recognise and remove internal and external roadblocks to success
You can’t always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.
Wayne Dyer
We all want to succeed. When success doesn’t come, we tell ourselves stories about why that might be.
- I’m unlucky.
- The timing isn’t right.
- Other people have better connections.
- People like me who are ______ just don’t win.
- The market is overcrowded.
Most of these excuses are false. And you know it. Humans are really good at rationalising their failures and placing the blame elsewhere.
Be honest.
Whether you bottle it up or act it out, are you keeping yourself from the things you say you want?
Doubt Is The Only Certainty
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie
There’s something you want, but you doubt your ability to get it. Deep down, you don’t think you deserve it. Seeing someone else with what you want makes you envious, so you become hypercritical of yourself or that person, which both lead to bitterness and anger.
Criticism and envy are signposts to what you really want. Figure out precisely what that is, and you’re well on the way to getting it.
Success looks very different to each of us. If you envy the writer with a number one bestseller, what element of their success annoys you most? It could be critical acclaim, financial security, freedom to write all day rather than be employed, or even the fact that they look so damn happy in their photos. Why can’t you have that?
Use that feeling. You can have what they have if you master your self-doubt.
A certain amount of doubt is healthy but too much is paralysing. Start with your definition of success and make a plan to get there. Don’t let doubt stop you. It’s time to act.
Risky Business
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Shannon L. Alder
Do you order the same food from the same restaurant every time?
Do you try that new restaurant you drove past yesterday, or do you only visit places that others have given at least a 4.8 review rating?
Risk aversion keeps you locked in place ruminating over all the ways things can go wrong if you change. You follow the herd, even if the herd isn’t going your way.
Moving towards your dreams always entails risk. It might be more difficult than you thought. You might not make it. It might not look as good from the inside.
But what’s the alternative?
The only way you’ll know where your limits are is to push yourself further. You can’t reach a new level without taking a chance that you might fail. Don’t discount the possibility that you might succeed.
Focus on the chance of success and accept that you’ll probably have to try more than once. Failing forward is tough, but taking each failure as a lesson helps you build the resilience and feedback you need.
As Wayne Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Adjust your aim and keep swinging.
Stuck In A Rut
We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
It’s often said that change is the only constant in life. We can only navigate a hugely complex world by filtering, simplifying and making mental models.Even though we’re hard-wired to prefer novelty, we also resist change because of the strain it puts on our mental bandwidth. Add to that fear of the unknown, and we retreat into the familiar safety of the comfort zone.
Resisting change eats away at you because repressing emotion consumes more energy than expressing it. Imagine you’re punching something. Now imagine you pull that punch at the last minute. You use energy for forward motion and more energy for an equal reverse motion. Not only that, but denying the punch leads to anger and resentment because you don’t get the release you need.
All that energy expended, yet you’re stuck in the same rut, settling for less. It’s exhausting.
You know you need a change when you’re bored repeating the same routine, when you’ve stopped learning, when there’s less and less reward in your activities.
You also know when a situation is bad for you and you need to change it or leave.
When you’ve poured a great deal of time and energy into a job or relationship, change can feel like a waste of your investment. This sunk cost fallacy stops you from cutting your losses and leads to inertia, staying with something that has no hope of improvement. What is right for one time and place may not be right forever.
Face that growing feeling of discontent head on. Use your journal to uncover its source or talk it out with someone. Identifying the source is the first step to deciding what changes you need to make, and they may not be as extensive as you fear.
Unresolved conflict between what you have and what you want often transforms into anger that is directed towards the self in anxiety and low mood, or outwards into hostility and envy.
Find the courage to confront the possibility of change so that you control the process.
Busy Doing Nothing
We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.
Jim Rohn
I expect you’re a busy person, like everyone these days. But are you doing the things that matter even if they’re difficult, or giving in to distraction?
If you find yourself down a rabbit hole of Youtube videos after looking up a simple fact online, you’re not alone. But the resulting guilt and shame can be enough to derail you from your actual work. Procrastination can wear many faces, including filling your time with “worthy” activities like reading or research or reorganising the kitchen cupboards.
It’s not enough to be busy. You need to be productive, not merely occupied. Getting clear on the day’s priorities is the first step, and an ordered schedule will help you achieve that. Each Sunday, spend thirty minutes with your planner and set aside time in the coming week for must-do and want-to-do tasks.
Knowing what to do and when gets around having fifty things you could be doing bouncing around your head, but being unable to pick one and therefore doing none of them.
Like eating your broccoli before dessert, must-do items come first. If you’re a rewards person, finish the task before you have your cookie, ten minutes of social media or whatever.
If you’re prone to distraction, minimise it. Use one of many stripped down desktop apps so you focus. Leave your phone in another room. Research has shown that even if it is silenced, your smartphone still pulls your attention.
Can’t bear to get started? Does the task feel overwhelming? Use the Pomodoro technique to break it into ten or fifteen-minute chunks. If a task fills you with dread, get it out of the way and eat the frog first. Everything else will be easier by comparison.
Get on task, stay on task, and accomplish more with your time.
The Truth Is Out There
One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.
Abraham Maslow
You probably know someone who likes to consider their options carefully. They gather information, take opinions, and always think twice. They feel safer when they have more evidence.
Then there are people who make choices based on their feelings about them, good or bad. Often they are highly intuitive. Journaling becomes a sacred rite as they dig deeper and deeper into emotions.
Too much analysis leads to paralysis. Too much thinking about feelings is another route to procrastination. Faced with an overload of emotion, you might manage it by repression, distraction, or numbing. In any case, you get nothing done.
Deep thinking is a good thing — as long as it leads to action. At some point, you have to declare the thinking phase complete, draw up a shortlist of options, and then choose one.
A list of pros and cons is the simplest tool, and the act of writing them down clarifies your thoughts.
A simple scoring system can help you prioritise different options. For example, when buying a house, I had a list of essentials like location, number of bedrooms, and living space. The second list was for desirables like south facing and size of the garden. By allocating one to three points for each essential and one point for each desirable, I was able to compare houses with different features more easily.
If a house missed any essentials it was out of the running, no matter how lovely. Scoring helps to take some of the emotion from the equation, especially for big decisions. Making your lists forces you to be more objective, but there’s nothing to stop you allocating your points in any way that feels right.
If you’re considering a major decision like a job change or relocation, try visualisation. Imagine yourself in a future where you’ve stayed unchanged and not followed through. Do you feel regret or disappointment? That’s a clue that this change could be right for you.
Of course, you can’t see the future, but you can use a combination of techniques to make the best decision you can. Emotion allied to objectivity gives you the best of both worlds.
Get Out Of Your Own Way
Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.
Alyce Cornyn-Selby
Your inner roadblocks are expressed in different behaviours.
- self-doubt — envy
- risk aversion — following the herd
- resisting change — settling for less
- lack of discipline — procrastination
- overthinking — distraction/numbing
You might recognise yourself in any or all of the scenarios above. We’re only human and none of us is perfect, but naming the obstacle is the first step to overcoming it. Outer behaviours always reflect inner thinking, so mastering your internal dialogue will improve your chances of success.
Make better decisions, accept the risk of failure and do it anyway, and follow through with action.
(first published by Publishous on 17.7.19)
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