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Mindset
Find A Catalyst That Will Motivate And Inspire You
Find A Catalyst That Will Motivate And Inspire You
A catalyst can be something that you experience – such as an event, or it can be words spoken by another person, or a book or a movie that causes you to alter your life in some way.
Some catalysts are simple – such as a man who gets fired because he’s always late. Losing the job can be a catalyst for that man to make sure he gets to his next job on time or find a job that gives him so much personal satisfaction, he never wants to let his company down.
The event of getting fired, often at an inopportune time, caused him to make a change in how he acts in life. Change is hard. It’s easier to do what you’ve always done because there’s comfort in familiarity.
Leaving your comfort zone thrusts you into new situations and forces you to deal with new ideas and new ways of handling various aspects of life. It’s scary and no one wants to go through it voluntarily.
If you were to take a survey of random strangers and ask them, “Are you happy with your life?” you would get more no answers than you would yes ones. There are a lot of people who aren’t happy with their lives.
They don’t like their personal life or their professional life – and they don’t like how they act sometimes. Yet day in and day out, they don’t do anything to change any of that.
Some people don’t know how to change it. They don’t understand how they can find a catalyst to motivate and inspire themselves toward the kind of life they want.
Sometimes a catalyst enters your life, and you’re too focused on the ordinary, that you miss it completely. You may have to train yourself to watch for opportunities if you want to raise yourself to a higher level of success and happiness.
Change Begins And Ends With You
If you take the time to look over your life at this moment, what would you think about it? Think about the people in your life – those who you’re in an intimate relationship with.
Is it everything you wanted it to be and hoped it could be? What about where you are financially in life? Does where you stand right now with your finances make you wish things were different?
Does it create a hunger within you to have more? To be wiser about your finances? What about your job? This is an area where a lot of people are absolutely miserable.
Yet, they stay in that job year after year getting older and even more miserable. If you dislike any area of your life because it simply isn’t satisfying, you but you stick with it anyway, it means that you’ve settled.
You’ve given up on the idea that there could be more – that you deserve more or that changing things is even worth the effort. If you dislike an area of your life now, but you don’t change anything about it, you will still dislike that area of your life three months, six months, or a year down the road.
You will have lost time and you will have missed the opportunity to make changes during that timeframe. If you want more out of life – if you feel that you should have more – and the unhappiness with your life sits like a rock in the pit of your stomach, then you need to take steps to make changes.
Physical signs like that are always indicators that something isn’t the way you want it to be – that it needs to be addressed. And ignoring these physical signs can lead to emotional complications as the stress of the matter weighs heavily on you.
Remaining where you are in a life you’re not happy with will lead to feelings of depression, sadness, and resignation. That hole inside of you that aches for something more, for something better will never be filled.
That’s not what you deserve. It’s not what anyone deserves. Life is not meant to be something that’s just endured. It’s meant to be lived with excitement because it’s an adventure if you decide that it is.
Roadblocks That Get In The Way Of Motivation
Though people are all different, we all have one thing in common – roadblocks that get in the way of what we really want from life. Roadblocks stop some people from ever making a change, but they motivate others to keep on going to find a way to what they want, regardless of the roadblock.
You might have one of these roadblocks or you might experience more than one of them. A major roadblock to change is fear. When things change, it ushers in differences that can make us afraid.
We’re afraid to leave behind the bad job for fear we won’t like the new one – fear that we might not fit in as well. Remember though, that one of the acronyms for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.
Your fears are usually based on what if myths – and they almost always never come to pass. Don’t let fear cause you to sit on the sidelines of change. Another roadblock that gets in the way is a lack of knowledge.
It’s hard to make changes when you’re not sure exactly how to go about those changes. You might be branching out into an area that’s completely beyond your scope of knowledge at the present time.
Remember that what you don’t know can be learned. Use educational resources as your catalyst for change and success. Strive for new levels of insight that you previously didn’t have.
Thinking that you simply can’t add another thing to your already full life keeps many people stuck where they are. Making changes requires work. So many people see the effort as not worth the payoff – and that’s a mistake.
This belief is what keeps you rooted to that job that you hate, to those messy finances, or to that relationship that’s sucking the life right out of you. Learning better time management skills can be a catalyst for a better life as you clear out things that are a waste of time and make room for what offers the most benefits.
Being just comfortable enough where you are can be a roadblock to motivate you to change. You’re not 100% happy, but you’re “happy enough.” All this means is that you settled for a life that keeps you locked in your comfort zone.
