Feeling stuck or unmotivated?
If you find yourself frustrated and not making the changes you want to make in your health, relationships or career, you may have fallen victim to the most common road block to your dreams: distractions.
Take heart, it’s happened to even the most successful women!
In my coaching practice, I’ve found that every woman encounters distractions on the path to achieving their dreams. I find that what separates my clients who succeed from those who don’t get results is whether or not they are able to get back on track to regain their focus on the goal.
Since it’s inevitable that you’ll experience set backs in life, the most important factor is what you do next. Do you let the distraction take you completely off course or do refocus your efforts to re-embark on the road to success?
While many factors can cause our focus to stray, I’ve found a pattern with the 3 biggest dream destroyers. These main three MUST be overcome if you want to attain the fabulous life you deserve.
Any guess what they might be?
Here are the 3 Biggest Dream Distractors
1. Self Doubt
If your determination and motivation for achieving your dream have faded, you may be experiencing self doubt. We all have negative thoughts that crop up at times. However, if you’ve found yourself stuck in a rut; it could be that you believe these thoughts that limit your potential. What ends up happening is that your goals are left abandoned on the side of the road because you feel that there’s no point in trying.
The underlying assumption in these beliefs is that “If I didn’t have my particular limitations or the struggle, I would be successful.” In fact, the opposite is true: we become successful by taking action, in spite of our circumstances. Confidence and motivation comes from action, not the other way around.
What you tell yourself has a powerful effect on what you set out to do. Talking to yourself productively by releasing the guilt, shame and frustration from your mental chatter is a great base for clarifying and accomplishing your goals. And, you will find yourself less held back when it comes to taking action!
2. Comparison & Competition
Have you ever found yourself comparing yourself to another woman or someone else that you see as more successful?
We are all different, yet we have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. It’s human nature, and while learning from others is an important part of critical decision making, if it is used to reinforce an unrealistic or negative self-image it can be an unhealthy habit to get into.
Mark Twain said that “comparison is the death of joy,” and the science agrees. Research has found that comparing breeds feelings of envy, low self-confidence, and depression.
If comparing is how you evaluate your worth, you will always be losing. It’s impossible to reach a point where you are better than others in every way. And why would you want to be? Part of what makes life awesome and interesting is enjoying and learning from the talents of others. Instead of trying to be as good as or better than others, focus your energy on being the very best version of yourself.
Next time you catch yourself using someone else as a benchmark for your own worth stop and remind yourself how ineffective this strategy really is. Instead, compassionately redirect your energy and attention to your own goals and what is required to achieve them.
3. Loss of excitement, joy and passion
Most people want a life that’s meaningful and fulfilling. Once you endeavor to move toward that life, it’s exhilarating! However, high enthusiasm can be difficult to maintain. It’s not uncommon to lose your joy and excitement at some point along your journey.
To combat the doldrums, it’s important to stay connected to your dream.
Sometimes, the best way to stay focused is to remember why your dream is important to you. Staying focused on the “why” can help you accomplish almost anything because it puts you in a positive and motivated state of mind. This kind of focus helps you grab onto your goals with ferocity and move forward with confidence.
So there you have it, the 3 biggest dream distractors and ways you can avoid these pitfalls to keep your focus where it belongs: on creating your most fabulous life.
Here’s to staying on track on the path to your dream. You CAN do it! I believe in you.
What about exhaustion? Working towards a long term goal that is stalled. Constant focus and monitoring is tiring and frustrating and detracts from other areas.
Thank you so much for sharing these distractions which are exactly true!! Just this evening a friend and I were discussing our lack of consistency on focussing on our improvement, this message of yours came at exactly the right time putting it into perspective :). I’m a firm believer in picking myself up, dusting myself off and trying again.
This topic and discussion was very helpful. There have been many times when i became distracted. I call not staying focused. If I can put these three objectives into my everyday life, I’ll probably be more productive and with more blue skies and sunshine throughout my life. Thanks Sherrie