Purpose Series: Overcoming the Obstacles to living your purpose.

8 min readSep 9, 2022

David M.R. Covey from Franklin Covey Institute, in an interview on the LeadX podcast, mentions how reading deathbed literature changed his perspective on life.

Deathbed literature is the interviews with people who are on the verge of dying. What made their life meaningful was not money, success, or awards they received in their lives but the services they rendered, experiences they had, and lasting relationships. From the deathbed literature, it is clear that true happiness comes from living your purpose, living a life in service of others.

The question is, do you have to wait until your deathbed to realize this?

Start living your purpose. If you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s ok; the only way is to go out there, experiment, and experience life. Just remember what Jay Shetty, a former monk, and Life coach said: Your passion is for you, your purpose is for others.

Living, experiment, and experiencing life and your purpose isn’t easy. When you start doing something you have never done before, you will face many obstacles.

Here are some of the key obstacles you will face when living your purpose and tips on how to overcome them.

1. Me, myself, and I

One of the most significant barriers you face and will have to overcome when you start living your purpose is YOU and the stories you tell yourself.

Does that sound paradoxical? But it’s true. When you are on the verge of a breakthrough, when you are moving out of your comfort zone, when you are pushing yourself beyond who you are, the obstacles that constantly pull you back are your thoughts, beliefs, and the story you tell yourself.

You will have your inner critic that keeps saying, “I am not good enough,” “I can’t do this,” “I am going to fail for sure.” “We limit ourselves more than anyone else. Me Myself and I.” says Maxine Tolbert, a Success Mindset coach, when asked what the biggest obstacle she faced when she first started as a coach leaving her corporate job was. The stories we tell ourselves are the biggest obstacle we will have ever to overcome.

You are the one who speaks the worst to yourself.

Be aware of what stories you tell yourself; those stories will define your future. You better tell yourself empowering stories.

Tips to overcome:

Go through a self-discovery journey, work on your self-awareness, and understand your strengths which will help you change the story you tell yourself.
Changing your relationship with the truth. Embracing the truth is one way to prevent ourselves from being the biggest obstacle to our purpose, says Sean Oldham.
Be aware of the story you say to yourself. Change the narration. Affirmation is a great way to replace those negative self-talk with positive ones.

Replace I am not good enough with “I have the strengths X, Y, Z which can help me live my purpose.” Replace” I can’t do this” with “I can do this, I am capable of getting this done; if I cant do it all, I can find someone who can help me out.” Replace “I am going to fail for sure” with “I have it in me to succeed; nothing is a failure if I learn from the experience.”

Ask better questions

When you fail, rather than asking yourself, “Why did I do that?” ask, “What could you have done differently?”. Your brain is an answer-making machine; the better the questions you ask, the better the answers will be. Changing the question from Why to What changes the brain from justification-oriented to be more outcome-oriented, which is better for your learning.

The power to tear down or build up lies in the stories you tell yourself.

2. Your beliefs. Your Mindset.

The Generative Success model in NLP emphasizes how your beliefs (either limiting or empowering) influence your potential, thereby influencing your actions and hence the results you generate. The results will then reinforce/dent your beliefs. That means it is either a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on what type of belief you start with. The model clearly shows the power of beliefs. Your beliefs can influence the results you create, so you better have empowering beliefs than limiting ones.

Tips to overcome limiting beliefs and fixed mindset:

One of the best ways to overcome limiting beliefs is to be aware when it surfaces. Your beliefs are influenced by your parents, teachers, society, or your past experiences. These experiences create limitations that we internalize. Increasing your self-awareness and making a mindset shift every time the limiting beliefs resurface is the best way to manage it.

If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become the truth for you. — Louise Hay

Address your limiting beliefs by challenging your own belief. Whenever you notice that you have a limiting belief, stop yourself and write down at least 4 truths that bust it. Acknowledge them but then replace the limiting one with a new empowering belief and put it to practice.
Practice mindfulness to increase your self-awareness and overcome your limiting beliefs.
A fixed mindset can be overcome by looking at failure as an opportunity for learning. Start by changing your perspective towards failure. Stop seeking external approval. Value the process of growth over the end result.

