Success is natural. The river of life leads us there. But there are dams on that river that prevent us from arriving at that point called success.  My life is about helping people identify those dams—we’ll call them blockages—which prevent the river of their life from delivering them into that great ocean downstream which we’ll call “Success.”

What are those blockages? They could be anything: How you grew up; Some little, silly something that a teacher said; Erroneous teachings from unknowledgeable leaders in your religion; The Great Depression’s influence on your parents or grandparents. Today, blockages are being created in the lives of young people who are growing up with a parent gone to war. Blockages can come from anywhere. And we’ve ALL got them.

I recall one man who, recently divorced, was asked why he ever married the girl in the first place. He said “I thought she was pretty. As a child my parents had always teased me about growing up to marry the “ugly” little girls in class; the dirty haired ones with snot bubbles hanging out their nose.  So when I got the chance to catch a beauty, I did.”

Turns out she was beautiful on the outside, but broken on the inside. The result was a divorce devastating in its emotional, personal and professional impact even a decade later.

Wow! That was a messy blockage, producing bad thinking, and leading to a personal  train wreck. How much better it would have been if that blockage could have been identified and removed earlier allowing the flow of the river to lead to a successful marriage.

We often feel guilty about our blockages, so much so that we may be reluctant to admit them, and therein lies the first lesson: There’s no shame in having a blockage. It’s not your fault. It’s not a weakness. It’s just an “is.” It’s a factor that affects your success. The first key to blowing up that dam on the River of Success is recognizing that it exists, admitting it, and moving beyond the false & improper guilt and shame to look for a solution. We want to dynamite that dam—blow it up—so the natural flow of the water carries you downstream to the Ocean of Success.

Exactly what is that blockage? Is it a circumstance? Or, is it a mental paradigm; a way of thinking that needs to be changed? It could be either, but more often than not its simply a way of thinking or a “false belief” that needs to be eliminated. Sometimes those false beliefs may be so deeply rooted that it’s hard to get to the tap root eliminate them. Our strongly-held, false beliefs may even be so comfortable we don’t want to let them go. There can be a sense of security, even in false belief!

Removing the dams on the River of Success requires willingness on your part to #1. Look into yourself and discover the blockage. #2. Delve into your thinking to ask yourself why you think that way. #3. Be willing to challenge your own belief to be sure it is correct or to change your thinking if it needs to be changed. When you remove those blockages, you’ll be amazed at how quickly the current of the River of Success will deliver you to higher and higher levels of achievement and personal satisfaction.