You know the direction you need to go. You have specifically identified your goals. You’ve educated yourself. So why aren’t you getting closer to your goal or increasing your income?

The brain is a complex thing. From the center of our brain and our reptilian instincts to the outer cortex that is in charge of our surface functions, there are behaviors and more things going on in there than we want to admit that are holding us back.

Its most likely not your knowledge or your practice. Its most likely your emotions that are creating barriers for you to take those much needed steps to advance to the next level.

I know you’ve heard it before. Emotions up, intelligence down. Is it safe for a man to operate heavy machinery with a wife that just left him? Is it Is it smart to go to the bar after closing a large deal and being on an emotional high? These lead to bad choices and dangerous outcomes. If we can gain control of our emotions, we can make better and more sound business and life advancement choices.

So what emotions are you having and not recognizing that are limiting your progress?

Laziness: I’m going to come right out and say it. If you’ve even said “I’m too busy to _____”. YOU ARE LAZY!

The most common form of laziness is staying busy. We all run around doing the things we want to do, or doing a bunch of easy tasks to trick our brain into feeling satisfied when deep down we know we are neglecting the important stuff.

Imagine a jar as your time and the things in the jar are tasks. Golf balls are the important things, pebbles are of medium importance and sand is the least important tasks you have. If you put just sand in your jar there will be no room for the important things. If you focus on the golf balls and get as much important stuff in there as possible, the pebbles and the sand will trickle in around the golf balls and you will have a way higher sense of satisfaction.

Take a look at what is on your mental or physical to-do list. What are you “too busy” for? What does that mean? These things could be holding you back from taking REAL steps toward your goals.

Bad habits: Habits are the small things that are essentially the baby steps we constantly take in a given direction. Our habits today will determine our future down the road. It’s hard to imagine the great effect our small habits make but they make all the difference. Have you even heard the phase “drips fill buckets”?

These are especially dangerous because habits are VERY hard to break. They take conscious effort to stop or start that action for quite some time before they are broken. I’ve heard 66 days of making or breaking a habit is needed to ingrain it into our lives and let them become rituals.

Example One:
Person A has a breakfast sandwich from a fast food restaurant and watches cartoons for 30 minutes every day. Person B eats oats and berries from home and hits the tread mill for 30 minutes every day. Imagine what their bodies would look like after one year. One day of either morning habit would not make much of a difference, but a whole year?

Example Two:
If you set your alarm just one hour earlier for just 5 days a week, that would give you an extra 20 hours or two and a half 8 hour days every month to do something productive. We all complain about not having enough time. What if I could offer you just 2 extra days per month? Just set that clock back one hour.

Now I’m not blind to the fact that starting or stopping any one of these examples would not be extremely difficult… at first. But after 2 months of will power and a conscious shift in your small actions, you can create a direction shift that WILL produce results.

Check out my good buddy Tony here with a simple 4-minute exercise to help start getting closer to your goals TODAY!

Cynicism: Cynicism is defined as an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest. Or skepticism.

This is another form of fear. This could create a huge feeling of self-doubt. It feeds paranoia. You know the situation well, you see it’s a good investment, but you create distrust moving forward. Whatever form it arises in, it WILL hold you back. Trust your gut, trust your knowledge, trust yourself and move forward!

You need to be able to decide if you have a legitimate concern or an overblown fear showing itself through cynicism or paranoia. If you have done your homework, know your goal and path to it, don’t let others talk you in or out of something you believe it right.

Cynicism will hold you back. It’s not easy but you need to identify where this is in your life and eliminate it!

Arrogance: Is defined as an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions.

If you can’t be true to yourself and honest with your strengths and weaknesses, you will have no chance on achieving financial freedom.

Don’t let your confidence shadow what you don’t know. There is confidence and there is cockiness. Arrogance breeds pride and blocks out possible useful information.

Imagine that there is a high level CEO visiting one of his factories that creates a product. One of the workers in dirty overalls comes up to him and tells him “I have a way to make you richer!” Arrogance would respond mentally with “There is nothing this low end worker can tell me! I know it all!” But the non-arrogant CEO realizes that this man may have an idea from being in the factory every day that I would never discover. “Maybe he knows something I don’t know.” He lends his ear and receives a small production change that costs only pennies and boosts production way up.

This is just one example. Don’t let arrogance creep in and build barriers for advancement.

FEAR:

This is number one.  Fear creeps into our mind at any opportunity it can.  Hesitate for one second on a decision and you start thinking of things that could go wrong.  You go into protection mode and focus on all the bad outcomes instead of the good ones.  You instinctively move away from that idea you had or that opportunity that came up because you were too analytical and not opportunistic enough.

Fear is a huge road block.   Imaging if fear wasn’t a factor?  What would you do? Invest your savings into a money making deal?   Quit your job to peruse your dream?  Finally barge the office where you want to work and demand an interview with the boss?

Fear goes right back to our cave man days. Top fears are essentially the same.  Fear of criticism, fear of loss of love, fear of ill health, fear of poverty, fear of failure and mostly fear of death.

Think about an action you need to take next and really measure these fears. Will it kill you? Probably not. Will it make you ill? Probably not. Could you fail? If you have taken calculated risk, a failure should only be a minor set back and be a learning lesson. We learn the most from our failures. Will it make you poor? If you are financially literate and have done your homework, you should be relatively diversified and not risking everything. Will it lose you love? If moving toward your goal will lose you love, then that is not true love and you are better off without it. Will it get you criticized? I hope so! If you are actively working toward improving yourself and people are criticising, you they either don’t understand or are envious. Criticism if often confused admiration.

Having fear is understandable. Taking risk and making changes is scary. Just don’t let it paralyze you. Keep pushing. The best things in life are right on the other side of the scariest.

On a positive note. If you have suffered from these afflictions that means you are human and have a good chance on pushing through to becoming closer to your goal. Breaking through these barriers is not easy. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and everyone would be rich.

Just stay focused, stay positive, identify limitations and then smash through them!

See you in the field.
Brendan