Obstacle...something that impedes progress or achievement
I always liked this line about fear I heard a guy in a meeting say....Fear is just an obstacle we put in front of something to keep us from rationalising it....Once I removed those obstacles in front of quitting....Failing...See...He can't do it!....Succeeding....I won't have any friends...Life will be boring.....What will I do with all that spare time?...Will people like me if I'm not drunk?...Once I got all that bulls!t out of the way...I could go about the business of quitting for good.
Now I could rationalise this serious problem I had....I had to quit...And never drink again. I'm an alkie but I'm not a dumb person.....I'm going to take the path that I see the most people having success with. There are a lot of ways people quit for good and I applaud them all....I want the one that works for the most people for the longest periods of time. That happened to be Alocholics Anonymous. I need to go to a meeting. Here comes Fear with a capitol F. What if I walk in there and people laugh or sneer at me because I'm an alcoholic?....What if I know somebody?....What if I'm too stupid to make it work?...I've screwed up everything else in my life....More obstacles...I didn't have alcohol to remove them...All my life I used alcohol to remove the obstacles in my way....I had removed obstacles with the worse obstacle out there...Alcohol. The only way to remove them was to do it....So I went...More bullsh!t....None of those things that I feared happened...All of a sudden...I'm openminded...I'm thinking with no obstacles in front of me. I listened....I tried things I thought would never work...But it worked for others...Why not me?...And these nice people helped me do it. And I'll be damned if it didn't work. The one thing that did more damage and scared me more than anything in my life...Was gone.....And for once....Basically since I was a little kid...I'm happy.
I wish you the best Ryan....With changing your life...It can be amazing.