It’s frustrating. You work hard; you try to do the right things. You make some headway, but “life” or other things seem to always keep you from making substantial progress toward accomplishing what’s most important to you. Why is that? Why is it so challenging for you, and for most people, to get what you want?
Here are some reasons based on my experience:
- You don’t really know what you want. You live your life and what happens happens. You haven’t made a choice so, because you’re not sure what you’re going to do, often “the situation wins.” People tend to be by-products of their situations instead of acting proactively and powerfully.
- You have an idea of what you want, but it’s not clear enough
- What you want is too different from what you’ve done in the past
- You’re afraid to go for it. You stand pat and don’t commit because you’re afraid of failing or you’re, actually, afraid of being successful.
- Other people have said, or might say, that what you want is crazy
- You settle by convincing yourself that where you’re at now is not that bad
- You don’t know how to accomplish what you want. Often we have identified a goal and are motivated to move forward, we just don’t know how to get started and what to do to get there.
- There’s never any time or (it’s cousin) there will be plenty of time later
- It’s too much work
- It’s too difficult
- It takes courage
- It’s hard to fully commit yourself. Clayton Christensen, former Harvard Business School professor and renowned author, stated that “It’s easier to hold your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold them 98% of the time.” The same can be said about committing to your personal improvement: complete commitment will yield much greater results than a high level of commitment.
- Addressing the unknown can be scary (Virginia Satir said that “People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.“). We want everything to be clear. Most people would rather be certain about their future, even if it is something they don’t want or not the best future.
- There’s no guarantee that your efforts will pay off
- And on and on…
These are real reasons and we all grapple with at least some of them. However, too often they result in so much uncertainty and consternation for us that we only progress a little or not at all; essentially staying stuck where we are. “It’s much easier to just say “This is who I am.” Publicly saying “This is who I want to be” is risky, since you’re not guaranteed to succeed. *
So, how can we get unstuck? How can we make progress like we never have before? Next time, we’ll introduce you to a process that has been tested and proven to work, time and time again. And it can work for you too!
* Quote from Benjamin Hardy, organizational psychologist and author of Willpower Doesn’t Work and Personality Isn’t Permanent