4 Things That Are Certain to Hold You Back in Life (Are You Guilty of Any?)

 

We all like to blame something when life isn't going the way we want it to; our friends, the weather, our boss, our family, the economy... there are a million things we like to blame. But what tends to hold us back in life is ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. When we conquer ourselves everything that we want in life all of a sudden becomes much more attainable.

Regret

Everyone looks back at one point or another at their life and wishes that they had done something differently, "I wish I had asked that girl out," "I should have started my own business," "If only I went to college," "I wish I spent more time with my kids." We believe that if we did these things, our life could have turned out differently and for the better.

I'm not going to tell you that your life would have turned out exactly the same way whether you did these things or not. But what I am going to tell you is that the longer you think about the past, the longer it will take for you to forget and move on.

The past has happened so there is no use thinking about it. We can't change it however much we would like to. What we can do is however is decide to move on. As soon as let go of our regrets we can focus on the future and shape it in the way we want.

Fear

Fear tops the list when it comes to what is holding us back in life. Everything we have not done and will never do is because of fear. Fear is only natural, everyone encounters it but unfortunately most people let fear stop them in their tracks.

Successful people though don't fall into this category. They are not different from anyone else and they are certainly not immune from fear. They encounter fear on a daily basis. What separates them from the majority of people though is that they don't let fear stop them from doing what they want to do. They understand that fear is natural and is something that is to be acknowledged, experienced and pushed through. If you never push through the fear then you will never know what could have been:

"You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky |

The only way to conquer fear is to Feel the fear & Do it anyway.

Fear won't just disappear overnight; it might not ever completely disappear. But by facing our fears we can no longer play the "What If" game.

Look at fear as a good thing. It makes life interesting. A life without fear would be very boring indeed.

Self Pity

At one time or another in our life we have all allowed self pity to creep in. We start to feel sorry for ourselves when it looks as if nothing ever goes our way. Sometimes whatever happened wasn't our fault and was completely out of our control. It doesn't matter if it was our fault or not; we must stop playing the blame game.

We have two choices:

Allow ourselves to wallow in self pity or to reflect on what went wrong, why, and then learn from it.

Laziness

We all know that feeling of wanting to do nothing else but lie on the couch and watch TV all day. It is only natural to want to relax but a relaxing life is not a worthwhile life. Everything that is worth attaining will take hard work. You could ask every single successful person who has ever lived and they would say the key to their success was hard work.

Laziness is not difficult to solve if handled in the right way. Unfortunately, most people think the solution is to tell a lazy person to "stop being lazy". That simply does not work (that's like telling an obese person to stop eating).

The solution is to take small steps to improve your productivity. Most of the time we feel so overwhelmed by the work we have to do that we don't even bother to take the first step. This is why it is crucial to break things up into small easy to do tasks.

Most people aren't prepared to work hard and as a result will never change their circumstances. Don't allow yourself to be this person!

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