6 Mental Barriers That Prevent You From Reaching Your Fullest Potential

Are you experiencing difficulties in achieving your goals? If you are finding it hard to get ahead, it could be because you’re subconsciously holding yourself back.

Many of us have unhealthy habits that stop us from reaching our fullest potential. By being aware of these mental barriers, we can start practicing exercises that can help us have better control over our environment and reach success. Here are the six surprising things that are holding you back.

Lack of Knowledge

Lack of knowledge makes people weary about achieving anything. They complain about not knowing enough to start a business and not having enough resources to start taking steps towards their success. Eventually, they settle for second-rate accomplishments and a lot of unrealized ambitions.

In truth, it is not the lack of knowledge or resources that are in charge of that. Many successful entrepreneurs knew nothing when they started building a business. In most cases, people are disempowered not because of lack of knowledge but because of the thought of it. Thoughts of insecurity, insufficiency, and low self-esteem can paralyze you from taking action.

To overcome this insecurity, first, you must make a commitment to achieve your dreams. When you start making commitments, you don’t just sit around. You will be constantly motivated to seek knowledge and do whatever it takes to reach your goal. Then, you will see yourself upgrading other elements such as your skills and abilities in order to be successful.

Fear of Failure

Fear of failure is a debilitating emotion that can fuel a lot of other negative emotions such as fear of being embarrassed, shamed, ridiculed, or judged. The feeling of constant fear and anxiety hinders you from taking the first step towards achieving your dreams.

Every time you postpone your goals, you also delay the realization of your dreams. If you don’t understand how to turn fear into fuel, you could be stuck in the same situation forever. You need to learn how to manage your fear and anxiety starting with simple mental exercise such as deep breathing.

When you’re in a state of fear, you can do six deep breaths into your nose and then out through your mouth. Deep breathing can help you relax and refocus your brain to think about positive things instead of negative things.

Self-Doubt

Self-doubt is another debilitating emotion which activates into fear. When it starts to creep in, you will begin a long cycle of procrastination that will prevent you from achieving your goals. Consequently, you would be stressing over every decision you make and keep picturing how things might go wrong.

It is hard to battle persistent self-doubt. However, you can start by doing things one at a time. When you achieve smaller milestones, you will gain self-respect and confidence. By taking things slowly, you can disrupt the pattern that reactivates the stress and fear response. It has been proven that when you work in a controlled environment, you are motivated to take actions, and then you can add more steps along the way. But, now, doing small things places you in control.

Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs constrain us in some ways. There are two types of limiting beliefs, explicit and implicit. Explicit belief is when you believe you can do a certain thing but deep down your subconscious mind, you’re thinking maybe you can’t do it because you’re not skilled enough or you are over-educated.

Explicit beliefs override the implicit belief that you can achieve something even when you don’t have skills or when you’re over-educated. When you fuel limiting beliefs, you are distracted, thereby destroying every single goal that you could have accomplished within the day.

To overcome limiting beliefs, you need to reprogram your thinking. A lot of successful entrepreneurs didn’t have the skills when they started. But you can start by setting small goals. Learn from your simple success and focus on amplifying your strengths instead of replicating your limiting beliefs. If you fail, take it as motivation to encourage yourself to do better.

Low Self-Esteem

Having ow self-esteem is often connected to a challenging past. You may have experienced severe trauma as a child or suffered a great failure. As a result, you have forgotten your worth as a person.

Say, for example, you have a dream of becoming a millionaire or building a big company. So you set your goal using your imagination and deductive reasoning. However, at the subconscious level, you don’t feel like you deserve any of it because you feel so poorly about yourself.

Having low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness are mental obstacles that hinder you from reaching your dreams. To overcome this, you need to have a strong conviction that you can complete the tasks at hand.

Instead of making your past experience as an excuse to not take action, take it as motivation to do more. Many successful entrepreneurs have experienced a couple of failures before they have reached their destination. The key is to refocus your mind to the positive things that are happening around you.

Procrastination 

Procrastination is often fueled by self-doubt and fear. If you’ve successfully crossed out the two, you would have no reason to delay your tasks at hand. However, if you constantly procrastinate, it is because you are afraid to fail. Fear of failure promotes procrastination mainly when it reduces your sense of autonomy or when you feel incapable of accomplishing things.

The good news is that procrastinators are often smart and hardworking people. The key to reaching your success is in how you control your way of thinking.

When you have an idea and you start postponing it until you find the right timing, it is never going to happen. So never let yourself postpone anything. Monitor your goals. Keep track of your deadlines and adopt a habit of acting. There’s no better time to accomplish your goals than now.

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