4 Tips For Overcoming Obstacles by Kevin Daum

If achieving goals were easy, everyone would do it quickly and without difficulty. Even if your vision is clear and you can articulate a detailed destiny, there are always obstacles in the path. It's the joy and journey of clearing those obstacles that makes life rich, and helps people feel truly accomplished when they finally reach their pinnacle of success.

While on a three-week trip to Vietnam, I decided to tackle two of my biggest personal challenges. I committed to both of these goals this year in my preferred futuring processfrom last fall. First, I wanted to get a handle on learning Vietnamese. As strange and ambitious as that sounds, I wanted to communicate with my new mother-in-law. (Plus, I figure it might be fun to finally know what my new family is actually saying about me.)

The second challenge was that I could stand to lose 35 lbs. At my age of 48, travel, exercise, and dietary changes don't come easy. However, as I write this column at the end of my Ho Chi Minh City visit, I've dropped 10 lbs., two inches in my waist, and bây giờ tôi nói má»™t ít tiếng Việt (I now speak a little Vietnamese).

​Here's how I finally blew past the obstacles in my way for the last 18 months. First, it helps to understand that obstacles come in three different flavors:

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