Are you wondering what is the secret to overcome obstacles and get everything you want in life? There are people who achieve their dreams, while some give up. Itโs all about the mindset! Let us see how you too can get what you want in life.
Once upon a time, there was a ruler of the ancient Greek city of Sypilus called Tantalus. He was invited to dine with the great Greek gods on mount Olympia, where he stole some exotic fruits to share with the ordinary people. Of course, this made the Gods angry for betraying their hospitality. To please them, Tantalus then sacrificed his own son and offered him to the Gods. Goes without saying, this made things even worse.
As a punishment, the Gods threw Tantalus in the deepest part of the Underworld, reserved for evildoers. His damnation? โ He was sentenced to sit in a pool of water, with fruits over his head. Every time he wanted to take a sip, the water receded. And when he reached for the fruit, it moved up.
Simply put, it was a life of eternal frustration and dissatisfaction.
This story of king Tantalus very likely echoes with anyone with big goals whoโs tried to achieve them all and have fallen shortโwhich captures most of us really.
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Itโs certainly a tantalizing feeling.
Often, success seem so close on the horizon and yetโso far when we try to go after what we want. And every time we fail, we sit there, stewing in the juices of our own humiliation and disappointment, paralysed and frequently discouraged.
If you take it a bit further and do a post-mortem analysis of what happened, the reasons for not succeeding boil down to few common reasons.
So, here is my advice on how to get over these hurdles and get closer to everything you want in life:
4 Steps To Get What You Want In Life
1. Know What You Want
Donโt fall into the too-broad fallacy. We often fail because our goals are too general or too vague.
Donโt just say: โI want to be rich,โ or โI want to be successful.โ Thatโs very undefined. Success has many faces, it means pretty much something different to every one of us.
Be explicitโfor example โI want to finish my book by the end of the year,โ โI want to become a vice president next year,โ โI want to have my own business by the time Iโm 30.โ
It doesnโt matter how big or โcrazyโ your dream is. To be able to plan to โget there,โ you must have a very good idea of what and where โthereโ is.
So, get down to the nitty-gritty details and set for yourself someย S.M.A.R.T goals.
2. Believe in You
We sometimes think that our goals are out of our leagueโthat they are too big and impossible, and that we are mad for dreaming about them. And that we donโt have what it takes to achieve themโthat we donโt have the needed skills, abilities, mojos.
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But remember that it may be all subjective, a perception. So, if you think you are lacking something which stops you from shooting for your stars, assess realisticallyโis it your low self-esteem talking, or you actually need to take some additional training or practice more.
What psychologists callย self-efficacy, or the belief that we can achieve our goals, has been found to be paramount in successfully completing them. To build a belief in You, run a strength inventory. Remind yourself of past successes.
Often, we are so focused on the negative, our shortcomings, the dark in us, that we forget to look at the light and what makes us worthy.
3. See Yourself as the Person You Want to Become
How we see ourselves and what we think of ourselves is a major protagonist in our success story. Itโs calledย self-imageย and generally has nothing to do with the image we see in the mirror. Itโs internal. But how we view ourselves dictates our behavior, actions and outcomes.
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Bob Proctor, the famous coach and public speaker, calls that picture of ourselves we hold deep in ourย sub-conscious mindsย โprime cause of success and failure in life.โ If you have a low self-image, you have a slim chance at winning. Itโs that powerful.
The best ways to build a more favorable self-image are through visualisation and priming.
Creative visualizationย is the practice purposely creating visual imagery in your mind of the things you want to achieve and have.ย โA thought, in its substance, produces the thing that is imagined by the thought,โย according to one of its first advocatesย Wallace D. Wattersย in his bookย โThe Science of Getting Richโย (1910).
That is, your sub-conscious mind drives your performance and successes.
Primingย is another technique for upgrading your self-image. Itโs a way out of the gloom and the โI canโt do itโ feelings.ย Tony Robbinsย admits practicing it every dayย and often talks about the ritual as the step toward turning around your life.
The main idea with these tactics is to challenge the comfort of the status quo. Seeing yourself in your mind succeeding day in and out will help you believe it that it can actually play out so in real life.
4. Try (and See What Happens)
Have you ever been rejected? It stinks, right? It rarely feels as a blessing in disguise, no matter what we are told by the gurus.
But what about if you deliberately were seeking rejection, to get more used to it? This is exactly what tech entrepreneurย Jia Jiangย did, which he also talked about in his famousย Ted Talkย โWhat I learned from 100 days of rejection.โย And guess whatโif you try or ask, he tells us, you will be surprised how many people are willing to say โyes.โ
And of course, not every door you knock on will be answered, but he point is to get more intimate with rejection. Itโs psychologically freeing to know that not every goal has a happy ending and thatโs also perfectly fine.
To advance this a bit furtherโProf.ย Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologists at Boston University, in her excellent bookย โHow to be yourself,โย talks about the Challenge List. Itโs a list of all the things that make us anxiousโand which we need to purposely start doing anywayโfrom public speaking to being more assertive to socializing. Itโs a successful technique in psychology, calledย desensitizationโcontinuous exposure to the fear breaks its spell.
In the end, going after what want you want can be scary and intimidating. Often, it feels like a long shot at best.
Of course, the easiest way out is to dismantle your tent and just leaveโmove on. But can you constantly run away when things get too challenging? Doesnโt sound like the winning strategy, does it? There are better ways to approach your goalsโand amp your chances of success.
Winning starts in your mind.
In the times when I need to remind myself of this, I always remember a line I read a while ago fromย Venus Williams:
โGames are won and lost long before you step on the court.โ
And judging by her strong track record, I believe she got it right.
You can only get everything you want in life by changing your mindset! Do you agree?
Written by: Evelyn Marinoff
Originally appeared on Evelyn Marinoff
โFor more tips and advice on how to improve your confidence, please visit Evelynโs website www.evelynmarinoff.com or follow her on Twitter @evelyn_marinoff.โ
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