You’re trading a full life for one that’s half empty – because if you’re not 100% satisfied, then something is missing. That something may be the very thing that you always wanted, but because you were “happy enough,” you’ll never reach it.
Visualization can be a catalyst for the changes you need to make. Picture the next level of success in every area of your life – finances, career satisfaction, relationships, health – everything that matters most to you.
Focus on how it could be improved and then make a game plan to get you there. If you block out those thoughts in an effort to stay content, you’ll never know what you could have made of your life if you’d give it a chance.
Wanting everything to be perfect is a huge roadblock to motivation. It’s here where people stall out. They want the new situation to be perfect before they attempt any changes.
They want the new job to have everything in place. They don’t want to take the chance that they’ll make a switch and find it’s not what they wanted. These are people who wait for the “perfect” relationship before getting into one.
Perfectionism is the killer of change because what you see in your mind as perfection doesn’t translate that way in life. That’s because there are no perfect scenarios in a life that’s lived to the fullest.
There are experiences to encounter – and not one of them will be perfect. That’s okay. Perfectionism kills progress. You don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines waiting to get into the game of life.
The number one roadblock that keeps too many people from letting a catalyst be their motivation is the fear of failure. They falsely believe that they haven’t failed yet because they haven’t even tried – so they’re safe.
But whether they realize it or not, they have failed. They’re choosing to stay stagnant in a lesser life than what they dreamed of. That, in itself, is a form of failure.
Another roadblock happens when people wait for change rather than seeking change. They wait for the perfect joint venture partner to come to them instead of seeking one out, because that requires putting themselves on the line.
They wait to see if the person they’re in a relationship with is going to treat them better, rather than speaking up about what they want and deserve. They avoid tough situations and tough conversations because they’re waiting for everything to work out on its own.
Change isn’t something that happens on a whim. It’s something that you make happen. You must find the motivation within yourself to make that change. And it’s uncomfortable at first.
That’s okay. Take that sign of discomfort as a compliment. It’s proving to you that you’re taking action and bettering your life, even in the face of fear or uneasiness.
Your Mind Can Be A Catalyst
You get the life that you think you deserve. Your mind or your thought patterns lead you to make changes – to take action that alters the life you currently have.
What usually happens when someone’s mind leads them to take action is they become so upset with their current situation, they think leaving it where it’s at is no longer an option.
Their emotions will often reach a point that they must make a change. This drive can often start out backed by an emotion. For example, if someone is in a relationship with a person who didn’t treat them that well, they’ll often stick with the relationship until a catalyst fueled by emotion causes a change.
One emotion could be anger. If the person you’re in a relationship with is unfaithful, it’s often anger over the cheating that drives the catalyst – even when the prior bad behavior didn’t induce a change.
Your subconscious knows what you truly want. What happens is this true desire becomes buried deep under what we’re willing to settle for. This is why so many people aren’t living a life full of passion.
You can tell if you’re living a life full of passion by asking yourself this question. Do I love getting out of bed in the morning? If you’re not excited about what you get to do when you get out of bed, that’s a warning sign that you need to find your catalyst.
Whatever it is that motivates you is what will drive you to wake up, ready to start and excel throughout your day. It will drive you to keep going in the face of obstacles.
You’ll continue on – even if you’re the only one who believes in you, or your idea or your change. That’s why it’s vital to your success – to your ability to thrive – that you get in a business that you have a strong emotional attachment to – something you are proud of and believe in strongly.
Face The Hard Truth About What’s Keeping You Stuck
Did you ever hear of someone who had a terrible health scare because they made bad choices in life that led to the issue? It shook them up – and for awhile, they strictly followed the doctor’s orders.
They ate right. They exercised. They got the amount of sleep that they needed. They quit smoking. They quit drinking. Yet before several months were out, they slipped right back into their old habits.
The catalyst, which was the health scare, came face to face with personal responsibility – and lost. The hard truth is that for your catalyst to motivate you, you’re going to have to accept personal responsibility.
The choices that you make in life are your choices. You made them because you thought they were the best option at the time. You might have received bad advice that led you to a decision – but in the end, you were the one that made that choice.
You must accept personal responsibility for what you want to see changed in your life before it can change. People who place the blame on others for their lot in life don’t ever reach a place where they’re truly happy – regardless of the changes.
That’s because they see life as happening to them rather than them making life happen. Accept the responsibility for your mistakes, for your poor choices, for that awful job you shouldn’t have taken, or for that relationship that was a mess from the start that you wasted too much time on.
