What’s Holding You Back?

June 19th 2018

“Man I do it for the principle, yeah you know that “holy” crap
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who hold me back” ~Hoodie Allen 

Everyone in life is on a journey to find their true self and their purpose. However, like any really journey, there are roadblocks. But what happens when we realize that our biggest roadblock is ourselves?

Picture this:
You are walking down the street and see a sign for rock climbing lessons and you think to yourself, “WOW! That sounds really fun and I would love to try it!” Then, as you walk up to the door of the rock climbing place, you see yourself standing right in front of you saying “You don’t have any upper body strength and the other people in there will laugh at you because you suck. Why don’t we wait a little bit and try to get good before taking classes so no one laughs at us?”

But how can you get good without taking a class, you might ask yourself? The answer to that question is pretty simple; you don’t. Your fear of failure causes you to make “self-serving” compromises that, ironic, don’t serve you at all. We make excuses for not pursuing our passions like not having time, not being good enough, not having the money, or we simply procrastinate getting started to the point where we miss all windows of opportunity. All of these excuse are centered around one thing, fear.

It is common to fear failure, however, this common fear is often counterproductive because we are so afraid of failing at one small specific thing, that we are allowing ourselves to fail in an even bigger way…we are failing to live. By constantly telling ourselves we are not capable of certain feats, we are letting ourselves fail without even trying.

I have been doing yoga for years and I am a certified yoga teacher, and one of the biggest excuses i hear from people who are interested in yoga but don’t try it is that they “aren’t flexible” which is common fear talk for “I am too afraid of being the worst in the class, so I am just not gonna give it a shot all together.”

And sometimes, fear doesn’t manifest itself as us holding ourselves back from starting something, it manifests itself as us holding ourselves back from progressing. I am probably the most guilty of this. Once i get passed the initial fear of trying new things, I tend to get pretty good then plateau because success actually scares me as much as failure.

You see, success is when things get more complicated. For example, if my blog grows a ton, I might actually have to learn about the tech aspect of blogging in order to improve my blog which makes me nervous. Or I may have to work with a manager or something and that makes me nervous because I can barely manage to schedule my own doctors appointments. In reality, I feel that I would be much further along in my blogging if I didn’t hold myself back.

But why wouldn’t I want myself to succeed? I think it goes back to the old saying “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” I feel like if I keep growing, I have more to lose. And while I try to quiet that voice in my head and continue to push for growth and improvement, it still lingers in the back of my mind that everything is really fragile.

So, how does someone combat this tendency to hold themselves back? Well, the first part is definitely self-talk. No more telling yourself that you suck or convincing yourself that you will be the worst in the room. No more playing our scenarios that haven’t even happened yet. And, most of all, no self-serving excuses.

After you work on self-talk, work on easing yourself into action. Just because you are no longer telling yourself you suck, doesn’t mean you should just throw yourself into the fire and expect to be 100% fine. Take your time. Work on building your confidence little by little so you don’t get overwhelmed by all of the changes taking place.

Lastly,  remember why you want to do what you’re doing. I love blogging because it allows me to express myself and interact with other content creators who are doing the same thing. I understand that I do want to grow my blog because I like seeing my hard work payoff and if things get more complicated and intricate, that is a good thing and I shouldn’t stress about it before it happens.

So keep pushing and don’t let that little voice in your head control you.

Jess~