Success is the end-goal du jour. We’re all striving, climbing, achieving our way to success. We’re working hard to achieve the lives we’ve always dreamed of. But success always seems just out of arm’s reach. No matter how far we climb, we never seem to be able to catch success. It’s always just around the bend or at the next milestone–five more clients, 50,000 more dollars, one big newspaper article. It’s frustrating. It’s discouraging. And it’s just plain inefficient.
Success has always been right in front of you, just waiting to be taken. You’ve just been sabotaging yourself to stop you from getting there. Here are five ways that you’re sabotaging your success (and just don’t know it).
1. Always striving for more.
There’s never enough. We always need to fill the bucket higher. We want more money, more fame, more clients, more partnerships–just more of everything. Because we feel like we’ll be successful once we hit a certain metric. And then we hit that metric and still don’t feel successful, so we extend it just a bit further. The truth is that you have to decide when you’ll give yourself permission to be successful and enjoy. There will always be more that you could do. There will always be more success to achieve. But when are you going to let yourself enjoy the success that you have right now?
2. Trying to be prepared.
We work our butts off to make sure everything is ready before we take a step forward. We edit and re-edit, we hesitate, we doubt our abilities. We stop ourselves from doing anything because we’re afraid that it might not be perfect. We’re a culture of perfectionists. We don’t want anybody to see our vulnerabilities because that will show just how not good enough we are.
But nobody who’s ever changed the world started by feeling ready. They’ve just done it. They’ve gone forward and taken a step and learned along the way.
Self trust is the most important skill you can have to be successful. If you’re waiting until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting a long time to let yourself accomplish your dreams. Nobody is ever ready. It’s about digging deep, trusting yourself, and jumping off the cliff, anyway.
3. Putting a limit on your worth.
Early on in life, we sized ourselves up and decided just about what we think we’re worth–how much love we should receive, how much money we should make, how much abuse we have to put up with. Any time we start to creep above that line, we shoot ourselves back down. Because we don’t feel like we deserve more than we’re worth.
If you are having issues raising your rates, asking for a raise, or just applying to that dream job, take a look at what you think you’re worth. Why are you afraid to raise that limit? Why don’t you think you deserve more than you’re getting?
It may seem outside of us, but the truth is that we’re the ones who decide our own worth, and then we tell the world what we’re willing to settle for. Don’t settle for anything because you’re worth way more than that.
4. Misunderstanding failure.
The number one fear holding people back from success is the fear of failure. We’re all terrified that we’re going to fail. But who is the judge of failure? If I trip while I’m walking, did I just fail at walking? If I get fired from my job, did I just fail at business?
We’re the only judge of our failures. We can choose to see them as failures, or we can choose to see them as minor setbacks. We have the ability to keep getting back up when we fall down and learn new ways to do things. Failure is only what you decide it is. And, if you’re not ready to throw in the towel and fail, then you might as well take the lesson and try something new.
5. Waiting until you get “there.”
There is this magical place that we’re all trying to get to. All the time, I hear from clients, “When I get there, I won’t have to work so hard” or “When I get there, I’ll raise my rates.”
The truth is that there is just an arbitrary milestone. We don’t need anyone’s permission to be as successful as we want to be. All we need is to decide today that we’re going to do what we want. Maybe we want to take off half the day and get a massage. Or maybe we want to raise our rates because we think we’re worth it. Or, better yet, we might just want to take a vacation.
We have the ability to do anything we want with our lives. We don’t need to wait for someone to tell us it’s okay. We don’t need to wait for a certain milestone to give ourselves permission. We can choose to be successful right now.
It has more to do with how much success you can allow into your life and less to do with how much you can achieve. If you want to be successful, commit to doing it right now. Do things before you’re ready, try and fail at everything, know how much you’re worth, and allow yourself to be successful today.
The only person who’s been sabotaging your success is you. And it’s time to change that. Because you deserve it.
Featured photo credit: Carbon NYC via flickr.com