Once you accept it, you can move on. You can free yourself to finally accept the catalyst for change. Don’t let where you were be a stone around your neck that anchors you to the place where you currently are.
Let the mistakes you made in the past become part of your motivation – part of your growing experience. While growth is hard, all good things happen with the evolution to a different place in life.
5 Ways You Can Find Your Catalyst
Knowing that you want your life to change requires that you take stock of your life. It means that you must examine every area and look at what’s not been working to make you feel the inner satisfaction that you’d like to have.
The first way that you can find your catalyst is to understand the things in your life that matter to you. Your catalyst for motivation won’t be the same as someone else’s.
While what matters to one person may be an expensive house, that might not matter to you. Your priority might be financial security for your retirement, or more time to spend with your loved ones.
If having time to do what you want to do with creative work is what matters to you, then your catalyst will be whatever action gives you the chance to free your inner artist.
This may be something as simple as cutting back on hours with work or finding a different job. It might be the catalyst of taking an art or a writing class. Whatever it is should be something that you truly desire – something that you feel your life would be lacking if you didn’t have it.
The second way is to accept that you’re going to have to change things to get what matters to you. Many people are willing to acknowledge what matters to them, but then they balk at the change.
You won’t get what matters to you without change. It’s like losing weight. You can’t shed pounds if you stay sedentary, eating copious amounts of calories. You must be mindful of your movement and intake.
The third way to find your catalyst is to give it the opportunity to happen. For example, if you want to start your own business, but your personal and professional life doesn’t leave you with room to learn about business development or to increase your talents, then something has to give.
You must make room to let the change in. Maybe that means spending a little time after work on the weekdays or on the weekends to educate yourself. It’s a temporary sacrifice for a long-term benefit.
The fourth way to find your catalyst is to make it concrete. Write it down. Share it with others. Find a mentor. Don’t allow this change you want to remain nothing more than a desire.
By naming it, you’re taking a step toward making it your future reality. Claim what it is that you want for your life. Then make a formidable plan to go after it, step-by-step.
The fifth way is to not let the size of the change throw you off your goal. Some changes that people want to make really are pretty big. Changes like moving from your home to live in another country because it’s what you’ve always wanted is a huge change.
You wouldn’t want to pack up overnight and head out the next morning. You can’t throw away personal responsibility when a catalyst happens. What you must do is focus on the things you need to do to reach that change sensibly.
If your goal is moving to another country, you would want to find a place to live and secure a way to support yourself financially before taking the leap. Those are action steps that you can take that lead to the big change.
Small change is what equals big change, and it gets you closer to where you want to be in life. Think about how often you’ve just accepted your fate – your lot in life.
Have you ever made an action plan to get to a better place? To have more peaceful relationships by setting boundaries. To feel the thrill of waking up each morning, ready to lead a niche that excites you?
If you’ve been watching time pass by, waiting for a bolt of lightening, consider this day your wake up call. It’s time to embrace every catalyst you encounter so that years down the road, you’re not still stuck in the mud wondering why life passed you by.
As you probably already know, having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to make a change in your life, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 😊
Reduce Burnout In 4 Simple Steps
Reduce Burnout In 4 Simple Steps
Burnout is a very real problem that affects millions of people all around the globe. This is especially true for entrepreneurs who are trying to build a business on the side while still working a day job.
Not only do they need to meet deadlines at work, but they also need to burn the candle at both ends when they get home, just so that their business can progress. Over and above that, they have family commitments, chores, bills, and a multitude of other life demands to handle.
It can be too much to bear and many people break down before they make a breakthrough.
The common signs of burnout are:
- Chronic stress
- Insomnia
- Physical manifestations of stress such as chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, etc.
- Anxiety
- Loss of appetite
- Depression
And so on. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here. Sometimes life can deal you a tough hand. The good news is that there are ways to cope with burnout.
Step 1: Make A List
This is the first and most important step. Put it ALL down on paper so that you don’t have a thousand and one things floating around your head and sapping your energy.
The list of tasks you have should bring about clarity. Now you’ll need to sort them out into 3 categories: Urgent, Important, Others
The first thing you’ll need to do is get the urgent stuff done and out of the way. The rest can wait. Once your level of urgency is reduced, you’ll be able to breathe.
Now focus on the important stuff while checking off one task from the ‘Others’ list daily. The items in the ‘Others’ category could be household chores, catching up with a friend, etc.
