Have you ever felt stuck, lost or overwhelmed in life? If so, you’re not alone. Some research shows that up to 75% of people have felt that way at one time or another.
When best selling author and speaker, Timber Hawkeye, realized he needed to make a big change in his life, he did some serious thinking about what he needed to do. He had been living a traditional life in Corporate America, with plenty of success and material possessions, including designer clothes and a sports car. But inside, he just knew something wasn’t right.
It’s a simple word. Powerful too. Yet it is often met with a less-than warm reception. There are many people who say “yes” to most things thrown their way, often in fear of saying “no.”
In reality, saying “no” isn’t anything other than being assertive. Not abrasive, confrontational, or anything in between. It’s an important but small part of assertive communication. Mastering it means to know your boundaries and communicate them in an effective, non-confrontational manner. If you don’t honour your boundaries, then you are giving someone else the opportunity to take advantage of you. By setting and enforcing what you’re comfortable with, whether that’s in your work, social, or personal life, you form your character and establish a social image (even if the social circle itself is small).
Start here: If procrastination is the problem, begin with the Procrastination Guide (then come back to this post).
“You’ve got to wake up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” — George Horace Lorimer
Procrastination isn’t a character flaw. It’s a system problem. Build a better system, and delay stops winning.
Most people don’t lose to laziness. They lose to drift. They open a tab. They take a “quick” scroll. They tend to a dozen low-stakes fires and call it a day. The cost of this is compounding regret, stalled income and fragile confidence.
What if I told you that achieving your most ambitious goals can be simpler than you think? If you believe that big goals are harder to achieve than smaller ones, you may be underestimating yourself.
The truth is that making big things happen doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task. For example, if you were wanting to get a new job to make more money and improve your lifestyle, it wouldn’t help to settle for the first job you came across. What steps would you take to create the outcome you’re hoping for? It all comes down to having a clear vision of what you want, having a plan of how to get there, and not giving up.
Most people want to be productive. We want to do our jobs well and produce quality work. Regardless of the type of work you do, you probably want it to be worth doing. And you want the end result to be a positive accomplishment.
But sometimes it can be hard to be productive. Things can stand in our way and make it difficult to complete, or sometimes even begin, the projects we had planned to do.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, one definition of consistency is, “The state or condition of always happening or behaving in the same way.” That may seem a bit boring at first, but the benefits of consistency can bring just the opposite.
Consistency helps to strengthen connections in the brain, so you may be thinking with greater clarity, and developing skills and knowledge through strong neural pathways.
Consistency creates momentum, which becomes a habit that can contribute to lasting change. So by being consistent you can make big strides in the direction of your goals. It tips the scales toward the side of success.
Failure is inevitable. It’s going to happen. And it’s probably more common than you think. If you haven’t experienced some form of failure in your life, you probably haven’t stepped too far outside of your comfort zone.
Since failure is something that happens to everyone at some point, you may find some degree of comfort knowing you’re not alone. But if failure is so common, why does it feel so big? Why is failure so hard to accept? Well, maybe it’s not so much the failure itself, but the fear of it. Maybe it’s so difficult because of all of the emotions associated with it.
Picture yourself for a moment. It’s 12:30 am on the 1st January. You and your friends are cooling off from the countdown and start thinking about the future. What goals do you have? Are they short or long-term? How achievable are they?
It’s not just when setting New Year’s Resolutions, either. We tend to focus on what the end goal looks like rather than the journey required to get there. It’s all well and good picturing yourself in your new apartment or job, but not focusing enough on the small wins required to reach that stage could prove detrimental in the long run. After all, day-to-day life doesn’t consist of big, life-changing actions. It’s the ‘grind’ – small, consistent actions that propel you towards bigger targets.
So, to keep those in mind, it’s worth remembering the difference between short-term and long-term gratification. Let’s say your goal is to get in shape for the summer. It’s challenging to turn down a delicious takeaway, for example, because the long-term gratification gained from choosing the healthy option is too far into the distance to perceive and benefit from. Short-term gratification – the taste and ease that comes with a takeaway – is immediate and therefore more desirable for your present self.
Overthinking is easy to slip into. Think about a time you distinctly remember overthinking. You feel your heartbeat rise and your eyes dart. Thoughts fire at unprecedented speeds as you struggle to pick up the pieces. You work yourself up, imagining all kinds of scenarios in your head, overloading it with stress.
Now ask yourself this, how many times have you felt silly or a strange wash of relief because the overthinking led to nothing? More often than not, situations aren’t as complex as you may think. Overthinking can lead to procrastination, and a lack of self-confidence, and destroys the time you have with yourself while potentially affecting those around you. Of course, this isn’t a blanket statement. Neglecting certain aspects in fear of overthinking will cause avoidable issues. Still, it’s worth noting the damage overthinking can cause.
