Recently, I read a couple of articles that revealed a couple of surprising obstacles to reaching goals. See if they are as surprising to you as they were to me.

Everyone struggles to reach those goals at one time or another. I know I’ve gone through stretches in my life when it seemed I was going nowhere in my efforts to reach my goals.

The first surprising obstacle was perfectionism. I think this is in part because we’ve always be told to be the best we can be and similar encouraging phrases. Issues can arise when we are trying to be so good (so perfect) that we get bogged down on the steps to reaching our goal that we never make real progress toward the goal.

The second surprising obstacle is setting a goal that is too ambitious. On the surface setting high goals would seem like a good idea. But if they’re too high, we can get discouraged when our progress seems too slow.

If you’re struggling reaching your goals, perhaps one of these two obstacles is holding you back. Now that you realize it, you can start overcoming them.