Step 2: Make Time To De-Stress
There’s no right or wrong answer here because different people do it differently. Some people meditate, some do yoga and some hit the punching bag.
What matters here is that the activity needs to give you some release from your pent up frustration.
If riding a roller coaster or swimming at the beach does that for you, then that’s what you need to do. Don’t struggle with yoga just because the books tell you to do that.
Step 3: Create A Schedule
Achieving work-life balance is a juggling act… and just like any good juggling act, there is a pattern involved. Your schedule is a pattern or a routine.
Call it whatever you want, but just know that you need one. Decide what time you’ll wake, how long you’ll spend working, what time you’ll stop work, when your leisure hours start, what time you’ll exercise, when you’ll sleep and so on.
When you have a routine, you’ll have less decision fatigue. It’s easier to follow structure and contrary to popular belief, structure gives you more freedom than trying to wing your day haphazardly.
Step 4: Be Proactive And Overcome Inertia
The best way to beat burnout is to take an active interest in changing things up. Since what you’ve done so far has only caused you burnout, it’s time for new measures. (Apply the 3 steps above.)
It’s very easy to sink into a state of depression where you want to do nothing and nothing interests you. When you stay in this stage for too long, you’ll be in a state of inertia and it’ll require Herculean effort on your part to get back on track.
The key to breaking inertia will be to start engaging in new activities/routine slowly. Initially, it’s best to get started with slow, progressive steps.
Once you gain some momentum, then you can accelerate over the next couple of weeks until you’re roaring and tearing up the track.
By applying the 4 tips above, you’ll be able to cope with burnout and reclaim your life. It’s never going to get easier. You’ll just need to get stronger and smarter.
Once you understand this, you’ll accept the challenges of the journey and do what it takes to reach your destination.
Adopting A Proactive Approach To Mitigate Compounded Stress In Your Life
Nobody reaches breaking point overnight unless it involves the death of someone close to them. For most other situations where you’re stressed out because of work or a cumulation of multiple issues – it always takes time to reach your breaking point.
There are signs all along the way to alert you to what’s building up. Very often, we neglect these signs and carry on until we reach ‘boiling point’ and feel like we’re going to explode.
Stress builds up. The key to prevent this from happening is to be proactive at mitigating it. Here’s what you need to do.
Is Everything Going Wrong?
You must assess the situation. In most cases, it’s usually less dire than it appears to be. We often tend to amplify worst case scenarios in our imagination and act as if these situations have come to pass.
Make a list of exactly what is stressing you out. Is it the bills? Or your weight? Work commitments? The car? The spouse? The kids?
Once you list all the triggers for your stress, now you have it all on paper to refer to. It’s important to get out of your own head.
What’s Within Your Control?
Look at the list you have. Which are the problems that’s within your control. If it’s the bills, then you need to pay them off. As difficult as this may be depending on your financial situation, there are still solutions to this problem.
However, if the company you’re working for is suffering losses and you’re worried that you may be retrenched, this situation is out of your control. You’ll need to stop worrying and start making plans for what you’d do should you be let go from your job.
Focus on the problems that you can solve and mentally detach from those that are out of your control. Worry doesn’t take away tomorrow’s problems, it takes away today’s peace.
What Do You Need To Do?
Once you know what you can control, then you need to make a plan to do something about it. If it’s the bills, then call up your debtors and structure a payment plan that’s within your ability. At least you’re making an effort and that does buy goodwill with those you owe.
If it’s your health, then make a diet plan and change your diet gradually. Move more and exercise daily. It’s all within your reach. You don’t need to do a lot at once. A little daily will add up to massive changes over time.
Just get started chipping away at your problems and you’ll feel better because you know these problems are going to be resolved.
Urgency vs Importance
Always get the urgent tasks done first. You don’t want them bouncing around in your thoughts constantly. Get them out of the way no matter how difficult or uncomfortable they may seem.
Once you’re done, you’ll feel an immense sense of relieve and less energy needs to be expended thinking about them.
You can then move on to the important tasks.
Delineate… Delegate… Discard
To reduce, you must be clear about what’s bothering you. This is delineation. Write it down and assess the situation thoroughly.
Do what you can and delegate what you can’t. If the chores are too overwhelming, get your spouse or kids involved and share the chores out. Everybody does their share and you’ll not be biting off more than you can chew.
Discard what you’re worrying about but have no control over. If you’re religious, spend time in prayer and let God move in his mysterious ways.
If you’re not religious, focus on what you can do and let what’s beyond your sphere of control sort themselves out, while you hope for the best.
