There are three ways that resistance can hold you back from reaching your goals.
As the saying goes, there will be times when the going gets tough, and when they do, the tough get going. The question then is, “What makes them tough, and what is causing those who aren’t to stagnate and/or get discouraged?”
That is what today’s post seeks to answer.
It often comes down to three things that they lack: knowledge, motivation, or the self-belief to power through to get that knowledge or motivation. And all three can be connected, so you can have only, or a mix of two or all three of these issues.
It often comes down to three things: Lack of knowledge, motivation & self-belief
Sometimes you will need to put on your thinking cap, place yourself back in the role of a student, and set your mind to learning the information that you lack. Any new hobby, interest, or business venture that you’re not familiar with will require learning. Often, this learning curve can be steep, and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by what it required.
Start small. Take the information in byte size chunks. Also ask yourself as you learn, “How can I put what I’ve just learned into practice immediately?” Knowledge without practical application is incomplete. Knowledge is power, but only if it’s useful to you.
There are days that come up where you get the temptation to let things slide for a bit. Granted, some rest is important, and you should take the time to recharge if you feel that you need it. But when procrastination hits, problems can develop, when you can take the time to do something and willfully choose not to. Personally, I’ve found that it’s best to take care of things when you are able to do so, and not put them off until later. That way, you don’t have a mounting list of tasks in your head, which can open the door to forgetting when your mind’s attention is on something else.
Facing a daunting task can cause a lack of motivation. We are more motivated to take on a task when it’s smaller as opposed to larger. This is why breaking larger tasks down to smaller chunks is much more manageable, and is a classic practice that everyone has heard of, because it’s so effective at helping to keep your motivation levels high.
People who don’t have a lot of self-belief can face problems from the start, and is what I consider the most important of these three factors. For one thing, you have to believe that you can do something before you can get the motivation and knowledge to do something. For example, If I were to take on an accounting task that I was unfamiliar with, I would get motivated to seek out the knowledge to do so. In order to even start to do that, I would have to have an unwavering belief that I can do that task, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that, or I would say that I don’t have the skills, which doesn’t look good from a professional standpoint.
Identify what is it that you might lack, and strive to fill the void.
Many great leaders aren’t born, or even have all of the tools and knowledge to lead the group. Some of it is learning as they go, by identifying what they need. Once they do that, they can go and get the knowledge and resources that they need. In order to lead others, you need to first learn how to lead yourself. This all starts with having the self-belief that you can do that. No one can truly give that to you; you have to cultivate that within yourself.
As you see, all three are tied together. You need the self-belief to achieve what you want in life, and from that, you gain the motivation to get going and if you need knowledge along the way, you go get that. You also need self-belief along the way to avoid getting discouraged when things get hard, or you suffer setbacks and need to think of a new strategy.