Internal v. External Barriers to Success

I recently gave a writing exercise to a group of students in which I asked them three questions:

What are the internal factors that I believe are keeping me from achieving my goals?

What are the external factors that I believe are keeping me from achieving my goals?

How can I turn the external factors into internal factors so that I can control the extent to which they affect me?

The most interesting observation I noticed when they were working on their answers was the brevity of the response to the first question.  This is a very important insight.  It means that the overwhelming majority of them did not place the responsibility for their lack of motivation or drive on themselves; they felt that external forces had a greater impact on their success, or lack of it.

As they were writing, I instructed them not to try to rationalize or logically analyze their thoughts; doing so, I think, would cause them to realize that the “external forces” were merely excuses and blame placed on outside entities in order to protect their feelings.  It is astounding to see in practice how many of our fallacies are blamed on external factors.  This protective mechanism gives us reassurance that it is not “our fault” that we did not reach a goal.  However, it is very damaging, and can leave us in a stuck place forever.

This is where the third question comes into play.  Once the students read their lists of external factors, it became very clear that most of the factors were, in fact, completely changeable with a little effort.  One student wrote, “Money:  If I didn’t have to work so much, I would have the time to devote to pursuing what I really want to do.”  The issue here is time.  I asked her to break down a typical daily schedule on a piece of paper, inserting timeframes for meals, chores, errands, and other activities.  Once she was finished, she discovered that many of these activities were taking much longer than they needed to, and that admittedly, she spent time “zoning out” and watching TV for a while during the evening.  After the analysis, she estimated that she actually had between 2-3 hours per day to devote to her goals that were currently being utilized in unproductive ways. 

The external blame came from fear; the fear that time would be spent without the guarantee of success.  She, like many of us, subconsciously stayed stuck because it felt safe.  But once we confront what we believe are the external forces holding us back, we strip away the paradigms and half-truths, and finally realize that our dreams are within our control.

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