According to Ellory Wells, you need to make room for your dreams by letting go of these 7 things.
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Everywhere you look there are motivational posts and inspirational articles about how to achieve everything you want in life. They have cool titles like “10 Ways to Achieve Your Dreams” or “The 3 Daily Habits Every Billionaire Keeps Doing.”
But success and achievement isn’t always about what you should be doing. Achieving your goals isn’t always about good habits and being disciplined. Sometimes, you have to let go.
The way of thinking that got us where we are might not be the way of thinking that will get us to where we want to go.
I want you to succeed. I want you to achieve your goals and live a life that makes you happy. If you want this for yourself, there are seven things you’re going to need to let go of:
1: Your fear of rejection
Everyone has a fear of getting rejected. I think it stems from that first dance in middle school where you’re standing against the wall wanting to ask the girl to join you on the dance floor but knowing your friends will make fun of you.
We all get rejected. The most successful people get rejected more than most. To paraphrase Thomas J. Watson, the man responsible for IBM’s success, “If you want to double your rate of success you must double your rate of failure.”
Put another way, “If you want to succeed faster get rejected more.”
Like on the middle school dance floor, rejection is a way of life. Everyone faces it. The only thing we can do is let go of our fear of rejection and learn from it whenever it happens.
2: Your self-doubts
If you’re going to achieve in life, you’re going to have to let go of your self-doubt. We all have it, but the people who get things done are the ones who can ignore their inner heckler and move forward anyway.
Self-doubt creeps up every time we try to do something worth doing. It’s that inner voice that asks,
Is this what you really want to do?
What if this doesn’t work?
Aren’t you afraid of failing?
In my coaching business, I’ve come across hundreds of people crippled by their self-doubt. However, their self-doubt doesn’t work on the surface or in recognizable forms. It works by telling the lie that if you just had a little more information you could be successful. It works behind the scenes telling you that today isn’t the right time and you should wait.
Can you ever eliminate self-doubt entirely? No. But you can learn to act in spite of it.
3: Arrogance
To achieve what you want to achieve in life, you must have a certain amount of self-confidence. You have to believe in yourself and in your abilities if you’re ever going to succeed. What many people fail to understand is that there’s a big difference between confidence and arrogance.
Confidence is knowing what you know and having a track record of results to back it up and arrogance is confidence for no reason, with no results.
Arrogance is something we have to face and move past every time we start something new. Our arrogance tells us we don’t have to start at the bottom, that we don’t have to pay our dues, or put in the necessary hustle to make things happen.
If you want to achieve your goals you have must let go of any and all arrogance. Like the toxic cancer of self-doubt, you must cut out arrogance at the core and be willing to do whatever is necessary to turn your dreams into a reality.
4: Holding on to old hurts
Grudges, anger, and resentments take up space that could be better served with energy toward your goals. If you’re spending time focusing on how others have hurt you or how you’ve be done wrong, those thoughts come at the cost of you being more successful faster.
5: Small visions, goals, and dreams
When you first set out to achieve a goal, it’s easy to use that nasty word that has kept you from achieving all your life – “just”.
You tell yourself, “I just want to make some extra cash on the side.” or “This is just a hobby, I don’t take it very seriously.”
“Just” is keeping you from doing amazing things with your life and you should stop saying it. Own your dreams and goals, and have the confidence to go after them.
If you’re going to achieve in life, you’re going to have to plan for the long-term. You’ve got to have a vision for your life, set massive goals, and dream big dreams. You need to find the balance between being realistic and setting a goal so audacious it’s almost ridiculous.
Take the advice of Stephen Covey and Michael Gerber and begin with the end in mind. Ask yourself where you want to be, not only in 6 months, but in 12, 18, and 24 months. Determine what you’d like to be doing in two years, work backward to today, and behave accordingly.
6: Where you are today
Several years ago I heard someone say, “You can’t steal second with your foot on first.” And it’s stuck with me ever since.
Chasing your dreams takes a lot of courage, but so does leaving behind where you are today. You can’t move to the house of your dreams if you’re not willing to let go of your apartment in the suburbs. You also can’t fully dedicate yourself to building your business without letting go of your day job.
In every journey, there comes a point where you have to embrace the unknown, take that step beyond your comfort zone, and go further than you’ve ever gone before.
If you want to achieve in life you will have to let go of where you are today so you can get where you’re supposed to be tomorrow.
7: Bad habits
Habits, both good and bad, come in all shapes and sizes. From the route you take to work every day to the way you brush your teeth and comb your hair, habits dictate most of what we do every day.
If you’re going to achieve your goals in life, you’ve got to let go of your bad habits, starting with the worst.
Habits like staying up too late and sleeping in when you could be spending time on your passion. Habits like maintaining an unhealthy lifestyle, being pessimistic, hanging out with the wrong types of people, or wasting time.
Every day our habits lead us down the path to the results we’ve always gotten. To get new results you have to get new habits. Start small and make the conscious effort to eliminate you bad habits and replace them with good ones.
What things have you had to let go or leave behind in order achieve your goals? I look forward to your comments below!
Photo: Pixabay
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