The Enormous Sense of Relief You Feel When You Stop Standing in Your Own Way

At some point in your life, you’ll be standing in your own way. It’s weird because you won’t realize you are doing it.

I have stood in my own way many times in my life.

When there was a goal that all ended in tears, it was me who was standing in the way. When multiple romantic relationships fell over, it was me standing in the way. When it was obvious I had a mental illness, it was me standing in the way from getting much-needed help.

All of that has changed, though. In the last twelve months I’ve stopped standing in my own way and it feels incredible. There’s nothing standing in my way because I’ve accepted responsibility, rather than renting it out to everyone I encounter at a discount with no refund policy.

Getting out of your own way allows you to achieve and do so much more with your life. It gives you back control. This is what holds us back:

Stories we tell ourselves

You know those stories. Stories where you put on the fortune teller outfit and pretend you know what’s going to happen next. Stories, where you create an ending that you know is a lie — because the person you are is going to write that ending for you.

Then there are those stories that claim to hold value and explain the meaning of life when half the time we’re running around with no idea what we’re doing. Not even Stephen King knew what he was doing. We’re all just figuring it out as we go along and writing the story in the process.

Get out of the way and let the story write itself in all its beauty with the struggle included.

The labels we assign in our head

Every day our brains are sticking labels on stuff with poor adhesive similar to Blu Tack. The most common label we give a life experience is bad. When you get out of your own way, you realize that all those labels you assign give meaning to an experience.

You can throw away the shitty label that describes something as bad, and stick a new label over the top called “learning.” Those negative labels are all learning.

Then there are labels we unfairly give other people. Who are we to judge someone else?

Maybe they are suffering from incredible pain right now and you are misinterpreting that pain and sticking a useless label on it that makes the situation worse. Those people you label shit or stupid are doing the best they can just like you are. Understanding this reality will help you to stop blocking the doorway to your potential.

Excuses

Lying to yourself with those seemingly tiny, little excuses robs you of millions of dollars worth of mental power and resilience. Everything that happens to you is your fault in some way.

Rather skip over that thought, own it for yourself. Take responsibility because that’s the first sign that you’re back in control again. Instead of excuses, be a little kinder to yourself.

If you missed the deadline, replace justifying the situation with an excuse, and accept that sometimes you screw up. Admitting when you fail or miss the target is far better than using an excuse that hides the truth.

Unkindness towards ourselves

This is the second mention of this one because it needs reinforcing. Be kind to yourself. Don’t be so harsh in your head with how you’re going. If you could hear the mental chatter of most people’s brains, you’d realize that they are messing up and faking their way through life just as much as the next person.

To be human is to struggle, so there’s no point being unkind to yourself because of it. Replace all of that wife-beater abuse you give yourself and show empathy towards yourself and how far you’ve come.

Even if you screw up, you’ve still come so far.

Huge expectations

A good way to stand in your own way is to create huge expectations for yourself. More than half of what you seek to achieve won’t work out. Most of life is spent missing the mark, falling short and coming back again.

Huge expectations only place pictures of outcomes in your head that aren’t real, like Instagram holidays.

Disconnect yourself a little from how everything is going to work out and replace all of that energy with showing up each day and putting in the work. The work will get you there, whereas expectations will only lie to you.

Expect nothing and you might just get more than you could ever dream of.

Endless wins

Your wins will be spread out.

Expecting to win because every picture quote you read with a guy in a Lambo tells you that “you should be winning today and if you’re not you should try harder you worthless slob” is the win fantasy that is harder to avoid with the rise of the machines (our phone). Even if you try and escape, it’s everywhere.

Everyone around you looks like they’re doing better than you. They look better, sound better, eat better, have more money and look way cuter in that sweater than you do. It’s false — all of it.

What places a big giant boulder in front of your aspirations in life is the idea that everybody is winning and you’re not.

No one is winning all the time; they’re just editing out all the work, losses, blank space and doubts out of the feature-length movie of their life and leaving you with the leftover pieces of gold to eat away whatever is left of you with their sparkle and promise of success.

You won’t endlessly win.

Step away from blocking the door

It feels amazing to get out of your way. The list above are all the things preventing you from getting out of your own way.

If you can take responsibility for life, develop some patience, back yourself, be kind to yourself and appreciate what it takes to be born a human and have to deal with the many downsides built into our mind, you’ll end up not blocking the door any longer, and instead letting everything that’s good walk right through that door and into whatever far out dream you may have.

Step away from the door. You’re good enough.

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