7 Things You Need To Give Up To Move Forward in Life
Small things can hinder your progress in life and keep you away from the success you truly deserve
Life is fulfilling when you’re making progress. The whole experience of moving forward, getting better at what you do, and scaling new heights is exhilarating.
But sometimes you feel you’ve hit a plateau and are stuck somewhere. Despite your best efforts, you’re not making headway and cannot move forward.
Often the problem is not that ‘you’re not pushing yourself harder’ but that you are doing things that are blocking your path and preventing you from moving forward.
If you’re ambitious and want to accomplish all you desire, take a moment to look at your life and remove the obstacles from your path.
Here are seven things that may be erecting hurdles in your way and stopping you from pursuing your dreams.
1. Being impatient
Accomplishing a goal or getting a positive outcome from your efforts requires patience. You have to keep working at it tirelessly without letting things get to you and feeling exasperated.
However, if you are impatient to see quick results, you’ll rush through your work. Your inability to wait will make you restless, and you’ll either leave many tasks unfinished and move on to other things or hurriedly complete the stuff without giving your best.
Mediocre work will only show average results, which won’t be enough to propel you forward toward success.
So if you want to succeed at anything, you must cultivate patience. It will enable you to not only accept delays and setbacks without getting upset but also keep you pushing harder despite the challenges and difficulties.
2. Taking shortcuts
We all want to succeed at whatever we do, and most people like it fast to happen. So they get into the habit of cutting corners and taking shortcuts.
But there’s no quick road to any place worth going. If you choose to take shortcuts, you’ll always fall short of achieving success.
Shortcuts and quick wins are a farce; they haven’t worked for anyone. You cannot simply circumvent or evade hard work. Flouting the rules, ducking the situation, escaping responsibility, or skirting the issues will come back to trouble you with grave consequences that you might regret later.
If you’re hungry to progress and move forward in life, you must prepare yourself to work diligently and go all the way. When it comes to achieving goals and scaling up, nothing can take the place of perseverance and persistence.
3. Hesitating to take tough calls
Choices are never easy to make; it’s always challenging to decide one thing over the other because things can go wrong, and more importantly, you’ll have to own up to the consequences of your decisions.
However, if you dilly-dally and keep yourself from making tough calls out of fear of making wrong decisions, you’ll never be able to move forward. Getting stuck due to indecision is more miserable than enduring the outcome of a bad decision.
Life is not perfect, and you cannot always predict what will happen. When something unexpected happens, or new opportunities come your way, you have to weigh the pros and cons, trust your instincts and make your choices.
Decision-making is a skill that you can hone. Learning to make good decisions by choosing the best possible option out of multiple alternatives will go a long way in helping you make rapid progress toward your goals.
4. Playing small
You stand in your own way of success when you undervalue yourself and diminish your abilities by playing small.
The self-deprecating behavior becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that confines you to your cocoon. You avoid venturing into the unknown to keep yourself safe and away from problems.
When you feel less of yourself, you start overthinking about things going wrong and plans failing.
Running the worst-case scenarios in your mind and worrying too much about ‘what if’ prevents you from dreaming big and aiming high. You are unmotivated to pursue goals that neither excite nor challenge you.
Second-guessing yourself also undermines your self-esteem and leads to self-doubt. You no longer feel confident to accept newer opportunities or take risks. Playing small therefore stops you in your tracks and stunts your growth.
So stop feeling you’re not enough and quit playing small. It’s time to level up your game. Listen to your heart, and believe in your infinite potential. Know that you are capable of achieving anything you set your eyes on.
5. Regretting past mistakes
No one’s perfect; everyone gets things wrong and makes mistakes at some point. However, ruminating about your past mistakes and being hard on yourself can stall your progress and make your onward life journey difficult.
When you keep judging yourself critically and revisit your mistakes over and over again, you constantly remind yourself of your failure. This lowers your sense of belief in yourself.
Rehashing past mistakes makes you feel underconfident and you cannot take action, make choices, or seek new opportunities because, at the back of your mind, you’re always afraid of repeating the follies.
Understand that mistakes happen all the time. To make the best of them, focus on the lessons learned, avoid making the same mistakes twice and move past them.
6. Holding onto what’s not working for you
As humans, most, if not all, people are emotional and are guided by their feelings more than logic. This sometimes makes them unduly clingy and can work against them,
Holding onto things, people, plans, and dream projects for sentimental reasons long after they have lost their relevance and are clearly not working can be counterproductive. It can come in your way of making progress and make you remain stuck.
Sooner or later, you have to come to terms with reality; life is what it is, and not everything pans out the way you visualize. When you see things not working for you or in your favor, you must let go of the old, try the alternatives and embrace the new.
7. Thinking you don’t need anyone’s help
Many people prefer to ‘fly solo’ and dislike sharing their dreams and goals with anyone. They think you can manage everything on their own. Nothing can be further than the truth.
No matter how good or proficient you are in your field of expertise, you can only do so much alone. We’re all in this together — the pursuit of success. No one can do it all by themselves.
Each person has their strengths and weaknesses, and therefore it is wise to seek help in areas where you struggle to get things done.
Besides, reaching out to others will not only provide you with moral support, but you can also benefit from the experience of others who have been there before you, learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same mistakes yourself.
In Conclusion
No one plans to sabotage their chances of success. Still, unknowingly your actions and behavior can stop you from moving forward and getting onto the next level of success and happiness. Be mindful of the road blockers in your path, make amends, and you’ll be blazing your trail and enjoying massive success.