Once you take a proactive approach towards stress instead of a reactive approach, you’ll be able to take back control of your life and bring about balance in it.
Achieving personal satisfaction in your life is not about avoiding stress completely. The kite rises against the wind. So, for you to progress and achieve satisfaction in your life you have to encounter stress. However, you do not need to be buried in it.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
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Is Your Creative Flow Being Distracted By Seeking Perfection?
Is Your Creative Flow Being Distracted By Seeking Perfection?
You always want to strive to do the best work that you can. No matter what it is that you’re doing, do it to the best of your ability. These are good concepts to live by, but often times they can be misinterpreted.
Phrases like “to the best of your ability” and “the best work that you can” don’t mean that what you’re doing has to be perfect, but rather as good as you can get it. If you’re allowing perfectionism to pull you off track, it can seriously halt your progress and have some rather adverse effects on you.
Perfectionism is essentially a state of mind in which you start to pick out every small flaw in your work, stemming from a desire for the project to be perfect. This is an entirely unrealistic goal, and the more time you spend trying to get it to be perfect, the worse it’s going to get.
The greatest masterpieces in the world have their flaws, and there is not one thing that is perfect. By striving for something unattainable, you could work for years to try to get something exactly right, and still be unsatisfied with it.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put any effort into it, but give it your best shot without going overboard. If it takes a few days, that’s fine, but once it starts to get into a few months of work with no progress, you’re going overboard.
While there is the danger of you wasting too much time chasing after perfection, there’s also the negative mental aspects. If you’re consistently dissatisfied with your work, you’re going to end up feeling pretty bad about yourself.
You might think you’re bad at your job or that you’re not putting in enough work, and it’ll only be detrimental to you. Instead of second guessing yourself and wasting time, produce something that’s satisfactory to your standards and be proud of that alone.
There’s no reason that you should overexert yourself just because you think something’s good, but it could be a tiny bit better. At some point, even if you were to reach a point very close to perfection, it would come with what’s known as diminishing returns.
If it takes you five hours to produce something that your client is happy with, but it takes you years to produce something that’s slightly better, but close to perfect, then the difference is negligible. You will have spent far more time doing it, making that work not worth doing in the first place.
Know The Difference Between Beneficial Distractions And Saboteurs
It’s true that some distractions can be beneficial to your creativity. Getting immersed in something that’s related to your creative work or doing something that lets your mind wander can help you be more creative and can often result in some better ideas.
This isn’t always the case, though, and you need to be able to distinguish the difference between distractions that are actually benefiting you and distractions that are holding you back from working as you need to.
For example, if you’re writing a science fiction novel, and you’re running out of ideas, it could be beneficial to watch some science fiction shows with the pretence that you’re trying to come up with new ideas.
It can help inspire you and show you things that you hadn’t thought of before. In this case, the distraction is beneficial. It helps you gather new ideas and gives you a bit of inspiration that you can channel into your work.
However, if your job is to come up with a more efficient system for your job, then a science fiction show isn’t really going to be that great of a diversion. Instead, it’s just going to eat up your time and make you less focused on the task at hand.
Distractions that have nothing to do with what you’re doing are often not that helpful, but that’s not always the case. If you were trying to come up with a new logo for a company and you were sitting outside letting your mind wander, that might not have anything to do with the logo directly, but it can still be a good way to open up your mind to new possibilities.
In this case, even though it’s not related to your work, it can still be pretty useful. One method of determining whether or not a distraction is beneficial to you is to keep a sort of distraction journal.
Log the amount of time you spent with each distraction and make note of how many quality ideas actually came out of that time you spent. If you spent 3 hours watching a show and only came up with one decent idea, it’s probably not that worth it and is just eating up your time.
If one hour spent outside produced three or four decent ideas, however, that’s a different story. At that point, that could be a worthwhile distraction that’s actually helping benefit you relative to the amount of time you spent on it.
Recognize When Your Creativity Has Got Out Of Control
Creativity is something to be admired and cherished, because it can be so incredibly helpful for you. It can give you new ways to do things, new ideas for projects, and bring a lot of light into your life.
However, there is such a thing as being too creative. You need to find a balance between creativity and actual implementation in order for those dreams and ideas to come to life.
You can spend your time 24/7 daydreaming, and during that time you will no doubt come up with some great fascinating ideas. The problem is, it’s almost irrelevant how good an idea is if it’s not put into action.
If you have an idea that would work well, but you don’t implement it, then you’re just wasting your creativity. You should use focus and hard work in conjunction with creativity so that you can actually benefit from your creative work.
