Obstacles or Detours? How to Reframe Life’s Challenges for a Brighter Future

[Barb Nangle]

Photo Credit: Allan Mas

“Just because you think something doesn't mean it’s true.”

This was a revelation to me when I got into recovery. Not only was that notion surprising, but the fact that I’d been doing some kind of personal development work for over 30 years and this had never occurred to me was shocking.

I’ve since learned that I can change my beliefs by changing my thoughts. That’s because beliefs are just thoughts we’ve been thinking for so long that we come to accept them as THE TRUTH.  This has reminded me of something I shared on a podcast episode 3.5 years ago about turning obstacles into detours.

 

Obstacles vs. Detours

That is, I changed my mind about what obstacles are. I used to think of them as blocking me from achieving what I wanted. I now know that they’re actually detours, put into my way by the universe as a signal to take another route. 

When seeming obstacles have appeared in my life, I can look back and see that they were actually rerouting me in a different direction. Things that felt like absolute disasters in my life turned into blessings or they led me to something fantastic.

When you come to a roadblock where there's a detour sign, it's because there's something ahead that you or someone else might be hurt by, or there will be an extreme delay if you go that way. The detour is meant to take you on a different path. You can still get to your destination, just by a different path and likely on a different timetable than originally planned. My experience is that this is also true with things that appear to be obstacles in our lives.

 

A personal example of a seeming obstacle that was really a detour.

I was introduced to a guy named Jerry with the intention of casually dating. Neither one of us had any intention of becoming serious. Yet we unexpectedly fell in love. Very soon we started talking about spending the rest of our lives together. A few months later, seemingly out of the blue, he dumped me.

Up until that point, it was the worst thing I had ever experienced. I was a f-ing mess! I felt loved by him in a way I never had before, so I was absolutely devasted. A few months later he came back, apologized, told me he’d had to do some soul searching and we reunited. Soon after, he asked me to marry him I said yes! Five months later he dumped me again.

As you can imagine, I was devastated again. I’d had my heart broken before, but not like this. And never twice by the same person. This felt like an enormous obstacle to the future life I had envisioned. I thought I’d never be able to live without him, I’d never get over him and I’d never meet someone I loved so dearly and who loved me so dearly.

Yet here I am, 20+ years later, and I’m completely indifferent to him. And I’m a healthy person in mind, body, and spirit and in a healthy romantic relationship with “my person.” A few years after Jerry dumped me, I got to the point where I became just as grateful that he had dumped me as I had been that he had come into my life. There was so much about that relationship that was extremely unhealthy.

For one thing, we drank booze and smoked weed very heavily together. I was extremely heavy at the time, and he really loved heavy women. He constantly gave me goodies like Boston cream doughnuts because he wanted me to be even fatter (which honestly blew my mind – I’d never heard of “chubby chasers” before I met him!).

 

Where that detour led.

Had I stayed in that relationship, there’s no telling if I’d still be alive. I certainly wouldn't be living happy, joyous, and free the way I am now, with a sweetheart who’s clean, sober, and thoughtful. I have an intimate, healthy relationship now which I couldn’t even have fathomed back then.

That breakup appeared to be an obstacle on the path to my “happily ever after” when in fact it was a detour. As a result of the deep pain of that relationship, I decided I was not going to wait for the universe to reveal the reason for that experience. I decided *I* was going to make meaning out of it. I took a deep look at myself and I realized two aspects of my life were an absolute mess: my finances and my health.

I then proceeded to take a five-year period of time to overhaul my finances. I changed over 25 habits and behaviors around my finances and started reading about finances daily so they’d always be at the forefront of my mind. I later took about a five-year period of time to overhaul my health and lost 50 pounds. This was well before I got into 12-step recovery, so even though I worked on all this stuff back then, it wasn’t enough. However, those two periods of working on my finances and health paved the way for where I am today. 

 

How to transform an obstacle into a detour.

The way to transform a seeming obstacle into a detour is to make a decision to do so. It’s really that easy. There’s no need to wait for the perspective of time to realize, “This isn’t an obstacle, it’s a detour!”

Here’s another example. I was laid off after 19 years at Yale. Many would think of that as a disaster. In fact, that’s what I thought at first. Yet I would never have started my own business if that hadn’t happened. I've helped thousands of people on their healing, growth, and recovery journeys through my professional speaking, podcast, writing, and coaching. None of that could have happened unless I hit that “obstacle” of being laid off. 

The universe is for you, not against you. Or, as David Bayer says, “Believe in the certainty of the goodness of the future.” When we remember that things that appear to be obstacles are actually detours, it eases our tension, anxiety, and worry. There’s no need to wait for the future to show you, “That was a good thing that happened.” 

The universe knows better than you do. All you have to do is change your mind about what things mean: this is a detour, not an obstacle. When you start playing with that idea, you can start to imagine “What fantastic places might this detour be leading me to?” instead of “What disasters are coming my way because of this obstacle?” Dream about good things that could be coming your way and stop catastrophizing.

When you do that, you’re approaching life from a powerful state of being and living on purpose. When you see things as obstacles, you’re approaching life from a primal state and living reactively. All it takes is one little decision to make that shift.