# CHAPTER 3: Identifying Barriers – The Stories That Keep Us Stuck
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review CHAPTER 3 of "Cultivating Audacity read online," and wow, this is the kind of chapter that quietly reaches into your chest and asks, “So, what’s really been holding you back?” It begins with a memory so vivid and painful that you can almost feel the heat rising in a six-year-old’s face.
The narrator, Anne Marie, takes us back to childhood as the youngest of five children, trailing after four brothers like a devoted little shadow. Whatever sport they played, she played. When they took piano lessons, so did she. When they went to church to become altar boys, she went too. There she is, only six years old, sitting in a room full of boys at the church’s annual recruitment meeting. Her oldest brother, Ed, is twelve. Dan, Steve, Gary, and Anne Marie sit in a neat row beside him. Five kids born within six and a half years, a tight crew, moving through the world together.
Then the priest asks each boy to stand, say his name, his age, and why he wants to be an altar boy. One by one, boys rise, some trembling, some confident. When the wave reaches their row, Ed stands and speaks about serving the community. Dan follows. Steve follows. Gary follows. And because Anne Marie always followed Gary, she stands up too. In her loud six-year-old voice, she proudly announces, “My name is Anne Marie. I am six years old, and I want to be an altar boy because...”
Laughter erupts. The priest gently tells her she cannot be an altar boy. “Why not?” she asks, her face hot and flushed. “You aren’t a boy,” he says kindly. So she tries again: “Ok, then I want to be an altar girl!” The room roars even louder. Even her brothers laugh. Her eyes sting with tears and frustration as the priest explains that girls cannot be altar servers. That moment becomes one of her earliest childhood memories—and it plants a fear of being embarrassed in front of large groups. For decades, that fear quietly stops her from taking risks. Only after she connects that old story to her reluctance to try new things is she able to move past it.
That is the heart of this chapter: the stories we tell ourselves become the barriers that keep us from the lives we want. After comparing your two lives in Chapter 2, you should have a good idea of what you want and why you want it. So why haven’t you already done it? The answer is your story. Your story is your security blanket. It is the reason “why” behind why you do what you do, why you stay where you stay, why you avoid the work that leads to the life you want. Those stories are limiting beliefs. They are the wall you built and now must deconstruct.
Anne Marie then introduces the four big barriers: fear, time, money, and the inner critic. Why are these four so universal? Because our brains are built to protect us. The amygdala alerts us to harm. We are wired to seek comfort. Barriers are not inherently bad. Just as guardrails on mountain roads protect cars from falling off a cliff, our excuses can protect us from reckless decisions. The difference between a risk worth taking and a reckless one is often the difference between a happy, satisfying life and one that feels chaotic and out of control.
Fear was Anne Marie’s barrier. That church memory stuck with her. She was afraid to put herself out there and risk laughter when she tried something new. As an adult, she feared failing, being embarrassed, being judged, sounding stupid, being bad at her job. Fear had such a powerful seat at her table that she waited ten full years at ESPN before she told anyone she wanted to work in front of the camera. She produced for reporters every day. She sometimes wrote copy that others repeated on air. She instructed them on delivery and made sure they looked good on camera. And yet, why was she so afraid to do it herself?
She told herself a story about moving from producing to reporting: People will think I am vain. It is difficult to get an on-camera job, so I might not even be able to do it. If I do get a job on television, I open myself up for embarrassment and humiliation if I am not good at it. People might criticize me, and that will hurt my feelings. I must protect my feelings at all costs, because if I don’t... what? I will be embarrassed, and I never want to experience that feeling again like I did when I was six years old.
But overcoming barriers is always about assessing the risk. Anne Marie is not suggesting you quit your job, uproot your family, and move cross-country without serious planning and strong support systems. That qualifies as reckless. Weighing risk versus potential outcome is a huge part of living audaciously. The worst that could happen if she were bad on air was being embarrassed and not getting hired again. That was a risk worth taking. The story her inner critic was telling her was just that—a story. And a fictional one, because it predicted a future that had not yet happened.
When fear is the obstacle, she advises doing the thing you fear most first. Go fail right out of the gate. Fail the test. Bomb on stage at the comedy club. Get turned down for the job. A fear barrier is always about the outcome. Putting yourself in a situation where failure is likely and then surviving that failure makes the next attempt less frightening. It will never again be your first time. More on that in Chapter 4, “Make Friends with Fear.”
Time is another barrier. How often have you said, “I want to, but I don’t have time”? No one with a goal has spare time. If they say otherwise, they don’t have any measurable intention of achieving that goal. Most of us are already overwhelmed with days packed to the brim. People with no kids, no pets, and no plants don’t have time. People with two jobs and four kids don’t have time. You have to find time—not “make” it, but carve it out. Anne Marie put off writing this book for two years because she has three children, a full-time television career, and keynote speaking engagements while traveling zigzagging across the country. She gets it. It is the abundance of bills, doctor’s appointments, sports, art projects, family gatherings, cooking, cleaning, and what seems like 300 school emails per week that tip her over the edge. In Chapter 5, she will discuss how to create boundaries around time and separate what is urgent from what is important.
Money is another primary barrier. Not enough of it. Scared to spend it. The belief that if you desire money, you are materialistic. There are many reasons why finances become an obstacle, and they all follow the word “but”: I want to, but I don’t have enough money. But I feel bad asking for money for that. But what if I don’t earn enough money to live when I make the move? If finances are one of your barriers, then a deep dive into your family’s history surrounding money is step one. A look at your financial picture and careful budgeting is step two in evaluating worth-it versus reckless decisions. “Money is no object” is a lie unless you are independently wealthy. Money should not stop you from starting. When she detached her self-worth from the decision-making process and asked for help, she made headway. More about that in Chapter 6.
