EVERY one of us has one hurdle or the other in our lives that we want to scale over. Your hurdle may be different from mine. Your hurdle may be looking for a good job while mine is getting the right type of person to do a particular job for me. Whatever it is that stands between us and what we desire is a hurdle. And unless we jump over them, we cannot make good progress.
Unfortunately, there are those in life who refuse to attempt to scale over the hurdles confronting them and those who wouldn’t make another effort if they mistakenly knock down one or two hurdles as they race through life.
In athletics, a set of hurdles are lined up along the running tracks, the race itself is called “Hurdles”. The objective is to slow down the speed of the hurdler. But in spite of the known objective of this extremely tasking event, athletes are trained to scale over them in a record time if they want to become Olympic gold medalists.
One of the world’s best-known hurdlers is Ed Moses, the American who broke the world record in 400m hurdles four times and won an incredible 81 races consecutively in the same event.
In the process of amassing all these trophies that made him a hall of famer in track and field, Ed Moses still knocked down quite a few hurdles. However, when he sent the hurdles crashing down in a race, Ed didn’t get into the habit of waiting to raise them. All he did was glide over the remaining ones, concentrating on his primary focus to be the first guy at the finishing line. Ed knew what most people in life refuse to learn. He knew that the hurdles he knocked down would be raised in time for other races and that there would be another opportunity for him to fly over them in a future event.
So what are the hurdles in your life that you are scared of jumping over?
Yes, poor education is a hurdle. So is the inability to get a good husband or wife. A married woman praying for her first child is facing a hurdle. An entrepreneur whose business is a long way to the profit zone, and the one whose business has moved out of it, are facing a daunting hurdle.
A junior manager working with a difficult boss has a hurdle there just as a would-be entrepreneur struggling with the problem of raising capital to launch his dream.
If your child couldn’t get admission into the university because he has been flunking his mathematics over the past three WAEC exams, then that is a hurdle. You name it, whatever it is that stands between you and all those things you wish to accomplish are hurdles. And unless you scale over them, you won’t get to where God wants you want to be.
So, how do you overcome these hurdles? I have discovered some of the strategies for scaling over them and I will share them with you right away.
Strategy No. 1
Recognize the nature of the hurdle. Examine what you call a hurdle very well, and be sure that it is as high as you imagined it to be. Many a time, we get stuck in one place because we fail to realize that what was stopping us isn’t as daunting as we had thought.
Strategy No. 2
Focus on the hurdles one at a time and find out the many different ways that you can scale over them. Take raising capital for example. There are many would-be entrepreneurs who have allowed their dream of financial independence to die because they see their inability to raise seed capital as an insurmountable obstacle. Yet, every entrepreneur who has succeeded in building a business has faced the same obstacle at one point or the other and overcome it.
Strategy No. 3
How did those who succeeded ahead of you do it? If you patiently find the answer to that question, and do what they did, you will get the same result with them.
In practice, it will take different time frames for you to cross the hurdles. Some hurdles will take less than 10 minutes to cross while some might take 10 years. No matter what the time frame is, what is most important is that you scale over them.
Speaking to a group of people was one of the hurdles that I lived with for many years. Deep down in my heart, I loved to be a speaker. But I was so shy that I could not speak before a few people.
In November 1994, when it became obvious that the next stage of my life required that I acquire public speaking ability, I prayed to God to make me an impactful speaker who would affect his generation positively.
After only three years of focusing on the hurdle, reading every book on public speaking that I could lay my hands on, and studying the way all the public speakers whose way of speaking I love go about it, God has answered my prayers.
While I am continuing to improve my proficiency as a public speaker – remember, learning is a journey, not a destination – the reality is that I no longer see public speaking as a hurdle to be afraid of.
Like Ed Moses, I may knock down one or two hurdles on the way to the finishing line, but my primary focus is the goal I’ve set for myself and I am driving towards it every single day.
What about you? Have you identified your hurdles? Do you know what you have to do to scale over them? Have you started to do those things?
Don’t wait for another second. Start to do them immediately.
ACT NOW!
And I shall see you at the top much sooner than you think.
Quote:
“Have you identified your hurdles? Do you know what you have to do to scale over them? Have you started to do those things? Don’t wait for another second. Start to do them immediately”
Don’t Miss: Faith Does Move Mountains – Pastor (Dr.) Emmanuel Ojeagbase