Implementing your creativity is tedious work, and it often requires a lot of focus and dedicated effort. If you’re more creatively inclined, this will be more of a hassle for you, but it will be well worth it if you’re coming up with quality ideas.
There’s a certain feeling of happiness that comes with watching something that you dreamt up actually take shape and become a successful idea. It just means you’re going to have to take some time to get it there.
You might be concerned that stopping your creativity to work for extended periods of time will hinder your creativity, but that’s not exactly true.
First, it means that your creative dreams won’t just go on to die out, but rather they’ll actually come to fruition and mean something rather than just staying an idea forever.
Additionally, you may be surprised to find that you can actually become more creative after a break. If you’re constantly using creativity, you may become burned out after a little while.
Taking a bit of a break to work normally can reinvigorate you when you get back to it, making you even more creative than you were before. It’s important to balance hard, boring work and creativity as much as possible.
Strictly doing either one will lead to some negative consequences. All work makes you less creative and you’ll start to get repetitive, while all creativity doesn’t really give you much to work with if you’re not putting things into action.
As you can appreciate, a lot of this is dependent on the way you think and if you want to know more about developing a good mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
How To Overcome Fear Of Change
How To Overcome Fear Of Change
Someone once said that death and taxes are the only two unavoidable things in life. They got it wrong – they forgot to add change. The third one is unavoidable. Nothing in life stays the same because change is an inevitable part of any natural cycle.
We’re often taken unawares by change and shocked when it happens. We’re afraid of it and resist it vehemently because we fear the unknown.
How It Holds You Back
A good example to illustrate this type of fear is technology. It’s become an integral part of our lives and most people are comfortable using it. In fact, some people are unable to function without it.
However, there are others who resist it. They insist on using traditional tools like notebooks and ledgers, paper invoices and manual accounting. They know the bare basics of computers and cell phones but just aren’t interested in upping their tech skills.
People who don’t like technology are in fact resisting change, in this case, our increasing dependence on technology. They regard this change as a total upheaval of the familiar lifestyle that they’re comfortable with.
A person who fears change isn’t likely to advance in their career with poor technical skills. In a world where digital tools make so many processes faster and easier, their productivity will suffer drastically.
Change can often be good and even life-changing if you’re able to look beyond your fear of it. High achievers and great people embrace change and see it as a challenge. For them, change is an opportunity to grow and achieve bigger successes. That’s what makes great people great!
The fear of change is linked to fear of the unknown and the unknown signifies risk. Risk, as we discussed earlier, links to survival. Therefore, the fear of change is sometimes very strong, especially in times of political or economic turmoil.
Action Steps
Here are a couple of quick action steps you can take to stop fear of change from holding you back.
Try New Things
Engaging in experiences that are new to you helps you become more accepting of change. It trains your mind to process that the unknown isn’t always bad. In fact, it can be amazingly fun and stimulating. You also have full control over what you choose to try.
This conditions your mind to be more comfortable with change. The key is to engage in new and different experiences like traveling abroad, which allows you to experience different cultures and engage with different people.
Trying new cuisine, learning a new language, or taking a class also helps ease your fear of change. The point is that what you choose to try should be something completely new to you, so, get creative! Make the rounds of your local ethnic restaurants, take a martial arts class, or sign up for singing lessons. As long as it’s something totally new, it’ll work.
Get Uncomfortable Once In A While
Next, up the level of trying new things by doing what makes you uncomfortable. Public speaking is a great example of this. For most people, giving a presentation or speaking in front of an audience is as uncomfortable as it can get! That’s the whole point of this exercise.
Another example is having a conversation with a particularly obnoxious person such as a chronic complainer or cynical hatemonger – and staying calm and collected. Attending a church service if you’re non-religious can be very uncomfortable as well.
Trying things that scare you also falls into this category. A wild roller-coaster ride or bungee jumping, deep-sea diving… we all have certain things we’ve never considered doing because they frighten us. Even trying them once will go a long way towards breaking your fear of change.
Overcoming your fears can be very liberating but is often difficult, and one of the most difficult of these is the dreaded fear of rejection, because nobody wants to be rejected and laughed at do they?
Fear Of Rejection/Ridicule
This fear is related to emotional pain and trauma. For some of us, it has its roots in childhood, where we experienced some form of abuse or bullying. These types of experiences and the negative emotions associated with them are often repressed. They continue to fester inside, causing fear of rejection or ridicule.