Then there is the inner critic—our formidable foe. That voice constantly whispers caution or criticism about what we believe about ourselves, what we are capable of, what we deserve, whether we even belong in the room. It makes us question every decision. It whispers, “I can’t,” when things get hard. It is a master at composing a list of reasons you shouldn’t make the move. As soon as you dispel one, another pops up like whack-a-mole trying to talk you out of your scary leap. Missy West, creator of Crush the Inner Critic workshops, teaches audiences nationwide how to identify the negative stories you tell yourself. Quell your inner critic. Pay attention to the things you are telling yourself. Once you track the thoughts that keep popping up, West recommends having a conversation with that voice. Those thoughts are separate from who you are. “They aren’t real. This is literally you making up a story that has no basis in reality,” West says. In Chapter 7, West dives in with specific steps to crush your inner critic.
Even when you have identified and addressed the obstacles to the life you crave, it is important to reevaluate occasionally. Anne Marie has taught herself to keep track of her level of engagement and contentment to ensure new barriers don’t arise. For eleven years of producing at ESPN, she loved her job. She felt like Forrest Gump, always at the center of the biggest story. She thrived at the biggest sporting events in the world, and it made her feel included in the stories most people were talking about. Her coworkers became her friends. The O. J. Simpson trial? Heavyweight title fight? Super Bowl? Olympics in Norway? Where is my ticket? I’m in! Until, over time, she felt unfulfilled.
A similar drop in contentment happened when returning to play-by-play announcing after the pandemic. She loved sports broadcasting and swore she could do it every day for the rest of her career. But after Covid, networks slashed pay, and she returned to a game rate lower than a decade earlier. She took on extra games to make up the financial difference, but her interest started to wane when she couldn’t prepare as thoroughly as she wanted. She decided to take fewer games so she could do a better job and add in the new challenge of keynote speaking. How did she know she needed to make that change? Because she had been there before. She had loved her job as a sideline reporter and then as a play-by-play announcer so much that she woke up with a huge smile, knowing game day had finally arrived. She had butterflies and couldn’t wait for the game to start. That evaporated when she was no longer paid what her decades in sports broadcasting deserved.
The market decides how much you should be paid. You can paint a portrait and think it is worth $300,000, but if the best offer you get is for $500, then that is what it’s worth. People were flooding into sports broadcasting, and with traditional television shrinking while streaming grew, networks could afford to hire less experienced broadcasters for a quarter of what she was making. She wasn’t angry that the network rates were reduced, but she didn’t want to be resentful about going into work. She wanted to work with joy. She made a calculated risk to pursue more keynote speaking opportunities so she could set her rate and determine her own value. She still does television because she loves it and is pretty good at it, but she has given herself the option to accept only the games that bring her joy. Those moves come naturally now that she has identified her barriers and morphed her inner critic into her inner coach.
Then she invites us to do the same. Try this exercise to dig into why you haven’t done “the thing” yet. Grab a piece of paper and create four columns. Label each column with one of the four barriers: fear, time, money, and inner critic. Write under each label every story you can think of related to that obstacle. For example, her “fear” column included: People will think I am vain. It is hard to get a job on TV. People will judge me. I will be bad at it and embarrass myself. I don’t have enough talent to be on air. Strangers will be able to criticize me. I will fail and won’t have a job at all. I have no idea how to start. Some fears result from an outer critic—family, friends, colleagues, people on social media—and some from your inner critic. After completing the exercise, step away from it. Get a good night’s sleep and look at it in the morning with fresh eyes. Where do you see barriers? What is the story you have been telling yourself? Is it fear, time, money, or your inner critic? It can be more than one, and most likely, it is a combination of a few or all of them. Take that information into the following chapters.
Audacity is not the absence of obstacles but the determination to overcome them. If the thought of doing the uncomfortable work of digging into your past seems almost too much to face, ask yourself what price you’re paying for not making the change. Are you waking up dreading the day, living paycheck to paycheck, counting the hours until work is over, or existing in a relationship where you aren’t valued? When you shift from waking up to a life that is “fine” to envisioning what your days and nights could look like, your future begins to unfold. Congratulations! You have done the hard work of identifying your barriers. Part 2 will guide you through the necessary steps to help you move past them. Please don’t shy away from the uncomfortable truths. Trying to excavate your story as to why you haven’t yet done “the thing” can be difficult, but a life you love is on the other side of it. Audacity is not the absence of obstacles but the determination to overcome them. Keep going. Turn the page.
And so begins Part 2: Breaking Down Barriers, with the anonymous quote, “The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.”
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating This chapter hit me like a gentle but firm wake-up call. The childhood altar boy story is so specific, so human, and so painfully relatable that it makes the entire lesson land with real emotional weight. I love how Anne Marie doesn’t just list abstract obstacles; she shows how fear, time, money, and the inner critic actually operate in a real life—her life, and by extension, ours. The shift from inner critic to inner coach is especially powerful. This is not just motivational fluff; it is honest, practical, and deeply introspective. My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.8 / 5 Stars.
Next Chapter Prediction Chapter 4, “Make Friends with Fear,” will likely take us straight into the fear barrier we just identified. I predict Anne Marie will share stories of failing on purpose, surviving embarrassment, and learning that fear loses its grip once you face it directly. We may see practical exercises for doing the thing you fear most first, reframing failure as data, and building the courage muscle through repeated exposure. Since Chapter 3 ends by asking us to identify our barriers, Chapter 4 will probably begin the work of dismantling fear step by step—maybe with a challenge to name one scary action and take it before the next chapter.
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