How Successful Do You Actually Want To Be?
Watch out! Your blind spots are about to be uncovered
“The more you see a person talking about something, the less they are probably doing it.” — Jeff Goins
What is it you most desire? I mean truly, in your heart of hearts, want.
Is it money? Love? Education? Fitness?
A publishing deal? An amazing business? More peace and mindfulness? Status?
A leaner body? Diamond-filled teeth?
Or do you just want ‘success’? You’ll take it in any form it comes.
But do you genuinely want these things, or is it only talk? And if you’re not only saying it, what’s stopping you? Are your excuses for not having those things valid?
I knew a girl who used to say, I wish I had that intelligent look some girls have.
She wanted the look — that certain Vitamin-D deficient pallor, dark eye-rings, and myopia. But she didn’t want to crack open a book. There was a trade-off she wasn’t willing to make to get what she wanted.
Let’s have an honest examination of what’s holding you back from creating the life of your dreams. It could be there are some trade-offs you’re not willing to make.
This article will help you uncover your blind spots.
1. Are you avoiding hard work?
“Lots of people want to be the noun without doing the verb. They want the job title without the work.” — Austin Kleon
Hard work is … hard. We shy away from it. It’s nature’s way of conserving energy. Nature chooses the path of least resistance.
Another name for avoiding hard work is laziness. Ouch. We don’t like thinking of ourselves as lazy, do we? It’s painful. It might even trigger some unpleasant childhood memories.
But, sometimes, laziness is what’s holding us back.
You might prefer the laid-back mode. Laziness has its benefits. You get to sleep late and sit around more.
You could find life more relaxing that way. For you, going at a slower pace is more nurturing for your soul. In your heart of hearts, you’d rather stay working in the mailroom. Being the hot-shot executive wouldn’t make you happy, and you know it.
If that’s the case, there’s no shame in it. But be honest about it. Admit it and stop saying you want something if you’re not willing to work for it.
I struggle with getting up before 7 am. I know I’d achieve much more if do the 5 am Morning Miracle, but I’m not willing to trade in my cozy time in bed. I prefer to be lazy than work on my goals that early in the morning.
Ask yourself this, Am I willing to trade the benefits of laziness for the pain of hard work to reach my goals?
Maybe the answer is, No, I’m not willing to make that trade. You prefer to stay as you are. If so, that’s legitimate.
But if the answer is, Yes, I am willing to work hard and give up the benefits of laziness, then it’s time. Rev up your engine, roll up your sleeves, and get started!
2. Are you taking responsibility?
“The best way to predict who your future self will be is to actively imagine and design your chosen future self.” — Dr Benjamin Hardy, How to Intentionally “Slow-Boil” Into Your Desired Future Self.
If you’re not getting what you want from life, you may be stuck in a victim mentality. You don’t have power over your own life and circumstances. You perceive yourself as weak. You don’t have control of yourself or your layer of the world.
Life is happening to you, instead of because of you. You’re not steering your ship.
If you’re blaming anyone but yourself, you’re not taking responsibility.
And if you’re now saying, it’s alright for you, you haven’t had the disadvantages I’ve had, think again. There is always someone who has had a much harder start than you’ve had who is soaring way ahead. It is often those very people who thrive. They’ve learned the hard way that it’s up to them.
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” — Maya Angelou.
If you’re in victim mode, it means you haven’t grown up. You may have a mindset of childlike dependency. Don’t dig around in your past for too long, analyzing how your development got arrested.
I spent way too long in my own life doing that. Trust me, the future has much more to teach us that the past ever will.
Instead, ask yourself this one question, Who’s going to take charge now?
It takes courage to take responsibility for our own lives.
If you’d rather wait for your boss or your Mom and Dad to make your decisions for you, admit it. If you’d rather say, I can’t have what I want because society is set up against me, then say you’d prefer to keep your excuses.
But also acknowledge this, If you fail to take charge, your life is unlikely to change.
3. Are you spread too thin?
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.” — Lily Tomlin
When you spend your time and energy on one thing, there is less time and energy to spend on something else. There is an opportunity cost to everything.
‘Decision’ means ‘to cut off.’ (From de ‘off’ and ‘’caedere’’ ‘to cut.’) So, are you willing to cut off your lesser options?
Many people, especially the ambitious, try to do too much. They want to launch a digital marketing company, start a family, and write a novel. Oh and keep their job, spend an hour a day on their watercolors and two hours a day at the gym. Go back to school and get another degree… you get the idea.
They confuse being busy with being effective. But often being busy is a way of avoiding focus. Busyness is our way of not making hard decisions.
“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” — Henry David Thoreau
Are you aiming straight at your goal, or are you going sideways?
It can be painful to cut things off. To say, I want to focus on being a content writer until it pays my bills, and I can quit my job as a supermarket teller. But doing that won’t leave me enough time to write my speculative romance zombie novel. And I’d love to launch myself as a Billionaire Lifestyle Instagram Star, but I can’t do that too.
You want to do them all. But if you hope to do any one thing correctly, you have to choose which one it will be. To be happy in a relationship, we must cut off the other flirtations in our life.
This is the area I struggle with most of all. It’s a daily challenge for me. There are so many projects I want to do, read, research, write, start. But I know lack of decision will hold me back.
It’s about making the best choice, not chasing every potential. What are your priorities? What is most important to you? Which option will most change your life for the better?
Do something properly or not at all.
