If you are anything like me, there’s a list of excuses holding you back from building your dreams:
- when I have more time,
- if I had more money,
- as soon as I finish.
For those of us that said that we needed more time at home, 2020 has provided many of us with a lot more time at home. Now we get to find out that this wasn’t holding us back!
Perhaps you said you needed more time with your kids to build stronger relationships. I don’t know how it’s working out for you, but my experience is that I am finding out just how little patience I have for teaching a six-year-old how to write, do her social studies and mathematics lessons!
Today, I am avoiding her play area, because I cannot bear to see the mess it is in. I am restricting myself to cleaning Friday, Saturday and Sunday: otherwise, I will use cleaning as my excuse for not getting things done in my business. Things that make me uncomfortable.
What is holding you back from following your dreams?
Perhaps you are held back by your lack of curiosity. Many of us hold our dreams at bay, sticking with the status quo. But let’s be honest: the status quo has been majorly disrupted! I don’t ever see it coming back! Are you curious about what you could create in the void? How open are you to exploring new ideas and perspectives in the changing world?
Do you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve this year? I know – 2020 is disrupted! So, maybe you revisit your plans: keeping the end in mind, what do you need to do now to achieve it?
Are you willing to fail trying something new when everything is up in the air? What if you create a website while you are stuck at home and no one finds it because you haven’t learnt how to use SEO? Is that really failure? How much of your time and energy are you willing to invest in learning a new skill?
You procrastinate. We all do it. I procrastinate cleaning the house. What’s your favourite excuse? The reality is that we do something else (within our comfort zone), instead of creating and manifesting our goals and dreams.
Aside:
I use the word “manifesting” widely: not in the sense of sitting and holding an intention and visualization, but in the sense of seeing it, creating a plan, and then executing the plan! Manifestation requires action, however small. To use an example from gardening: it’s the sowing we do in order to reap the harvest. The whole process begins with seeing the crop, but then we go and we get the seeds, we prepare the soil and we plant.
Obviously, once we’ve sowed, we may have smaller tasks to complete: watering, weeding and making sure that there are no slugs eating our crops. Some crops require more effort and attention than others. Some dreams & plans do too.
Then, we wait. We trust that what we’ve planted will grow and that there will be a harvest.
Are you letting your doubts get the better of you?
Unfortunately, if you harbour doubts about whether your dreams are feasible, you are unlikely to succeed.
In fact, I’ll bet you don’t even start!
100% chance of failure when you fail to start! Your actions, and lack of action, impacts your results.
Do you even believe you could be that person that achieves greatness?
Or do you spend your time catastrophizing and awfulizing?
At a time like this, I understand the urge to make mountains out of molehills! The world appears to be upside down. People are panicking. Are you buying into their fear and doubts? Do you allow that to feed your fears?
Our minds are brilliantly creative: designed to make up stories. That same creativity can get out of hand, with imaginations running wild.
When you invest your time and energy feeding your doubts and fears, you will convince yourself not to even bother. I have a friend that regularly wants to come over and tell me about their problems. They have an amazing capacity to create obstacles and challenges that don’t even exist yet! Unfortunately, when I ask them to turn that creativity into looking for solutions for the actual challenges before them, they shy away. They allow their doubts to create imaginary obstacles in the future, that they fail to face the smaller challenges they actually have before them in the moment.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: “This will never work out“.
When you doubt in your heart:
What do you want? Today, for this month and this year?
Can you trust your heart to listen to what it wants and desires? Are your dreams formed in your head “this would be a good idea” or does the seed begin in your heart: I dream of being happy, free, bold and fulfilled.
Many of us second-guess our desires because we choose to “think it through”. Unfortunately, this often means that we tell ourselves “no” before we’ve even studied possibilities with curiosity.
Dreams: I shouldn’t want this, because it’s unrealistic
How many times have you abandoned a dream, without taking a single step? Perhaps you heard your mum or dad’s voice in your head “be reasonable” or “you can’t always have what you want”. Whose voice do you hear? Does this person get to decide what you “should” or “shouldn’t” dream of doing or becoming?
Consider for a moment your inner dialogue and what it tells you about who you are and who you should be.
It’s easy to should yourself into oblivion.
Telling yourself “no” stops you from being curious and looking into it. Perhaps the first idea you have is a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean that the dream should be forgotten. Most of us want to start at “amazing” and “awesome”, forgetting that we are beginners when we start anything new.
Perhaps what you should do is expect to make mistakes at the beginning.
Doubts for your safety and security
I don’t know about you, but I regularly avoid failure. If I’m honest, I’ve sat on a draft of this blog post for over two and a half weeks! It was hitting too close to home.
When something takes me outside of my comfort zone, into a place where I might make a mistake, my natural instinct is to preserve the safety of the status quo. It doesn’t matter than I know (head knowledge) that endless procrastination inevitably leads to failure and defeat. I defeated myself because I didn’t put in the effort.
What safety and security are you craving at the moment that is keeping you paralysed? Stop looking down and start to look up, with a wider and bigger perspective. If you are physically safe at the moment, what more could you be doing if you invested your energy in your dreams instead of your doubts?
At the very first sign of any problem, we quit. Of course, perhaps that’s the moment to roll up our sleeves and show what we are truly capable of.
“No” rarely means “impossible”
When we drum up a little more courage, we realise that “no” simply means “harder”. There are obstacles and challenges. But tell me a time in your life when there were no obstacles and challenges. Can you think of a single period of your life when you weren’t forced to step up and into becoming something more?
At this moment, we are all being asked to step up and out of our comfort zones. The stakes are higher, the challenges are bigger. Your dreams are just as important now as they ever were!
The challenge I put to you today is what would change for your life, your family and loved ones if you dared to step past your doubts and into what you are capable of?
