You can overcome your negative limits of yourself
Perhaps you’re in a job you don’t like, you’re not getting on well with your boss. The relationship is stifling your creativity, and going to work on a daily basis is a drag. In fact, you don’t look forward to going to work. You tried to resolve this issue with your manager, but she brushed you off. You tried to get another job elsewhere, participated in extensive interviews, but when you expected to get that phone call with the offer, you instead received a letter of rejection. You tried to start a home business and it fell flat on your face. The net result of all of the above? You’re a difficult colleague, not good enough, you’re failure, and perhaps you’re even a lazy slob. And now you have to face this monster of a boss on a daily basis, doing what you don’t love, simply because you have to have a job and survive. Because of all those experiences, you feel l paralysed, unable to move, stuck, and with nowhere to go.
You allow your experiences to limit you
A friend invites you to partner with them on a business opportunity. Instead of being excited and try to be innovative, you decline. After all, you did try something, that home based business, and it failed right? You tried to resolve your issues with your boss, and that didn’t work right? You tried looking for a job, and you got rejected. So, what is the point?
Your limitations are influenced by your historical background
What these experiences and the results are doing is creating a disabling belief system about yourself, where you believe that that you are incapable of achieving anything, you are a failure, a no good. Lest we forget, this may also be attributable to the feedback you received as you grew up…does your primary teacher telling you, ‘you will amount to no good’ ring a bell? Hasn’t that stayed in your mind, like forever? ‘I’m no good, I will never be good’. So, the things happening in your life right now, coupled with your historical background and what happened in your earlier years, may well be the main reasons you are limiting yourself to your growth and your success.
Missed opportunities
Can you imagine what you are missing out on, while you’re busy feeling sorry for yourself? Can you think of the possibilities and the opportunities passing you by, simply because you will not allow yourself to explore them? Can you imagine how the barrier you are creating, is limiting you to achieving your dreams? So then, I hear you ask: How can I move past my limitations?
Recognise that you do have a history of success
For starters, you did pass from that horrible primary school teachers’ class, didn’t you? You have lived this long, done a lot of things, and I mean a lot of things, and you have succeeded, or achieved something. Surely you wouldn’t even be in this job that’s driving you crazy right now, would you? So, start identifying your past successes, and look at how you got to where you are right now. Reminding yourself that you have been a success before, just on its own, is a powerful motivation to get you back on the ‘can do’ attitude. So, identify the little things you did that got you to your success. Remember how excited, and happy you were when you passed your matric? When you got your driver’s license? And how confident you felt? This is because when your efforts produce a successful result, it becomes a successful experience. And when you combine several successful experiences you establish a pattern, a pattern of success.
You can move beyond your limitations
Now, remember that pattern of success, relive it, and remind yourself that you can be a successful. Don’t let the failure, your boss, and your new job rejection, determine your future and your destiny. You have come very far, so, re-develop the emotional viewpoint of being a successful person – this will then become your belief system. Because your actions have produced successful results in the past, you have every reason to believe that they will produce successful results in the future. This is an empowering belief system that will fill you with optimism and courage. Can you just move on from the negativity, the blame already? Move on. Like right now. There is no point in being stuck in the past. In fact, listening to someone going on and on about their challenges and how unlucky they are, is so bland. View those negative experiences as a learning point for you, and identify what lessons they are teaching you about you. You will start to see and identify what little things you can do to improve in your work environment to make sure you are productive, happy, engaged, relate well, achieve and exceed the expectations of your boss and your colleagues. And maybe, just maybe, you will realise that your boss actually did like you all along, and you were the one with the problem after all.
My challenge to you? Expand your horizon. Think out of the box. Focus on changing you. After all, it still does start with you.
‘You have done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination.’ Ralph Marston