My bike’s been collecting dust for two years.

Then, after watching my son complete a major goal of his own, something in me stirred. His accomplishment reminded me of who I am at my core: an athlete to the bone. So I pulled out the tire pump, got out the grease, and hit the trails.

I wasn’t even a mile into my ride when I saw the tree blocking my way. This wasn’t just an obstacle—it was a metaphor.

Here’s the backstory:

I quit biking when I dropped out of an Ironman.

It was a season of my life when everything felt impossibly hard. My personal life was in shambles because of a horrific legal situation my ex-husband had fallen into. My kids needed my time and my protection as our world collapsed around us. My work schedule was relentless, because I was hustling hard to show the world that “everything is okay, everything is fine, I’ve got this.”

And typically, when life gets hard, I get harder. So I signed up for a full Ironman, thinking I could steal time from sleep and leisure to cover my training.

For a few months, it worked … until it didn’t.

Two months before the race, I looked at my travel and work schedule and asked a hard question: How am I going to find 20 hours to train this week? The reality was, I wasn’t. Then a harder question: If I somehow found 100 spare hours in the coming weeks, would they be best invested in an athletic pursuit? I knew the answer to that question.

I needed more peace, more time with my family. This was the right goal for me, but the absolute wrong time. I have no regrets … other than the street cred of finishing a “full” Ironman. (I’d only done a half at that point.)

That’s why getting back on the bike was so meaningful. I’m ready to get back to my roots, and by no means is this going to be easy. It’ll take effort, and there will be obstacles. Now, obstacles are commonly viewed as stop signs—turn around, go back, this isn’t meant for you. For me, right now, the tree meant something else: pick up the bike, carry it over, keep moving.

Steven Pressfield writes about this in The War of Art: the bigger the goal, the bigger the resistance. I’ve come to see obstacles as signs. They’re not there to discourage you. They’re there to tell you that this life—the one you actually want to experience—is going to demand something exceptional from you.

For me, being exceptional means revisiting the goals and expectations I once set for myself: racing, writing, and continuing to serve my clients in new ways that support their ambitions and aspirations.

So I have to ask: What does being exceptional mean to you?

I bet it’s not creating a new goal. I imagine it’s returning to the one you walked away from a million excuses ago—because it wasn’t the right time, because you weren’t ready, because it didn’t seem possible.

And maybe that was true at the time.  But, here’s what I know: the goal you abandoned hasn’t abandoned you. It’s still there, waiting on the other side of that fallen tree.

So pick it back up. Carry it over. Keep moving.

Now’s the time. Consider this your nudge to get gutsy again.