3. Comparison, the dream killer

You and your personality are a culmination of all your experiences, your intelligence, and your genes. So, you are as unique as anyone can ever be. Sadly, many of you rarely realize your inner potential and strive every single day to be like someone else rather than BEING YOU.

Hence, self-doubt or comparison is another obstacle that tops the list. Our society and social media condition us to compare ourselves with others constantly. Thereby you miss out on working on your unique journey that can create an impact in this world.

You have lost yourself continually comparing yourself with others. ~ Sajna Samad

Tips to overcome the Comparison barrier.

Chiao Wen Lan, an artist, and epidemiologist talked about her experience when she was out for theatre auditioning; the thoughts of comparison and self-doubts that crept up were crippling such as Will I be compared to others? What will others think about me? Awareness was vital; I had to self-coach myself and ask, “What’s the worst that could happen if I didn’t get the role?” and is at that moment, my world changed, and hence decided to take the leap of faith.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.Explore. Dream.Discover ~ Mark Twain

Understanding that you are unique, Understanding your strengths, and tapping into those capabilities will make you successful. Rather than brooding over your weakness, find the strengths that help you live your dream and work on them. Find someone stronger in your weaker skills. Remember, You don’t have to know it all…!

Understand that you will be judged even if you do or don’t do, so do it anyway.

4. Your tribe

One of the greatest external obstacles you face when trying to live your purpose is the environment you are in, the people around you, both online and offline. Look around and check whether the environment and people around you uplift or demotivate you to move forward. Cut out the noise that doesn’t serve you.

You are a sum of 5 people you spend your time most with. ~ Jim Rohn, the American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker

Your tribe influences your success in whatever you do.

Tips for choosing your tribe:

Analyze your day and understand whom you spend your time with, look at what you would like to achieve, and create a new tribe that aligns with the same values.
Detach from those unwanted distractions, from those who create negative beliefs in you, from those negative thoughts that don’t serve your purpose.
Sometimes you live in the illusion thinking that you can change others, while the only person you control is yourself. You may make others aware of how they influence you, but you can’t change them or make them behave differently if they don’t want to. So rather than wasting your energy trying to change others, pick the tribe you would like to be surrounded with, which is under your circle of influence.
All that doesn’t mean you have to isolate yourself from everyone because isolation is also an obstacle. Surrounding yourself with those who motivate you, complimenting your weaknesses is a must for living your purpose.

We are wired to grow together, so go find that tribe of yours.

5. Your habits

This is has been one of the most talked-about obstacles ever in self-help books.

If you want to change your life change your habits, say Bob Proctor.

Tips to change your habits:

Audit your life. Find habits that don’t serve you. Practice ADD-DELETE -EDIT. Direct 100 percent of your energy to change one habit at a time.

ADD Add/anchor a new habit to be practiced along with a habit you are having now. For, e.g., You brush your teeth whenever you wake up. If you want to practice yoga, add that right after you brush and do them always in sequence.
DELETE: Remove the bad habits and replace them with something better. Do you frequently watch TV, replace it with reading books of fiction.
EDIT: Edit the habits that you want to improve on. It could be something like increasing the time of your exercise from 30 mins to 1 hr.

Research says that it takes an average of 66 days to enforce a new activity as a habit into your life. So consistency is key when you are trying to change a habit.

Overcoming obstacles is to be ready to rethink, pivot, shift and adapt to find your passion of fulfillment. It is about the true joy that brings purpose to impact whatever they may be.

In his book ‘The 5 AM Club’, Robin Sharma speaks about the 4 Interior Empires that need to be balanced for you to be successful. The 4 interior empires are Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset.

The power lies within you.

Looking at the above obstacles, you would have realized that most of these obstacles are under your circle of influence. You can change them if you want to. It depends on how driven you are to live your purpose. My question to You is, which of these 4 interior empires are you going to work on today? And what is now your excuse not to tackle them?

Live Your purpose. Experience. Experiment.

I am a Jay Shetty Certified Life coach focusing on Self- Mastery and Career coaching. If you are struggling to live your purpose, let us hop on a call and decide how we can work together. Drop me a message for details.

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