Welcome back!
If you haven’t achieved everything you want in life, then it’s quite possible that something is holding you back. And before you can move forward, you need to find out what, exactly is holding you back.
That’s what we’re going to start exploring, beginning with this lesson. First, you’ll get an overview of the many possibilities. That is, you’ll learn about some of the more common reasons and factors that keep people frozen in place, not moving ahead. In the coming lessons we’ll then examine each of these factors in more depth. Finally, you’ll discover how to overcome these various reasons, fears and other success-blocking factors.
Let me start with a warning…
You may glance down the list below and say to yourself, “none of this is relevant to me.” This could be denial. You may have such a deep-seated block in place that you may not even be aware of it! That’s why I ask you to read this list and the coming lessons, even if you don’t think the lesson refers to you.
What’s more, I’d like you to absorb this information with an open mind and without judgment. That’s because if you start judging a certain factor as “silly” or “stupid,” then you may not want to admit that this factor is hindering you. And if you can acknowledge it, then you can’t move past it.
So read on with an open mind and attitude of overcoming whatever is holding you back. Here then are some of the more common success blocks, reasons, and fears. Keep in mind that these are large categories of factors, and that you may be blocked by some or even all of these factors:
- Fear. This is a big one. And that’s because it encompasses all sorts of fears, including fear of success, fear of failure, fear of stepping out of one’s comfort zone… and many more. Because fears are so common – and very effective at holding people back – the next few lessons will examine fear.
- Depression. This can range from having the normal “blues” to having clinical depression. Because lack of motivation is a major symptom of clinical depression, it’s easy to see why depression can hold people back from achieving their goals.
- Bad health habits. This sounds simple, but poor health habits (such as eating the wrong foods and not getting enough sleep) can keep a person from achieving goals. That’s because poor health habits contribute to a lack of energy, lack of mental clarity and lack of focus, all of which are needed to achieve your goals.
- Getting burned out. If you try to take on too much, or if you’re leading a stressful life, you can simply burn out. This lowers productivity, motivation and your overall enthusiasm for a project.
- Goals not important any more. Sometimes you lose enthusiasm for a project, often because the goals just aren’t as important to you anymore. You need to re-evaluate your goals to see if they truly aren’t important any more… or if you’re just rationalizing so that you don’t feel guilty about not achieving your goals.
- Feeling overwhelmed. Finally, sometimes you have trouble moving forward simply because you feel completely overwhelmed. You’re not sure what step to take first. You may not even be sure if you’re working on the right goal. This may be a symptom of fear… or you could have just created a goal that was too ambitious. That doesn’t mean you need to scale it back, but you may need to set goals for smaller milestones.
That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll find out if fear is blocking your success, so stay tuned!