“Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishments.”

Eric Butterworth is widely known as one of the fathers of motivational speaking and positive thinking. In the parlance of his day, he spoke here about men and achievement, but, of course, his words comments apply to all of us —to anyone who wants to strives to do and be more.

Thinking of obstacles as a way of developing our “achievement muscle” is a great way to reframe them, isn’t it? Looked at this way, obstacles become assets—they give us something useful instead of derailing us.

Let’s ponder for a moment all the benefits obstacles deliver. They:

Deliver valuable feedback: When we hit a roadblock on a project, we’re forced to stop, reassess, and re-envision whatever we’re doing. And in the process, we often learn something valuable that we can use.

Ignite our ingenuity: An obstacle fuels our creativity. When things don’t go as we planned, we need to come up with other options, other ideas, other solutions. We need to find a way to go over, under, around, or through that obstacle in order to move forward. Often the Plan B or Plan C we come up is better than the one we started with. What a gift!

Rekindle our motivation: Sometimes we lose the sense of urgency, the fire in the belly that spurred us to start a project. When we hit an obstacle and feel stymied, it forces us to consider just how much we want what we’ve said we want. If we want it enough than the work is no problem and an obstacle can rekindle our desire.

Expand our horizons: When you face a problem or an obstacle, don’t get frustrated, get fascinated as Dr. Rob Gilbert says so well on his amazing Success Hotline.* When you get frustrated, you contract, you get into a negative spiral and nothing good comes of it. But when you get fascinated, you look with wonder and curiosity at the problem before you and open the door to all kinds of possibilities.

Builds our achievement muscle: The more obstacles we face and overcome, as Eric Butterworth says, the stronger our “power of accomplishment” becomes. And the better equipped we become to handle the next obstacle that comes our way.

It’s more than likely that sometime soon both you and I will hit an obstacle on the road to completing a project we care about. When that happens don’t forget to flex your achievement muscle! Write on!

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