How it holds you back
One of the most dangerous consequences of this fear is that we can become obsessed with seeking approval. As a result, we may stifle our individuality and personal opinions to ‘conform’ or ‘fit in’. This could be very detrimental to personal growth and creativity.
Even worse, the desire to avoid ridicule or rejection can drive us to compromise our values and beliefs. In other words, we sell ourselves out. What’s more, we know it and feel terrible about it. This can lead to self-hate, one of the most toxic emotions of all.
Action Steps
Here are a couple of quick action steps you can take to stop fear of rejection from holding you back. Overcoming this fear will be a major step forward in your life.
Surround Yourself With The Right People
These are family members, friends and colleagues who totally love and accept you as you are. They see all your brilliant qualities and are generous with encouragement and support.
Surround yourself with as many of these people as you can. They’ll give you the confidence and self-worth to deal with criticism and rejection and accept that you just can’t please everyone.
Stand Up For Something You Believe In
Find a cause that you’re passionate about such as the environmental crisis, world hunger or animal rights. Educate yourself on the topic and join an advocacy group.
Speak about your cause to others and try to enlist their efforts. This applies to your political, religious, and moral convictions as well.
You don’t necessarily need to advertise them to all and sundry but don’t be afraid to speak up and defend them with courage and conviction.
Overcoming this fear can have a big impact on how you live your life, and what you can achieve, so it is well worth trying to conquer this.
And remember, nobody can make you feel rejected without your permission; you can reframe these occasions and nip the feeling of rejection in the bud.
Let’s look at one more fear that may be holding you back from living the life you want.
Fear Of Responsibility
The fear of responsibility is directly related to the fear of failure and the fear of risk. Some people also fear responsibility because they don’t like to be held accountable for their actions. They prefer to blame others rather than honestly confront themselves.
How it holds you back
This fear can hold you back professionally because you gain a reputation as someone who shuns responsibility and therefore, has no commitment or dedication to their career.
Taking full responsibility is the mark of leaders and high achievers. They hold themselves fully accountable for their actions and the outcomes of their decisions. They quickly jump in to fix mistakes and address emergency situations rather than waste time blaming themselves or others.
In your personal life, the fear of responsibility can be extremely detrimental to relationships. You may delay important decisions like marriage or starting a family. You may experience a painful breakup or lose potential partners because you’re seen as someone who shuns commitment.
Action steps
Here are a couple of quick action steps you can take to stop fear of rejection from holding you back.
Fix Your Flaws
Train yourself to become more responsible by honestly identifying your flaws and reflecting on them. You may tend to interrupt others in conversation or not listen actively. You may tend to gossip. You could be holding yourself back by seeing yourself as the perpetual victim.
We all have personal flaws that we can work on to improve. Whatever your own may be, make the intention to fix them and become a better person. In the process, you’ll realize that taking responsibility feels great!
Learn To Apologize
People who fear responsibility often find it hard to apologize for their mistakes. Commit to apologizing when you make a mistake or feel that you’ve offended someone.
Any simple apology will do. For example, “I’m sorry if that sounded rude, I didn’t mean it to be” or “I’m sorry for not responding to your email promptly but I was having a hectic day.”
There’ll be opportunities every day to make an apology so take advantage of them as often as you can.
Don’t worry, it gets easier over time. And again, you’ll feel great about having the integrity and honesty to admit you were wrong.
Make Promises And Keep Them
Never commit to something unless you can keep your commitment. This is an integral part of learning to take responsibility.
Failing to follow through with promises is the quickest way to lose respect or even important people in your life.
Stop Blaming Others
Don’t take the easy way out by blaming others, even if they are wrong. Stay alert to this negative reaction because quite simply, it’s not going to fix anything.
When something goes wrong, ditch the blame game and look for ways to set things right. If you feel that someone needs to be made aware of a mistake, you can explain to them later what they did wrong and how they can avoid it the next time around.
Likewise, stay alert to your feelings of perpetual victimhood. Be brutally honest with yourself because you know that the world isn’t out to get you.
If you are being treated unfairly or victimized in some way, only you can change that. Own up to the fact that you can take control of your life and change any negative situation.
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
7 Life-Wrecking Dangers Of Procrastination
7 Life-Wrecking Dangers Of Procrastination
Putting things off from time to time may not cause too many problems in your life. On the other hand, chronic procrastination can consistently jack up your stress levels. It lowers your self-esteem and can cause severe mental and physical health problems.
