The Smartest Way to Overcome an Obstacle

The Huffington Post:

Few important things in life come easy. Starting in school, there are days where assignments just don’t go well. That concept you thought you had nailed in class has flown from your mind by the time you sit down to do your work. As you get older, the obstacles get more varied. You might want to buy a great new car, but you don’t have the money. You could be thwarted at work by someone who has a different agenda. Or perhaps the economy has made it difficult for your business to push forward on a new venture.

Dealing with obstacles is a crucial part of being successful in life. And there are lots of strategies we use to help us deal with them.

Sometimes, of course, we just push through the obstacles. That is, an obstacle may just increase our sense of commitment to a goal. I have written before about research by Ayelet Fishbach, Ron Friedman and Arie Kruglanski showing that we often associate key obstacles with the goal they block. So, seeing a tempting piece of cake may actually help to remind you that you’re on a diet.

When you’re faced with a new obstacle, though, this kind of automatic reminding won’t work. An interesting paper by Janina Marguc, Jens Forster and Gerben Van Kleef in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology demonstrates that when we hit a new obstacle, one way that we deal with it is by thinking about the problem more globally.

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post