Taking action has been discovered to be, if not the ultimate, at least one of the top 5 principles for success. Even though we know that taking action is the right call, we still don’t take the steps necessary to achieve the results we are looking for. Today I want to dive into your mindset by asking the question: How bad do you want it?
From a mindset standpoint there are three main culprits that inhibit our success. Those inhibitors are fear, stories and complexity.
Fear is the most recognizable for us because it is immediate and more tangible than other mindset issues. We fear failure and in a peculiar way we fear success as well. The dichotomy between the two fears is mystifying and in some parts cruel. On the one hand we don’t want to be rejected so we fear putting ourselves out there. On the other hand what if we are accepted? Then what happens. Now I am scared because I am out in the open and exposed to criticism and scrutiny.
This reminds me of the high school guy who wants to ask a girl out but worries that she will say no. Then when he gets the nerve to ask and she says yes, it doesn’t get rid of the fear it just shifts to a set of new concerns. What if I am not interesting? What if she thinks I am a bad kisser? What if she laughs at my car?
Deeper than fear lies a much harder obstacle to spot and overcome. That obstacle is the stories that we create for our lives that if you were to really examine them just aren’t true. These stories are created by negative experiences that happen in our past that we then take on and use it to define us.
If you were an unpopular nerd in high school, you may still be holding onto some of the conversations around that experience and they may still be holding you back. You may think that people generally don’t like you. You may think that you aren’t suited to stand out or that you are not special. The reality is that when we step back and take a look at these stories, we realize that they aren’t true for us today and we need to release their hold on us.
Another issue that keeps us from taking action is the complexity that we create in our minds about a certain project. This happens to me when it comes to fixing things around my house. Recently I had a situation where my kitchen sink was leaking. It leaked for a few months and my solutions was to put a flower vase underneath the leak and empty it once a week. (This was not a favored move by my better half.)
The reason why I didn’t fix it is that I had told myself that I don’t know anything about plumbing and therefore would be unable to fix this problem. The reality was that when I finally dove in and looked at the problem, it was not nearly as hard as I made it out to be and was able to fix the problem in about 20 minutes time. I let the complexity get in the way of my taking action and in retrospect this was foolish. I wasted tons of time and worry with my band aid solution of the flower vase.
These are the mind set issues that keep us from doing the things we know we should be doing to achieve greater success. Take a look at these issues and ask yourself which of these applies to you. It really comes down to how bad you want it? Most of us wait until something bad happens before we make a positive change. Is that going to be your story too?