The negative effects of procrastination can range from something as simple as missing a deadline on an important task, or it can be something more long-term, such as a missed opportunity that kills a dream.
Some of us may be lucky enough to identify our procrastination habit in time and may be able do something about it.
For others, it can have long-lasting effects that resonate throughout their lives.
The reasons that people procrastinate can be incredibly varied and they may not always obvious. Sometimes, it is a hidden fear that we don’t want to acknowledge, or it could be simply not wanting to do something because it just doesn’t motivate us.
Here are 7 life-wrecking dangers of procrastinating you should remember the next time you are thinking about delaying some action or task you know you need to be doing today.
1 – You Lose Valuable Time
Odds are you already feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day. Why procrastinate and make the situation even worse? The most fleeting and valuable commodity you have is time. It can’t be replaced.
Procrastinators often look up with deadlines staring them in the face at the last minute and think, “Where did all the time go?”
When you have to fly around at the last minute trying to cram a few days’ worth of work into a few hours because you’ve been procrastinating, you realize that you’ve wasted precious time that you can’t get back.
2 – You Miss Out On Valuable Opportunities
Any time you do one thing, you are costing yourself the opportunity to do something else. Putting things off until later, when later finally arrives and you absolutely must take action, doesn’t allow you to be free in case a wonderful opportunity arises.
Procrastination doesn’t allow you to answer when opportunity knocks.
3 – You Never Realize Your Full Potential
Studies show that if you procrastinate once, you’ll do it twice. Procrastinate a couple of times, and you begin to plan procrastination into your regular routine.
The people who create their dream realities make effective use of their time.
When you waste time and put things off, the results you finally achieve are watered down and rushed.
Everyone has incredible potential inside them, and when you lazily and continually “wait till later”, you kill your inner desire to better yourself in one way or another.
This means you rob yourself of living the greatest and most fulfilled life that you possibly can.
4 – You Sabotage Your Career And Relationships
Procrastination is the enemy of efficiency and productivity. When you put things off in the workplace, you kill your chances of advancement. You might even get fired.
When you consistently procrastinate in a relationship, you’re telling the important people in your life that you simply don’t care. This means you run the risk of damaging, or even permanently ruining, relationships that are important to you.
5 – You Crush Your Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem and procrastination are comfortable bedfellows. When you put things off and put things off until you have to rush around at the end and get them done, you feel bad about yourself.
You wonder, “Why can’t I just do what I need to do?” You ask yourself, “Why can’t I take action in the pursuit of things that are so important to me?”
This leads to thoughts that you deserve failure, since you must obviously are programmed for poor performance and a lack of motivation. This low level of self-belief and self-esteem leads to more procrastination, and a very unhealthy mental cycle develops.
Negative emotions like self-hatred and self-doubt create stress, and stress is at the cornerstone of all chronic disease. It is in this way that …
6 – Not Meeting Goals
Procrastination seems to become a major issue when we start to think about setting goals or wanting to achieve or change something.
Don’t get me wrong; you really may have a strong desire to change, but you just find it impossible to take that vital first step.
This can be incredibly confusing and frustrating; you might find yourself thinking, “Why is it so difficult to go for something that I know I want so badly?” Only you can answer that; you’ll have to explore a little deeper to try to find out why you are resisting and effectively sabotaging your own personal growth.
We set goals because we want to have a better life, and these can be business, career, relationship type goals. If you don’t even attempt to reach these goals because of procrastination, you reduce the possibility to better your life.
You need to find what the root cause is behind your procrastination, especially if it’s preventing you from achieving your goals, or you may never attain them and you may be losing out on some of what life has to offer you.
7 – Procrastination Can Quite Literally Kill You
You may think that statement is a little harsh or “over-the-top”. Actually, it isn’t. People who procrastinate constantly make poor decisions. You put off going to that doctor’s appointment, justifying your decision by saying that you probably won’t be able to afford his bill.
You find excuses for putting off exercising all the time. You know you should eat better, but you can always start your new diet tomorrow.
Aside from the poor mental health that comes from a lack of self-esteem, procrastination can lead to physical health problems that have serious consequences.
Stress is related to the top preventable causes of death. Procrastination is a powerful stress booster. Put off taking care of your physical health for years, and you increase the odds that you’ll die from a serious illness or disease.
Stop procrastinating. It’s a killer, a job and relationship wrecker. Putting off important tasks and responsibilities leads to so many negative results. Chronic procrastination can make it virtually impossible to live a life of fulfillment and success.
And remember, one way to beat procrastination is to stay focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
