Do you lack confidence in yourself or your abilities? Do you feel like this holds you back from achieving the success you desire? You may be struggling with self-doubt. This nemesis of success lies in waiting to remind you that you aren’t good enough, even after reaching your goal. It wants you to quit and keep the status quo, but you don’t have to give in to your self-doubt. You can overcome it to reach anything you set your mind to.

6 Key Steps to Thwart Self-Doubt

Many suffer from Imposter Syndrome when seeking success. It can stop them in their tracks. Are you ready to kick self-doubt to the curb once and for all? Great! Here’s how you can do it:  📉 

1. Decide not to make excuses. When you start to doubt things, it is easy to give in to the emotions and rationalize why something is not working out as you planned. Look at what is happening and what you can do to change things-no more excuses. Just move forward. 

2. Give yourself the gift of self-compassion. You are your own worst critic. Instead of chastising yourself over a mistake and then letting it hold you back, change how you talk to yourself. Use affirmations to encourage yourself and overcome negative self-talk.

3. Review your previous accomplishments. Sometimes, you forget all the great things you have previously done. Remember winning the talent show? What about that promotion you worked hard to achieve? Your past accomplishments remind you of what you are capable of doing. Embrace them. Learn from them.

4. Stop playing the ‘Comparison Game.’ The easiest way to increase your self-doubt is to compare yourself to others. Everyone is on their own journey, and no two look the same. You can learn from others that may apply to your goals, but it should stop there if you want to overcome self-doubt.

5. Make a decision and jump in. Often we let doubt stop us from making a decision. If you fall into this trap, understand that not making a decision is still making a decision, even if it is living a stagnant life. Go ahead and make the decision and course-correct as needed. At least you will be making progress on your goals that lead to your success.

6. Surround yourself will supportive people. It helps to have a core group of people that help you feel good and are willing to cheer you on. The encouragement bolsters your self-confidence, which pushes self-doubt out of the way.

Kick self-doubt out of your life for good. A more confident you makes a more successful you.

Planners like to plan. It brings them comfort and helps them feel they are in control. Yet, the best-laid plans are not worth much if you never act. If you like to plan but hesitate to execute, your chances of reaching success are limited. Sure, you may finally reach your goal – someday – but you will get there faster if you stop planning and start doing. 

5 Steps Act on Your Plans  📆 

Getting stuck in the planning rut is not fun nor productive. The reasons you may do this range from fear to perfectionism. Are you ready to stop the merry-go-round of endless planning futility and make your dreams a reality? Use these steps to move from plan to action: 

1. Look at how you spend your time. If you are in the midst of planning a project, pay attention to how long you have spent preparing it. Has it been a few hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Once you know where you are spending time, you can begin the process of switching from planning to action.

2. Monitor what you consume. You need to stop consuming content at some point and start doing. It’s easy to get lost down Internet rabbit holes in your research and planning. You can alleviate any time-wasting by being intentional about what you are looking for and setting a time limit on how long you will spend doing it.

3. Accept that no plan will ever be perfect. Waiting to develop the ideal plan will leave you waiting for a very long time. Plan to the best of your abilities and then leap into implementation. Treat your plan as a roadmap to refer to, not a commandment set in stone from which you can never deviate.

4. Break big projects down to bite-sized steps. Sometimes, your plans may seem more like mountains to be scaled. That can be terrifying and stop you from taking the next step. It’s okay to take a little time and break a more extensive project into smaller steps that you can handle easily.

5. Just start. This may be the hardest step to take, but you need to at some point. When all else is done, and you have no more excuses, act. Look for what you can do in the next five minutes and do it. You will feel better, and you might feel the momentum build to take another and another. Now, you’re on your way to achieving goals and reaching success!

Remember, it’s okay to step out from behind the plans and implement them. You will gain so much more confidence when you do.  😄 

Success looks different to different people. For some, it is about having a loving family and raising children as productive members of society. For others, success is about pushing boundaries and grasping that next great adventure. However, if you are stuck and feel like you aren’t where you want to be in life, it may be because your comfort zone is a little too comfortable. There is nothing wrong with living life comfortably and within the familiar. But for those looking to become successful in their life, your comfort zone may be holding you back.

Ways Your Comfort Zones Prevents Your Success  👀

Routines bring us comfort. Comfort gives us a sense of confidence in knowing what to expect. It sounds delightful until you become bored and feel an itching to try something new. Then your comfort zone can become your biggest enemy on your path to success. Here are a few ways that staying comfortable prevents the success you desperately seek:

1. You lose who you are. Staying comfortable removes risks that help you discover your true self. How will you ever learn to overcome new challenges if you don’t take risks? Instead of giving into fear and staying safe, consider stepping out, taking the risk, and learning from the process. You may discover a whole new you lurking beneath the surface.

