Imagine feeling immobilized. Unable to move, not even an inch. You are following the path you imagined in your dreams but every step feels like a boulder on your shoulders pressing you down against the floor keeping you from moving forward. You feel hopeless, scared, frozen in time, while life continues to move on, leaving you behind. That desperation feeds from your soul and there is nothing else you desire more than to break free. That is how it feels when you give up half way. That is how it feels when you see others achieve your dreams. That is how it feels when you yearn for success but you have never tasted it.
Do you believe change starts with you?
In this article I share 5 keys to break free from self imposed limitations. As you read through them, take note and let me know how you would apply each key into your day to day life
Start With Self Reflection
Imagine one of your friends comes to you and asks you to help them figure out what they could change to help them be more successful. Now imagine that friend is you, and you are giving yourself that advice. Write everything that comes to mind, do not hesitate, and do not lie to yourself. No one is there to judge you so might as well be extremely candid with yourself. “To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.” — Steven R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We need to continue to look in the mirror first and be brutally honest with ourselves. We need to confront all the good, bad, and the ugly without hesitation.
As you look inside, make sure to be nice to yourself as well. You want to encourage positive reinforcement while you open up to your vulnerabilities. In Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, she mentions “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” In other words, take the risk to be vulnerable with yourself and look into your inner voice, because only then, you will find who you truly are. There is nothing more profound than taking the time to learn more about yourself without judgment but instead with an attitude of wonder into the fantastic journey that is self learning and self growth. Look into ways to continue to learn and improve on skills that will help support you through your career and life. It is perfectly fine if you do not have all the answers right away. The point is to take a radical candor approach with yourself so that you can grow and not fall behind as the business landscapes continue to evolve.
Create a Path and Stay Consistent
One of the aspects that I have noticed through out my career and life is that without consistency you automatically fail. There is no worst feeling than starting in a new journey to then see it fall apart because we stop ourselves from staying on the course. Michael Jordan, widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time, once said — “I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don’t do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.” Michael’s thought process shows the direct relationship between the quality and consistency of your efforts and the outcomes you achieve. It has been proven countless of times that sustained effort leads to success. Michael did not drive aimlessly but instead followed the path forward in his basketball career with consistency and was able to succeed.
Although following your path is important, you will be driving aimlessly unless you have defined a destination. As you think of your vision and goals, make sure to write them down. In doing so, it helps to make it feel more real as it is now in a physical form. Review the market and competitors and learn from the path they have taken and use it to make an educated decision on how to move towards achieving your vision. Once you have your plan, then the rest is day to day consistency. You will not attain your goals unless you continuously work to achieve them. You are building a tower stone by stone, and it will not get done in one day. You have to be patient and follow the plan. Eventually you will be able to stop and look down. Then and there you will be surprised at how much progress you have accomplished. Just like Darren Hardy said in his book The Compound Effect — “It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.”
Be Opened To Feedback
Feedback is the epitome of growth. Embracing feedback allows individuals to identify and refine areas of improvement. Focusing on open honest feedback will foster an environment of trust, continuous learning, and team building that will build high efficiency teams. Like Kim Scott mentioned in her book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity — “When you don’t care about people, you don’t bother to criticize. When you are afraid of hurting someone’s feelings or dealing with their reaction, you don’t know how to criticize. Either way, you fail to help people grow.” As leaders, we need to be able to grow other leaders and a big part of that is feedback. Like I mention in my article, Building Stronger Teams: Build An Environment For Open Honest Feedback article that you can find in LinkedIn — “Leaders need to be malleable enough and resilient enough to accept the harshest of feedbacks even if they have already been working on such shortcomings.”
As leaders we need to focus on learning from the feedback of our peers, leadership, and the people that we lead. We need to be tough and resilient as sometimes feedback is hard to hear. We are leaders now and no one said it was easy. The resilience is tested when we have to accept feedback while going through a long period of no recognition. Leaders win only when the team they lead wins and therefore why it is important to adapt as fast as possible to the changes that surround us. That openness to feedback is what allows us to adapt and react quickly to make the necessary changes to continue with positive growth. “In the growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.” said by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. That means that we should look at feedback as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and find new ways to push forward to continue to improve in our life and career.
Remain A Student For Life
Continue to find ways to learn from books, lectures, conferences, videos, mentors, and any other resources that you can get your hands on. As leaders, we need to continue to learn to be able to adapt and survive in an ever moving business landscape. Like Hery Ford said “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young”. You need to stay a student for life if you plan to continue to out grow yourself and others around you. In doing so, you need to make sure to also keep a positive mindset, otherwise you’ll close yourself from unexpected informative sources.
Throw your ego away and continue to practice no matter what level you have reached in your career. “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” — Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success. Therefore no matter where you are, how many awards you have received, you should continue to practice. The idea of remain a student for life is to focus on the journey and continue to evolve and grow. There is no point in just focusing on the end goal because once you reach it, there will be new ones that pop up. Therefore you might as well be present for every single minute of every practice you participate in. The late Kobe Bryant, five-time NBA champion, once said “It’s not about the number of hours you practice, it’s about the number of hours your mind is present during the practice”
Find Joy In What You Do
You need to find your passion and what you love to do. Only then you will be able to endure the challenges that come with being in a leadership position. Sometimes you will go months or even years without recognition because projects took that long to complete. You have to persevere and the only way to do it is by finding enjoyment in the day to day. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”, said late Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple Inc. He emphasizes that we should focus on finding what we love because we will spend the majority of our lives working on that something. And just like Jim Carrey said, during a commencement speech at Maharishi University of Management in 2014, “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
You need to follow on the path of what you love because recognition will not always come when you desire it. But even so you need to find ways to find the good in the little things around you. You need to feel like every day something good has come out of the hours you have put in so that you can continue to push through. That recognition can easily come from within and it will flourish when you follow your passion every day. Like Elizabeth Gilbert said in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear — “Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.” That means that we need to follow what brings us joy and in doing so our mind and body will take the necessary steps necessary to make us successful.
Ending Thoughts
It is essential to embrace the journey of personal and professional growth as a continuous process that never ends. Maintaining a student mindset keeps us agile and open to new learning experiences that eventually allows us to reach complete and utter joy. The journey is about transforming challenges into stepping stones towards success and fulfillment in every step we take. I know you arrived here because you have reached a ceiling and you have found yourself unable to move. But I am here to tell you that your way to freedom is already in front of you. You have already started to take steps and as long as you keep that consistency going then you will be able to release yourself from your self imposed limitations. You got this!!