What’s the biggest barrier blocking you from reaching your goals today? Did you know your negative thoughts might be erecting the boundaries to your leadership potential? Yep — it just might be you!

It’s time for you to shift your thinking. You need to reframe how you view leadership. Your beliefs unconsciously direct you in your moment-by-moment choices and actions. What you believe drives your viewpoint and your mindset in every situation. Your self-perception is a prime basis for how you experience life. You behave according to whom you believe you should be.

Maybe someone suggested you couldn’t fulfill your destiny because you are a woman. That person was wrong! Hundreds of existing leadership models express how to network, how to communicate with others, and how to deal with conflict. The problem is, most are based on male leadership examples. Stop thinking your leadership needs to appear the same as male leadership. Our world is in desperate need of your unique leadership, which God predestined to blend into your one-of-a- kind feminine identity.

Reframing turns around frozen thinking and sets your mind free to move toward new ideas, solutions, strategies and resources for a breakthrough in your ministry.

Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom was a Dutch Christian watchmaker who, along with other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. She was imprisoned in a Nazi women’s labor camp along with her sister Betsie. Corrie wrote years later of her conversation with God regarding the condition of their barracks.

The circumstances for the inmates were unimaginably horrific everywhere in the labor camp, but Corrie discovered that her barracks were the most uninhabitable because of an infestation of fleas. According to Corrie, she was complaining to God about the fleas when she suddenly realized the fleas kept the prison guards from entering their barracks. Because of the fleas, Corrie and her sister Betsie were able to preach and lead worship services, and hundreds of women received Christ. God allowed the thing she despised into Corrie’s life to protect her ministry. Corrie endured an unspeakable situation. However, by reframing her thinking, Corrie recognized the benefits of the situation for fulfilling her purpose.

Reframing turns around frozen thinking and sets your mind free to move toward new ideas, solutions, strategies and resources for a breakthrough in your ministry. Reframing creates a new, positive pathway forward to success. Start today. Looking at a situation from a positive frame of mind transforms an old obstacle into a new opportunity.

You have unlimited potential. God wants to do amazing things in your life as you open up your thinking. You must grab this revelation for yourself and believe you are a leader.

Start thanking God today for the “fleas” in your ministry, and consider how can you reframe your leadership.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2018 edition of Influence magazine.