20 ways to get out of your own way

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

It’s common to get frustrated or discouraged when change is hard.

You might tell yourself a story about what’s wrong with you preventing your next uplevel: “I’m not X (enough).”

There is great beauty and power in not blaming other people or your circumstances. And this is still a cop out — a disempowered identity in the guise of “taking responsibility.”

Women do this often. As shared by Sally Helgesen in How Women Rise, it’s a common form of apology (and self sabotage).

If you really want to change, why would you tell yourself you weren’t the kind of person who could?

Being callous, self-abusive and/or unforgiving with yourself becomes a self fulfilling prophesy and habitual avoidance of your greatness. Don’t play the anti-hero.

This is also your (little) ego’s way of protecting itself from vulnerability and change. Habitually big egos are just as if not more culpable, as discussed in this HBR article.

Love who and where you are—and get over yourself.

:)

Of course, you don’t know what you don’t know already. If you knew it — more powerfully and reliably than any competing and entirely subjective “truths” — you would do it already.

How to make possibility reality when you don’t quite believe it yourself? AKA, when there is no evidence?

1. You catch yourself acting out of alignment, and get curious.
2. You recognize where you are and where the gaps lay.
3. You give credit where credit’s due, including celebrating your progress.
4. You talk to yourself differently.
5. You get/create rock solid supports and accountability.
6. You declare and commit.
7. You act the part until it’s automatic.
8. You get fiercely kind to yourself in the trenches (like a great people leader).
9. You manage triggers, temptations and moments of resistance.
10. You walk the line of infinite grace and zero wiggle room.
11. You infuse a commitment to high performance with a learning mindset.
12. You don’t buy the lies you tell yourself, about being or having anything less than you need to be different.
13. You integrate heady belief with grounded tactics and pragmatism.
14. You say yes to every single bit of your struggles without equating it to Truth or taking it as given.
15. You love yourself so much you couldn’t possibly do differently.
16. You surrender to the result, cause or vision that’s much larger than you.
17. You “just do it.”
18. You become cause over effect.
19. You become just the kind of person who…
20. You melt, you flow, you connect, you act with faith and you let it happen.

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