Home > Articles > Life and Living > Five Top Tips to Overcome What's Holding You Back
Five Top Tips to Overcome What's Holding You Back
1. Define what it is that’s holding you back.
Get very clear about what it is that’s making you put things off, give up, back off. What it is that’s making you limit yourself. What it is that’s making you under-achieve Put the spotlight on it. Study it.
2. Work out a plan to move beyond it.
Once you’re clear about what’s holding you back, focus your energy on strategies to overcome it, get round it, chip away at it. Take Mathew, a terrific new client I started working with today, who at 55 wants to change his career.
One of Mathew’s hold-me-backs was facing the fact that he needed to choose one option to move forward with, rather than continue to dissipate his talent and energy on trying to pursue numerous alternatives.
3. Set your goal and BEGIN.
This is often the hardest part! Your goal needs to be precise, specific, concrete. Where you are now is the right place to start. Sometimes the act of starting needs to be an act of WILL.
Like Mathew - he knew from past experience that once he started a project, a feedback loop would be generated that would bring its own momentum, but the very first step, the act of starting, had to be a sheer act of will to overcome his habit of procrastination. Sometimes, what needs to happen is simply this: grit your teeth and do it. Now.
4. Take steps forward.
Break things down into bite sized chunks. Tackle scary issues head on with small tasks and bit by bit this will get the big things done. Think in terms of creating stepping stones to bring you closer and closer to what you want.
Just as you would gradually tone and hone your muscles when you start out on a fitness programme, so you can tone and hone your life and your work. It’s not helpful to wait for the perfect match to come to you; believe that you can move towards it.
5. Get the right people around you.
The company we keep is vital. If you don’t choose an environment that will best develop you, if you don’t have people and things around you helping you, then it’s highly likely you will be holding back.
Our friends and family don’t necessarily mean to constrain us, but inadvertently sometimes they do. Sometimes they want us to stay how we are, not change or move on. Check your support network: is it working for you? If the answer’s no, then how can you find the support you need, and when will you do it?
