What are the things that are holding you back from your dreams?
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Life seems so simple around a fire.
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They can’t hurt us that way or let us down.
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I promise it won’t simply happen.
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- Pretending – we’ve all heard the “fake it til you make it” line. I call BS on that way of thinking. I’ve played that game a lot in my professional and personal life. Here’s the thing about that game: you lose every time. You always get found out. A great example of this is social media. For the record, I love social media, but it’s super easy to pretend like we have life fully under control there. Smiling kids, happy wife, great vacations, no stress. The problem with real life though is the filters don’t exist. The bills still come, the kids still cry, the marriage is still hard. Drop the pretending game and pursue authenticity and vulnerability instead.
- Protecting – the weird uncle of pretending is protecting. Building up insulated barriers to protect people from knowing the real you. The alluring thing about protection is the belief that we can’t be hurt inside the self-made walls. But the people that are really in your corner and want to support you in your dreams can’t unless you let the guards down. Every single one of us carries some dark, wounded places. Areas we don’t want to let people in, but the result of showing those sides of us is a lot more, “oh yeah, me too’s” than judgment.
- Pride – too often, I’m more worried about what others will think of me if I’m vulnerable. My pride gets in the way of letting the deep stuff surface. Being proud of your kid is one thing, being prideful in the way we deal with others is an entirely different thing.
- Performing – we live in a what have you done for me today culture? So we all hustle, grind and work to keep up the act. But are we doing that on an open road or a treadmill? Are we doing the right type of hustling? The right type of work? Are we simply doing mindless work or the real work of creating, initiating and leading? The latter kind of work leads to breakthroughs.
This post originally appeared on Justin Ricklefs’ Blog. Reprinted with permission.
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Photo: Getty Images