“What impedes you, empowers you.”

Wow! What action-provoking words these are — packed with can-do dynamite!, I As soon as I heard them, I knew they were meant for me and wanted to share them, too.

Just savor the promise these words hold: Anything that obstructs or hinders us can actually give us power and fuel our progress. What an amazing tool! There are no obstacles, only opportunities: Just imagine the energizing effect on us if we reframed our mindsets in synch with this concept. Here’s what would happen:

When we hit a roadblock in our writing, we’d double down and work harder and smarter. We’d challenge ourselves to come up with better phrases, better plotting, fuller characters. Instead of getting drained by the problem, we’d get juiced, we’d get a shot of adrenalin. We’d push ourselves into new territory – and do more dangerous writing.

When we tackled a new, unfamiliar genre or shifted from writing short stories to a novel, instead of feeling overwhelmed and out of our league, we’d get excited and energized by all the ways it offered us to learn and grow. We’d see the chance to blast out of our comfort zone as a precious gift and not a scary departure.

When we ran into difficulties finding agents and publishers – memo to myself, here! – we’d see it as a challenge, not a comment on the quality of our work. We’d call in the creativity troops and figure out fresh angles for pitching our stories and new avenues for identifying people to contact and woo.

The bottom line? As Dr. Rob Gilbert, my friend and mentor, says, “don’t get frustrated, get fascinated!”* When you hit an obstacle, don’t let it sap your energy, let it fuel you and put you into overdrive. Just imagine the forward motion this would result in.

It’s easy to feel deflated when we’re stopped by an obstacle – to let all the air go out of us and collapse like a tired balloon. So often that’s our default response – I’ve been there many times. But what if we could turn this tired old response on its head and use what’s happened to energize and motivate us? Then no naysayer, no unexpected circumstance, no nagging self-doubting inner critic could keep us down. We’d be unstoppable!

“What impedes you, empowers you” – why not take this as our mantra and act on it today? Let’s use obstacles as octane as we all write on!

* Check out Dr. Gilbert’s fabulous Success Hotline: 973-743-4690.

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