If you don’t clarify your priorities, you’ll be reactive as you go through your days. When you’re clear about your purpose, you will be proactive.
So ask yourself, am I willing to cut off lesser choices?
4. Are you avoiding tedium?
“The truth is that everyone is bored.” ― Albert Camus, The Plague
“Bored of being bored because being bored is boring.” — Anonymous
Tedious tasks litter the path to our dreams. Setting up a website or going back to school means taking care of details. Filling in forms, remembering passwords, learning about SEO or plugins. Redoing a statistics class or writing an entrance essay. All these things can be boring.
Even the most glamorous seeming roles can be full of monotony. Actors have to write resumes, get training, go to auditions and learn their lines. They still have to pay bills and unplug blocked sinks and look after the details of life.
Writers have to stare at a computer screen until their eyes are bleary. Type until their fingers and wrists hurt. Proofreading and fact-checking is tedious work.
I will avoid administrative tasks until the cows come home. I’d much rather be doing a million and one things than making entries into QuickBooks. But I know some things are unavoidable if I want to achieve.
Most of us have been avoiding tedium since we were little. Do you remember how, as a kid, you dreaded boredom? We all groaned when the dull teacher came into the room. But guess what? It’s pretty useful being able to multiply 3 x 7 and write cursive now, isn’t it?
If there’s something you say you’d like to do, but you’re not doing it, ask yourself, Am I avoiding tedium?
5. Are you afraid of change?
“When changing your life means losing your sense of self, change is difficult.” -Ayodeji Awosika, Tabula Rasa: My Personal Secret to Success.
We’ve developed and confirmed our self-image from a young age. Success forces us to see ourselves in new ways. It is challenging to change our view of ourselves.
Are we afraid to be successful because we’d be someone new? We may not even know any self-made millionaires or anyone with a PhD in Astrophysics. If we became one of those kinds of people, would we even know ourselves?
On some level, we feel we owe it to our friends and family to remain the person we’ve always been. The people close to us have an interest in keeping us as we are. Familiarity is safe. Our family members are often the most resistant to our development.
“We have to shed our skin. An adult doesn’t fit into the clothes they wore as a child.” — John Cousins, Failure and Mistakes Pave the Road to Success.
Ask yourself if there is someone you don’t want to outshine. You know they’ll be jealous of you, and you don’t want to cause pain. If your father always dreamed of being a millionaire but ended up broke, you may be afraid of out-doing him. You won’t want to launch that million-dollar consultancy because you’re scared of the look on his face.
The path to success demands we let go of our ideas about ourselves. We can’t hold on to the old image of who we are. We’ll change in more ways than we can imagine. The people we love will have to accept those changes too.
Ask yourself, Is my fear of change standing between me and the things I say I want?
6. Are you afraid to fail?
“Those who want to win will win regardless of opposition, discouragement, or failure.” — Cristian Mihal, The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People
We invent so many excuses not to try. But it isn’t trying we are afraid of — it’s trying our darnedest and still failing.
If we do our best and fall flat on our faces, we may have to face harsh realities. We may not be as great as we imagined we were in our fantasies.
I remember plucking up the courage to walk into a very fancy boutique in London when I was a teenager to ask for a job. My heart was racing. I was terrified.
The staff looked at my scruffy clothes, my poorly cut hair. They took in my unpolished country bumpkin ways and laughed at me (I grew up in the west of Cornwall and was new to London).
Yes, they laughed and didn’t even bother to reply. I walked out of there with my cheeks burning and my knees quaking.
I failed spectacularly. I bombed. But I learned after that how to present myself and carry myself with more entitlement. They were no better than me, but they knew how to play the game.
I look back on my teenage self and say, You’re a winner, Pippa, because you tried.
“Good things happen to those who hustle.”- Chuck Noll, head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1969 to 1991.
If the modelling agency turns us down, we’ll have to admit we’re not perfect model material. The catwalk might not be ready for a big-boned forty-year-old, even if you still get carded, and Hubby says you’re hot.
If we don’t get the job, we may have to look at our lack of skills square in the eye. Or admit our charm isn’t a ticket to everything. We may have to accept that our screenplay about slow-rotting fruit isn’t going to take the world by storm.
Or worse, that we’re not as talented as we believed.
Our worst fears rise to the surface when we open ourselves to the possibility of not succeeding. It can be petrifying.
But it is also the path to success.
So ask yourself which you prefer — the potential pain of failing or the certain pain of regret?
In conclusion
So — do you actually want to be successful?
Would you prefer to avoid hard work and tedium than go after your goals? Would you rather not take responsibility for yourself? Maybe you’d rather not make hard choices and will continue trying to do everything.
You don’t want to make significant changes. It could be that failing is too big a risk for you, and you’d prefer not to try.
Or can you smell success around the corner like a beautiful, fragrant rose? You can almost taste it, sweet and delicate on your tongue.
You don’t want to make money — you’re going to do it. You’re not going to dream about losing weight and having a fantastic body — you’re going to make it happen.
Today is the day you launch yourself as a singer-songwriter or start that business. You’re finally going to commit to your partner and delete those numbers you should never have kept for so long.
Now is the moment you stay the same. Or it’s the moment you emerge from your shell, spread your wings, and soar into your future.
It’s your choice to make. Just don’t kid yourself, whatever you do.
Thank you for reading. I wish you everything.
I wonder if my early career trained me to think I could effectively tackle 40 projects at once.
Time to parse my passions and get real. Thank you, funny lady! 🫠😆💜🙏