During my self-reflection earlier this year and my observation of others, it is clear to me that there are often behaviours we possess knowingly or unknowingly, or certain deeds that we entertain in our lives that lead us to not succeed and grow as planned and thus become the stumbling blocks that barricade us from reaching our optimal ability. Below I have outlined in my opinion five stumbling blocks you need to watch out for because if tolerated they will indeed lead you to fail than succeed.
1. Self- Doubt
This is definitely the biggest killer of one's dreams and honestly, we shouldn't even fear failure as much as we should fear self-doubt existing in us. When you lack self-belief in your ability to achieve you are the only person limiting yourself and no-one can encourage you and/or help motivate you move forward and past it. So, I encourage you to get out of your damn way because it is better to have tried and failed, than to ponder and wonder on whether you would have succeeded, had you worked at seeing your vision through.
The best and most effective way of how to get rid of self-doubt is to fill your thoughts with words that affirm that you can do it, spend time learning about others who have overcome it and adopt the same methods of how they did it. Surround yourself with people who will encourage you and lead you to snap out of your self-doubt, consume information that helps you conquer your self-doubt from listening to motivational speakers to reading books.
"She was unstoppable not because she didn't have failures and doubts but because she continued on despite them."
2. Dream Stealers
There is nothing as scary as thinking you have the right set of people around you, only to find those very people are the reason your dreams are not coming true. You can recognise this people because they will be the ones adding into your self-doubt and feeding you with information on how your idea won’t succeed, then thereafter they will quickly adopt your idea as their own and succeed with it. From a spiritual perspective they will be people who hold hostage your dream and you will indeed fail to pursue it for some reason.
How to get rid of these people is pray a simple prayer of discernment, asking God to reveal to you the snakes in your spaces and for him to teach you how to seal your mouth from speaking about what you want to do and allowing your actions and the results of your work to do the talking.
"Not everyone has the capacity to hold your dreams. Therefore, share only when the dream has materialised not at its infancy stage."
3. Oversharing
We live in a world that praises us for sharing and when you don’t, you're viewed as strange and in some cases, you might find yourself outcasted by your community. However, this oversharing is quite costly we have seen it with famous couples who have split and end up publicly declaring their private pain and attract prying eyes who fail to provide them the peace they need to adjust to the split or people whose ideas have been stolen by others who are in the position to kick-start the idea faster and sooner, popularising it as their own.
There are countless other examples of what it costs to overshare. It is imperative to adopt the habit of swapping oversharing with practicing moving in silence because in life as much as you have people routing for you there as another group of people rejoicing over your downfall. The best way to live is avoid giving people access to your journey until the results of your achievements can’t be contained anymore this is a sure way to omit jealousy and people wishing bad for you while you’re working towards achieving your goal.
"You make your business someone's business when you share it with them."
4. Repeating the same thing and hoping for a different result
Life is about learning from mistakes and if you’re not learning then you will continue repeating the same mistake and this often to your own detriment where you will lose time and sometimes money. You need to get in the habit of keeping track of what is not working and be quick to let it go because all it does is make you dwell on your failures and mishaps, propel negative thinking and what you need to do instead is press on and try something new until you finally get a winning formula.
Think about it this way Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before he got the formula of getting the bulb right had he not kept trying to tweak new aspects, we would either not have a bulb right now or we would be talking about another inventor who was willing to keep trying something different until he succeeded.
“Mistakes are meant for learning not repeating.”
5. Failing to research enough
We are so fortunate that in this day and age we have many options to help us with populating extensive and detailed research, from the internet to tonnes of published books, archived documentation and documentaries. Therefore, whatever idea you have, more times or not it has either been tried and didn’t quite succeed or there is a different version of your idea in existence. It would be very inane of you to pour investment to an idea without understanding the market and also the costs required to make it work. Take your time to research so you can plan better, broaden your creative ideas and fine tune them to suite your target market.
“Good design doesn’t stem from intuition, talent or luck. It comes from research and understanding.”
You only have this life to live, and it is on you to do it justice. It will be a disservice to yourself if you don’t work hard to bring your vision, goals and dreams to life.