The quality of these thoughts is dependent on your lifestyle, beliefs and environment among other factors.

If you remain in a toxic relationship or workplace, consistently play violent video games, don’t maintain your physical and mental health and eat a poor diet, this will be reflected in the quality of your thoughts.

It’s no wonder that you don’t have any motivation or courage to make the changes in your life that you want to. Your lifestyle simply does not support it.

In this situation, negative self-talk can be unbearable but the truth is you have no idea what your capabilities are. You have never allowed yourself to venture out of the rut you’ve created and into the infinite space beyond, so how could you know? You don’t even allow yourself to dream about being able to change the world because you’re afraid of judgment.

This is where managing your thoughts and emotions becomes so important. This case study explores how meditation can help you stop overthinking so you can actually connect with what’s important to you.

Obstacle 2) Fear of Judgment

I’ll share an embarrassing story with you.

Long ago, in high school, I was interviewed for a job at a Canadian IT franchise. When the interviewer asked me why I wanted the job, I looked at him bright-eyed and said, “I want to learn more about technology because I want to change the world.”

The man gave me a strange look and that was the last I ever heard from him.

Looking back now, I know I could’ve been more tactful with that, but in the moment, tact was the last thing on my mind. He asked me for my why, and I gave it to him with no filter.

The truth is that you cannot predict the outcome of any situation. It might’ve happened that instead, he loved my ambition and hired me on the spot. Either way, I wouldn’t have known before the fact.

And this is true for everything that you put out into the world. If you behave the way that you think someone wants you to, that interaction won’t be authentic. You won’t be expressing your truth and the other person will have no idea and respond based on what you’ve outwardly expressed.

What have you gained in this situation?

Nothing. If anything you’ve wasted both your time and the other person’s time on a conversation based on falsehood.

Even if the results of such a conversation are initially perceived to be positive, in the long run, they will cause you misery. Going with the same example, if you lie to get a job, down the road, you may find that that career path doesn’t resonate with you. You’re back where you started years ago in that uncomfortable interview room where you felt like you needed to lie to impress the interviewer.

Your best alternative is to just be unapologetically you. People’s opinions change all the time and they don’t affect you unless you let them. Don’t limit yourself because of what you think society wants from you.

Obstacle 3) Fear of Failure

The next obstacle in life that you will face, is fear of failure. You edit your speech, your actions and even your thoughts based on what you think is right or wrong, acceptable and passable or unacceptable and against the grain.

Your mind creates stories from everything that you do and everything that you want to do, ‘If I do this, then something terrible will happen. If I do that, then something even worse will happen.’

This potential for failure down the road is what holds you back from taking the first step towards your dreams or any steps for that matter. It keeps you paralyzed in place and miserable.

No situation in life is linear. You will always be presented with an abundance of options, you just have to recognize them. Recognize that you don’t ever fail until you stop trying and if you never try, you aren’t giving yourself the opportunity to succeed.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, your potential is limitless. The only thing holding you back, is you.

If something is meant for you, it will come, but you must take the appropriate steps. You can’t be offered your dream position at your dream company if you don’t qualify yourself for the job.

The only thing that you have to do to overcome all obstacles in life is to listen to that wise, little voice inside and let go.

Trust that everything else will be taken care of.