What can you do to not lose faith in yourself? What can you do to keep yourself motivated and willing to keep pushing forward? How can you bring up the power to overcome all roadblocks and obstacles that are put in your way?
This is something I am very passionate about. I always wanted to find out why some people seem to have endless energy and always manage to stay upbeat about their progress in life and others seem to struggle with that A LOT. I definitely was one of the latter not so long ago. I used to beat myself up for not making enough “progress”. I was always sabotaging myself and wanted more. I wanted to reach my goals faster, wanted more just ended up being frustrated and depressed.
It is funny, that when you are experiencing your worst down times, it is when the growth takes place and finally everything just clicks. I understood that I was sabotaging myself and ALSO that I could just stop doing it!:) It was not my life situation nor my circumstances that made me feel so bad about myself, it was more like the way I was looking at myself. I was focusing on the wrong things.
Check out my list of 6 tricks that helped me to turn my perspective on things in life DRASTICALLY around and understand that you can do the same too.
1. Look back on how far you have gone.
Because we put all our attention on our dreams and goals and how we can get there as fast as possible, we often forget how far we have already gone. We only focus on how far we are still away where we want to be and it might make us feel frustrated, giving us a feeling like it is all not worth the trouble.
This is not true. We are just putting our focus on the wrong stuff. Look back on your past months, weeks, years for a minute and see for yourself how far you have gone already. Look back and appreciate all the steps you have taken. Look back and acknowledge that you have indeed done something great. The power you gain by realising that you are changing your life is oftentimes the only thing you need to see to keep yourself pushing forward.
2. Ask yourself where you where last year.
When you feel like nothing is working out anymore and there is no sense in going on, ask yourself where you have been exactly one year ago? How did you feel back then? What was your life like? Did you learn something? Did you grow as a person? Did you make some very important decisions? Was there a special event you can remember that totally turned your life around? Oftentimes this little trick is enough to help us realise that we are still moving forward and growing as a person.
3. Write down a list of your last 100 achievements.
I am not kidding: write down your last 100 achievements. Don’t stop until you are finished. And don’t come up with excuses like it is too much. Take this exercise seriously because it has great power to keep you motivated to stay on track. Write down 100 things you are proud of! Something you did, anything you accomplished in the last weeks, months, years. Write down everything you appreciate in your life. Write down little things too because more than often these are the things that mean the most to us. To list 100 things might seem much at first, but it is actually a fun exercise that can also bring you a lot of clarity and focus. It puts your journey in life into a whole new light and can reassure you that you are on the right path.
4. Ask a good friend to give you some honest feedback.
We can be our worst enemy when it comes to appreciating and acknowledging our progress. We tend to be a little bit too harsh on yourself. And our opinion about certain events in life are sometimes not very objective. We like to see things worse for ourselves than they really are. Ironically we see other people always in a brighter light. Check out this eye-opening short video about a FBI trained artist guy drawing women only by how they describe themselves. Afterwards he draws the same women by how OTHER people see them. It is really interesting how they final sketches differ from each other! Maybe you should not be so harsh on yourself too.
5. Track the personal, not only the professional.
It can happen that we are so focused on our professional and financial goals that we forget what we accomplish in our private life. We cannot forget that personal development in itself is a very rewarding but also challenging endeavour. It takes time too! And I encourage you to invest into yourself A LOT! We are looking at our selves and how far we got in your job and with our career. How much money we made and how our business is going. How many customers we got this year and all the other stuff we are so caught up with.
- We tend to forget that we are also growing as a person.
- With every day we understand the world a little bit more.
- We learn new stuff.
- We become more understanding and we stop judging other people less and less.
- We become more loving or more peacefully.
- We grow spiritually or deepen our passion for something.
All this and more is ALSO happening while you are on your journey to reach your goals and live your dreams. Although you believe that you might not be getting ahead in life, you still are. You are growing as a human being, working on yourself and ever learning. This is something you have to appreciate and value too.
6. Realize that it is never done.
You got to enjoy the process because there will never be a goal. You will never be finished. You will never be done. There is no place where you can just arrive and be. It is about never-ending growth and life-long learning. Once you understand that there is no final destination, you will slow down. You will love the journey more. You will enjoy your mistakes. You will love the path itself. You will remove all the stress from yourself. There will be no rush anymore, because you know that you won’t be able to arrive anyways. You just choose to live your life the way you want it to be and you enjoy every moment of it.
