You're Already Working Hard at Something

One of the biggest reasons we often feel unmotivated is because it seems too hard to make the changes we want to see in our lives. It’s easier to sit back and do nothing, moan and groan about how awful everything is, how tired we are of floating in a river of mediocrity. But it only seems easier to do that because we’ve gotten USED to doing that.

In truth, you are already working hard at staying where you are. Do you think it’s easy to ignore the desire to reach for more? Do you think it’s easy to hold yourself back from achieving your biggest dreams? What you’re doing is like balancing on a fence. Momentum wants to pull you in one direction, while your fears or doubts are pulling you in another direction. It takes tremendous endurance to stay balanced between two powerful forces like that!

Since you’re already working hard at staying stationary, it is a simple matter to shift your focus and redirect your energies to begin moving forward.

How?

It seems like a major leap to move from where you are to where you’d rather be, but it’s important to note that there is probably just ONE THING that stands between you and your ability to move forward. This one thing will be different for everyone, but review the most common reasons below and see if they apply to you:

Fear:

You’ve gotten it into your head that something bad will happen if you begin working toward what you want. You have a feeling of dread or doom, and you feel sure that you’ll somehow screw it up or fail. You don’t want to experience that feeling of failure, so you choose to not try at all.

What should you fear more: taking a chance and possibly failing, or never trying at all and creating a certain life of mediocrity? When you look at it like that, you’ll see that fear of failure is ridiculous. It seems overwhelming at times, yes. But it means nothing in the big scheme of things. So you may stumble and fall a few times. Big deal! Just dust yourself off and get moving again! It may sound overly simple for me to say that, but once you experience it for yourself, you realize how silly a fear of failure really is.

Doubt:

Even if you don’t fear failure, you might lack confidence in your own ability to overcome challenges and create the life you want. You might even doubt your ability to know the right path for you.

The only way to know for sure is to try! If you want to make positive changes in your life, you HAVE to be willing to believe that you have what it takes – even a tiny bit. You have to believe that even if you don’t initially have what it takes to succeed, you can work on developing it. Do you think that ANY successful person was just born that way? Of course not! Each and every one of them had to go through a learning curve, and continually push themselves past their limits. They had to start small and take one step at a time, honing their skills, developing new ones, and further strengthening those too. You are no different; you have the same exact ability to do what they have done.

Laziness:

Let’s be honest; sometimes we all feel lazy. We like taking the easy way out as often as possible. We’d rather sit and stare at a television screen or computer screen because we don’t have to think too hard, or work too hard. We can just collapse into a vegetative state and not have to overcome challenges or face our fears. Unfortunately, this creates a set of consequences all its own, some of which you may be experiencing right now.

Let me share a secret with you: you can still have your periods of laziness AND excel beyond your wildest dreams! It’s all about balance.

I wouldn’t be serving you at all if I told you to avoid the activities you enjoy. You NEED those things. You need to have a fun social life, and plenty of downtime to relax and recharge. But you also need MORE than those things. You need a sense of pride and accomplishment about what you do. You need the contrast of working hard, followed by playing hard, followed by resting easy.

So, what’s stopping you from moving forward? Is it fear, doubt, laziness, or something else? Identify your inner blockage, and then take steps to blast it the heck out of your life. Stop working hard at mediocrity, and start working hard at success. Let your inner momentum carry you forward toward the life you truly want – and deserve.