2. You stop learning and progressing. Our brains need stimulus to stay sharp-sharp brains aid in attaining success. Routines and comfort can stall this, making it difficult to grow and reach new personal heights. With personal growth, you increase your abilities and your chances of success.

3. You find reasons to postpone your success. Ostriches will put their head in the sand, thinking the lion cannot see them. The truth is, the lion still sees the ostrich that is now a sitting duck. When you live in your comfort zone for too long, you become like the ostrich burying its head in the face of difficulty. Success requires you to look ‘danger’ in the face and keep moving forward.

4. You lose out on new dreams. Dreaming one goal leads to dreaming more. Success lives off of the plans you come up with. Your comfort zone may leave you in a cozy haze of complacency that threatens your future happiness. You will never know what could have been if you stop dreaming.

Don’t let complacency get in the way of your dreams. It’s time to step out of your comfort zone and resume your journey to success.

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How have you been talking to yourself lately? Would you say the same thing to your family that you say to yourself? When you say something like, “I’m not good at X, so I won’t try,” you are expressing negative self-talk. Sometimes, a little negative speak stops you from making an unwise or unsafe decision. Most of the time, the critical voice in your head prevents you from reaching the success you desire.

How Negative Self-Talk Holds You Back  💬

Negative self-talk prevents you from seeing opportunities. It increases your stress and may affect your behavior. It may also manifest itself in these ways:

1. You believe things about yourself that aren’t true. When you keep repeating the same negative ideas, you start believing them. Soon, your thinking is limited, and so are your chances of success.

2. You believe that great is no longer good enough. You may find yourself picking apart your last project, looking for all those bits that didn’t go as planned. This may lead you to think only perfection will do, and since perfection isn’t attainable, you shouldn’t try.

3. You feel depressed. Too much negative talk can lead you down the path of depression, damaging you and your loved ones.

4. Your relationships may suffer. Constantly living in a mind of self-deprecation can leech out into your relationships. Others may see you as needy and insecure. It can prevent open communication and a feeling of closeness because anything they say may be taken wrong by you.

4 Suggestions to Stop the Negative Self-Talk

You can stop the negative self-talk from preventing your success. Here are four suggestions to get you started:

1. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. When the inner critic starts chattering, stop and listen. Then, pay attention to how you feel when the words are harsh.

2. Live in the moment. Reduce the chatter in your head by focusing on what you are doing now, not the stuff coming up. For example, if you are sipping a cup of hot tea, relish the flavor and warmth of the cup in your hands.

3. Play devil’s advocate. As negative self-talk springs up, challenge the thoughts coming out. Ask yourself if the statement is true. Most likely, it is an exaggeration instead of the truth.

4. Swap out negative words with positive ones. Decrease the negativity in your everyday speech by actively using more favorable terms.

Remember that your journey to success will move smoother when you beat back any negative self-talk that’s holding you back

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Success is a rollercoaster filled with hills and dips. You sit in the front car, put on your safety belt, and let the brake release send you down the track. The first hill is always the one full of anticipation. It’s the highest one and propels you toward the rest of the ride, where you will encounter super-fast speeds mixed with some slow spots. Notice that while it was fun, it was less than perfect. The cars shook your bones, and you may have felt like you had whiplash. But you had fun! Success does that too. Its twists and turns, hills and valleys, leave you breathless and ready for more unless you let perfectionism stall you at the gate.

How Perfection Stalls Your Success Journey

The best way to stop success in its tracks is to be hung up on perfection. Here is how it affects your journey and what you can do about it:  🌄

1. You fail to get things done. You find yourself fretting over the perfect business plan instead of implementing the plan. Why? Because you feel you must account for every eventuality. You do not have a crystal ball and cannot tell the future. It’s OK to accept ‘good enough’ and get moving. You can tweak along the way.

2. You focus on the product, not the process. Too much emphasis on the final product leaves you trapped. All of your energies will be expended on the end result while you miss out on the beauty of the process to get there. Developing good habits will propel you to complete everything that needs to be completed. You will also learn and grow so that you can adjust and make the final result even better than you initially imagined.

3. You allow for fluid deadlines. Setting deadlines helps to get things done. Moving your deadlines will enable you to postpone your success. You’ll find that you allow perfectionism to creep in almost every time you postpone a deadline.

4. You lose momentum. Perfectionism slows your speed out of the gate. If you delay working on your goals, you may become complacent about reaching them. The result is delayed (or non-existent) success. Move fast, keep your enthusiasm, and stay on course.

Don’t get caught on the kiddie coaster called perfectionism. Jump into the front car of your success coaster, and keep your hands up for the thrill of a lifetime.

😊