Feeling stuck is normal. If you’ve been working towards a goal or a vision of success and are frustrated with where you are at, don’t panic, you’re not alone. The most important thing is that you are recognizing that you want to take the next step to make your dreams a reality, and get yourself un-stuck
While there are a lot of reasons why you aren’t where you want to be, there are 4 common reasons that hold people back from leveling up.
What Does Success Look Like to You?
Before we jump into those reasons, I just want to clarify that success looks different for everyone. For one person success can mean having excess time to spend with friends and family, and for another, it can mean being promoted to a senior manager.
The first thing that needs to be done before you can truly relish in your achievements is that you need to define what success looks like for you. If you don’t do this, you might be striving for the wrong type of success. When you achieve a success that is not aligned with what you truly value, it won’t actually feel like a success.
Now without further ado, here are the four reasons you’re not achieving the success you desire.
You’re Not Reassuring Yourself
While this might not seem like the most important thing, learning how to reassure yourself is key to resilience.
When things get tough, being able to reassure yourself with positive self-talk and keeping top of mind why you’re doing what you’re doing is sometimes the only thing that can keep you going.
When you don’t know how to reassure yourself, negative thoughts, fears, and doubts can take over whenever there’s a setback. Paralyzing you from taking meaningful actions towards your goals. This might lead you to quit your dream or make your path towards success harder because you’re constantly fighting against yourself.
This happens often when we start a job search. When the first rejection comes in, so can a wave of negative thoughts about your abilities, your self-worth, etc. When you have an established practice of reassuring yourself, you can put these negative fear-based thoughts to rest, and operate from a place of abundance.
Learning to reassure yourself can help you move past setbacks and get closer to achieving your version of success.
Self-Sabotaging/ Not Taking Meaningful Action
This might be an uncomfortable one to think about because we want to think that we would never self-sabotage ourselves. Often times this is happening unconsciously, so it’s important to look at what actions you are actually taking, not just planning to take.
Have you broken down your goal into smaller manageable steps? or do you have the heavy feeling looming over you that you have a huge goal, but you’re not sure where to start to you procrastinate?
Are you saying yes to new opportunities, or actively seeking them out? Or do you talk yourself out of them?
Do you keep your deadlines with yourself? or continuously push them back?
Understanding what’s stopping you from taking meaningful action towards your goals takes being mindful of how you’re spending your time. Are you spending it doing things that will move you forward or are you stuck in your mind?
If you find that you are doing some self-sabotage, be kind to yourself. You are now aware of your setback and you can start to take action to adjust the behavior.
Lacking Confidence in Yourself
While we all want to project that we are confident in ourselves and our goals, it’s not always the easiest thing. Even when we have a great support system that is confident in you, it’s vital that you have confidence in yourself and what you’re doing.
This goes hand in hand with reassuring yourself and eliminating self-doubt. Truly having confidence in yourself and what you’re going to achieve will propel you forward.
This doesn’t mean you need to be loud about what you’re doing — unless that’s your vibe, then all the power to you! However, if that’s not your cup of tea it’s not a big deal. You don’t need to project your confidence out into every corner of the world, as long as you truly believe in yourself that’s all that matters.
Building up your confidence, and continually encouraging yourself as you move forward is one of the keys to long-term success.
Imposter Syndrome
Last but not least, is imposter syndrome. This encompasses parts of the other three reasons, but it’s really a whole universe to unravel of its own.
If you haven’t heard of Imposter Syndrome, it’s when you get the feeling that you are a fraud, unworthy, or a fake. This can happen in any situation like at work, parenting, or even playing a sport. This creeps in even when there is evidence that you do in fact deserve the role you have.
This feeling of being an imposter is more common than you might think. It’s been estimated that it has affected around 70% of people at one point or another in their careers.
It can stop us in our tracks if we don’t reign it in — amplifying all of the other reasons that are stopping you from the success you deserve. However complex and multi-faceted imposter syndrome can be, it is manageable and you can move past it.
Our mind is very powerful and likes to create stories that can either derail us or boost us forward. One of the ways that I like to reign in my imposter syndrome is to separate facts from feelings. First I write down the feelings, that I am having around my worthiness of a job or a career move (or whatever situation you are having imposter syndrome about), then I write down what fact-based evidence there is to back up these feelings. Often time’s it becomes clear that there is no real evidence to back up these feelings, rather it’s just more feelings that are fueled with self-doubt.
This is just one way to overcome imposter syndrome, there are many ways to move past it but all in all, the key is to make it clear to yourself that you are in fact worthy of the success you are after. This will allow you to move forward with ease, putting imposter syndrome in its place.
By bringing awareness to these 4 reasons that could be holding you back, you’ll be moving forward and making strides towards your version of success.
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