Do you know what the biggest obstacle is that people face on living the life that they have been dreaming of? Money? Nope. Time? Nope. The number 1 obstacle that keeps people from achieving their goals is taking action. You can have all the time and money in the world and still not live the life of your dreams if you don’t take action to achieve them.
So today I am going to share my story, my struggles, my wishing, my praying for change and how it wasn’t until I made a conscious decision to do something different that I started to see my life begin to change.
My hope is that by sharing my story you will begin to understand how taking action may be the ingredient you are missing to feeling fulfilled and chasing your dreams.
Let me start by saying, life is a journey, I understand this more than ever over the past couple of years. I don’t know about you, but, I will find myself daydreaming about the life that I want to create for myself, this has been part of who I am from a very early age. My mom would call me a “dreamer”. I have found that I have created so many plans and written them in my journal or a sticky note - sometimes it is a business I have wanted to start, a vacation I want to take, a house I want to build, a relationship I want to have. I will write the details out and a timeline on how I think I should take to make it happen. Then I file it away or even crumple it up and throw it away. My point is that sometimes we make plans or have dreams but writing them on paper or speaking them out loud doesn’t make them become a reality. The only thing that makes them come to fruition is taking action. Why is it that something that sounds so simple is SOOOO HARD!
I will let you in on a secret…I have wanted to be a life coach for over 10 years. That’s right for 10 years I have been dreaming of what my life would be like if I would be able to help others build the life of their dreams while dreaming of living the life of my dreams. It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that I finally said enough is enough and signed up for my first certification course. I was working for a telecommunications company doing business to business sales and was one of the top performers and thoroughly enjoyed building relationships with clients and helping solve their issues by providing IT Solutions to meet the demands of their growing businesses. I had a small office and oftentimes I would have coworkers pop in and sit down in the chair in the corner of my office and start talking to me about their struggles, both professional and personal. They would seek my guidance and I would ask them questions, sometimes challenging their mindset by the time they would get up to leave they had a plan in place and were ready to take action on whatever it was that was weighing on their mind. They would smile and thank me and I would continue on with my day. I didn’t realize at the time that I was acting as the company “life coach”, but hindsight is that was what I was doing. They were feeling weighed down and challenged and it made it difficult for them to perform the task at hand. They didn’t want to talk to the HR department or their manager as they felt it could have a negative impact on their employee reviews. Eventually, the company I worked for was purchased and the consultative career that I once loved became transactional. The relationship building diminished and I lost the vigor I once had for my corporate responsibilities.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you felt stuck in a career that wasn’t what you originally signed up for or have you out grown a role you once had?
It happens all to often that we stay with something familiar because it is what we know and what we are known for being going at. It becomes our identity. There is one thing…the longer we continue to stay at something that is no longer meant for us our internal light starts to dim. The things that once energized us becomes monotonous and before we know it, the feelings creep in of feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed and it starts to overflow in other areas in our life. Think about it…if so much of our time is spent at work and we wake up already feeling drained and not wanting to go - how are we going to give the best of ourselves to our work and to others around us.
What drives us to take action? As humans we naturally move towards pleasure and away from pain. So in order to take action the pain has to be enough for us to make a decision. Think back to the time you made a decision quickly, maybe it was ending a relationship, changing a career, deciding on a vacation - why were you able to make the decision? What was the benefit to you? What would the result have been if you didn’t make the decision when you did?
Are you having trouble thinking of a time that you were decisive. Let me share one of Tony Robbin’s analogies - he said, Have you ever drank or eaten something that didn’t agree with you. That it made you so sick that you to this day still have not consumed it. You made a decision in that moment, it caused you enough pain that you decided to never indulge in that drink or food ever again.
Taking action is easy when you make the decision to do so. The hard part is understanding that staying stuck is causing us more pain than pleasure. We are so often “comfortable” with the familiar that we overthink the possibilities of change. We stop listening to our guts - that inner voice that tells us that we are meant for more and allow our brains to process all the reasons why we shouldn’t take the risk. Does this sound familiar. I know it does for me! Staying stuck in a career I am miserable at, knowing i am meant for more. Knowing that I have a gift to help people achieve their fullest potential by providing them unwavering support and empathy until they are able to build the foundation and realize they are worthy of chasing their dreams and building the life they desire. It wasn’t until I took the time to reflect on where I was and where I wanted to be and realize that staying stuck and not taking action to chasing my dreams was not going to change my life. I am in control, if I want to help people, if I wanted to live my purpose I needed to step into who I was meant to be and take action.
Did this process happen overnight, absolutely NOT! Do I still struggle on a daily basis on the right actionable steps to take…absolutely! What is the difference? I now know that staying stuck was making me miserable. I was tired all the time, zero energy to want to do anything, my relationships suffered. I no longer had any patience with my children, no desire to build a romantic relationship with a partner. I wasn’t living my life I was only just existing in it. It was time to take action and create the life I want.
If you are feeling stuck, overwhelmed and like you are just existing then I want you to hear me. There is more to this life - you have the power within you to live a life you love. Here are a few steps that you can take to go from overthinking and overwhelmed to taking action.
Step 1 - Take a moment of self-reflection and identify the specific areas where you feel stuck. What obstacles or challenge are preventing you from moving forward. Once you write them down, ask yourself the same question over and over again until you are very specific. It is important to get down to the root cause in order to begin the process of overcoming them.
Step 2 - Now that you know what the root cause of being stuck, make a list of how being stuck is currently serving you. If it wasn’t serving you in some way you would not still be stuck (remember the example before of never eating or drinking a specific food that made us sick). Once you are aware that you have a belief that is tied to why you are stuck you can begin to break it down and take action.
As I described earlier, for me I was feeling stuck in my career, I was feeling unfulfilled and it was draining my energy. However, for me, my job was giving me a steady paycheck and benefits. As I continued to dive in and ask myself questions. I held a belief that I couldn’t walk away from a steady paycheck and insurance to launch my coaching business because it was too risky and I needed the steady income to provide for my family.
Is this what you are telling yourself? Did you just say, that’s right Karen, it is too risky, you need to make sure you can provide for your family and have insurance? This is the story I have told myself for years. Now, what if I shared hundreds of stories of people who were fired from their jobs, turned around and followed their dreams and made more money than they ever thought possible? Do you believe this to be true? Yes, of course it is! Every day people leave the comfort of their jobs and follow their intuition and are extremely successful. Of course the alternative can also be true, but, You know what else is true? That the people who took a chance on their dreams will never have to wonder “what if”. They are able to take the lesson that they learned and pivot and try again and again.
Now, I am not advising that you go to work and quit your job today. What I am sharing with you is that we often tell ourselves a story, but, we rarely take the time to challenge the story we are telling ourselves. I want you to start challenging yourself. Challenge your beliefs and ask yourself what the alternative could be.
So let me reiterate - In step 1 You identified an area of your life that you feel stuck and Step 2 you gained a better understanding of how this belief is currently serving you and clarity on if the belief is true or not.
Step 3 - Make a plan and take action. If you determined that the area that you are currently stuck in is causing you more pain then pleasure, that you realize that the story you have been telling yourself is not true, then the next step is to determine the small actionable steps that you are going to take to do something different. This is going to vary depending on each individual circumstance, but, one thing will remain true no matter the circumstance - if you don’t make a plan you won’t take action and you will continue to remain stuck. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It is time to do something different - make a plan and take action. Life is meant to be lived so stop just existing!
I believe in you!
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