You must learn how to drive on the bumpiness of life. It is never smooth. You have no option but to drive no matter the dish and potholes. You need to accept the bumpy road of life. When you do, you will come to see that they lead to the best places. You are stagnant and not moving forward if you want the road to be smooth before you embark on your journey of life. You must take time to enjoy the moment and make the most of what is in front of you. Speed bumps slow you down. Speed bump prevents accidents. Speed bumps make you a better driver.

You have the choice in life to be happy. Your happiness does not depend on anything but you. Bumps have a purpose, understand their purpose and stay positive. A road bend is not the end, so don’t make it the end. You have the responsibility to drive through the bend safely. If you don’t, you’re not a good driver and are not meant to be on the road. You must practice, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, and make the most of life.

Despite all the confusion around you, be patient, everything will fall in place. Don’t be in a hurry to solve problems. Hurdles are disheartening, and they’re often unavoidable. If you take your time and plan, every obstacle can be a great opportunity. Your mind works to find solutions when you see challenges as a call to action. Many people are in a hurry jumping straight from discovering a problem with attempting to solving it. You need a systematic approach to how you deal with issues. It takes more than a gut feeling. You need creativity on how to find the answers to your obstacles.

We started looking at some of the things that can become a stumbling block on your journey to be successful. We will continue.

Shortcut: Life is a process, and there are no short cuts if you want to grow and develop in the process. You did not become an adult overnight. You grew; it was a process that came with different stages. In the various stages, there were developments, challenges, lessons, and knowledge. It takes years and years of hard work and practice to build yourself and anything worthwhile. It takes determination and believing that you can do it. There are no shortcuts to success.

To do something worthwhile in life like in a relationship, business, and life in general, you should never give up no matter the nature of the obstacles you encounter. Try to see it through. It is not wrong to look for ways to make things more efficient. There are no perfect relationships in life. Every relationship takes time to develop. Be patient and don’t be in a hurry. When people share their success stories, most often they don’t tell you about their tears, struggles, pain, patient, and how they were determined, making it work. It’s the blood, sweat and tears that make anything of any real importance worth it in the end.

Greed: Greed is a strong and selfish desire for something. Most people who are greedy can never be happy in their life because they are never satisfied. Even when you think they are successful, they cannot appreciate and enjoy their success. They become unstable. They love material things more than human. They become selfish and demanding. Greed causes you to risk everything in life. Greediness is the fastest way to make others believe you are not kind. Kindness is a demonstration of power, while greed is a demonstration of frailty. Cupidity exposes you as weak. People see right through for who you are, and they know you are afraid of losing.

Greed is only a means to more greed. Our desires are supposed to serve us by providing motivation and enthusiasm. But greed will reverse this relationship so that we become slaves to our desires. It destroys reputation. There are only two things you can’t buy, friendship and accolades. When you buy them, and people find out you did not acquire them in an honourable and honest manner, it depreciates the value.

Making Excuses: Excuses are rationalisations one makes for themselves about people, events, and circumstances. People create conceived reasons to defend their behaviour, so they can neglect to take the required actions and be responsible. With excuses, you place blame on an external condition, thereby not dealing with the situation in question.

Here are some reasons we make excuses:

• Fear of embarrassment
• Fear of failure
• Fear of success
• Fear of uncertainty
• Fear of change
• Fear of making mistakes
• Fear of responsibility
• Fear of lack of confidence

Fear is the root of making excuses. To eliminate excuses, you must trace and remove all fear. Fear traps and locks you away within your comfort zone, yet fear often develops as a result of a lack of:

• Understanding
• Information
• Resources
• Experience
• Perspective

A life of excuse makes you a danger to yourself and society. You become too toxic and harmful. Excuses will hold you back from recognising opportunities, talents, and skills you might have to help you overcome your problems.

Lack of discipline: Self-discipline is one of the indispensable requirements for achieving success, but too often, the lack of self-discipline affects your desire to be disciplined. People are not born with self-discipline; they need to develop it, but they don’t know how to do so.Discipline will enable you to do the small things that do not have immediate rewards so that you can achieve a bigger dream. The lack of discipline will lead you to procrastinate, play and flit around from one idea to another – but it will never bring you the satisfaction of mastery of any skill or ideal. You need to stay focused. You must start developing discipline if you want to be successful in any endeavour.

Looking down on yourself: If you don’t believe in you who will? Stop judging and start accepting. Stop putting yourself down with negative self-talk. You will damage your self-esteem and self-confidence if you continue to put yourself down. That includes the words you say out loud in addition to your internal negative self-talk. It is easy to believe negative thoughts and words which can distort your perception about yourself. They impact on your sense of self-worth. You can’t control what others say about you, but you can control what you say about yourself. Start talking about yourself positively to build your self-esteem. Believe you are worthy and quit the self-bullying. Treat yourself as you would a good friend and respect yourself.