Remind yourself of your mortality often. Life is short and there is no reason to hide from it or back down. Knowing that life is short should be all the motivation you need to live it the way you want to. It can be hard to change and break ruts because old habits die hard.
How many people are working jobs today that they dreamed of? Not many, but it's not because it's impossible, its because you settle. You get scared of not being able to pay a bill and do the safest thing possible to feel secure.
What is security? Is it working for someone else until they don't need you anymore or is secure living the life of your dreams? One thing is for sure if you have an idea, you are going to have to make it happen.
The best place to make a massive change is with a tiny change in your habits. No one is telling you to try and change your whole life in a day. The key to successful habit change, though is to start small. Most people try and make substantial habit changes.
The Fears That Hold Back Big Dreams
These are the four fears that hold back a dream. They are irrational, and you have made most fears up in your head. You will never be able to get to your full potential until you can let go of these fears.
Life is Short - Stop Fearing Poverty
The fear of poverty is evident here. The reason the fear of poverty grips you is because you equate having no money with death. If you don't have money, you won't have shelter or food, and therefore you will starve to death.
If you live in a first-world country, there are so many safeguards in place to help people who get down on their luck from things like food stamps to being able to collect unemployment checks. There are safeguards meant to help you.
Does this mean that you should aim for these things, of course not, but they can ease your fears. You can also make a list of all the family and friends that will help you if need be.
Every successful person had to take a risk, and many had to take a trip or two through poverty to find their path. The question you must ask yourself is if it's worth it?
You can always go back to playing it safe. You don't want to live your entire life, wondering what if. Many have risen out of poverty before, and you can do the same.
Life is Short - Stop Fearing Failure
Everyone wants to succeed, but no one wants to fail to get there. You will fail at some point, and you should be thankful. Success does not teach much.
Success builds your ego, and it makes you feel untouchable. Failure reminds you of how small you are, and it brings a healthy dose of humility.
People who are fearful of failure think that if you don't try anything, then you never have to fail. You fail by default when you never try. Life is short, so to trying nothing means you waste your whole life, not doing what you want to do.
The more you try, the larger the failures get, and the bigger the lessons are. Experience can be a brutal teacher, but no one said that you have to learn from your own failures.
You can read books and get mentors and learn from the mistakes of others as well. When you learn from others mistakes, you don't have to go through the pain.
Fear of Success
It's weird to talk about the fear of success because most people don't think they have it. The truth is that most people don't know how to handle success. When it begins to come your way you purposely sabotage yourself not to have to deal with it.
The fear of success has to do with corrupted self-identity. If you see yourself as a failure, you will never accept success.
If you feel success coming your way you will run from it because you don't think that you deserve it. We never act against the grains of our self-belief. In one hand we can want success but also see ourselves as being failures.
The cure to a fear of success is to begin working on yourself. First things first, you need to start building your confidence. The best way to do that is through building habits which we will cover later.
The other thing you can do is focus on is changing your identity. You need to change how you see yourself. You have to let go of your past and begin to see yourself as a success.
Everyone has succeeded at something. Focus on the things that you have achieved it. Make the failures smaller and magnify the things that you have done right. Start with morning affirmations that affirm who you now are instead of who you used to be.
Fear of Letting Others Down
The fear of letting others down gets so many people on the wrong path right from a young age. As a child, all you want to do is please your parents.
If they want you to be a doctor, you do that because it will make them smile. Nevermind the fact that you hate blood and you're a gifted artist. You go to school and gt good grades to get into medical school so you can please the people who raised you.
The reality is that living a life built on the expectations of another person will never make you happy. You have to be willing to let some people down on your path to success.
Everyone else will have an idea or plan for your life. Just remember people rarely have more in store for you than they do for themselves. They will tell you to aim for something below where they are sometimes.
Life is Short - Risk is Measured Wrong
When you think about how life is short, it should change how you see risk. Living a life that someone else planned for you and told you is the right way is the riskiest thing you can do.
Imagine getting to the end of your like and realizing you did not live at all. What is a risk when you only get one life.
Risk is not about the chance you have to fall flat on your face. Risk is doing anything that does not lead you to using your gifts and towards fulfillment.
You can make $200,000 a year as a banker and hate every day of your life. That is risky! What if you die? Life is short, and you will have wasted yours hating your days.
You need to look at what is risky and what is not with a different measure. Look at things through the perspective of moving closer towards fulfillment.
It changes what you think of failure and poverty, as well. It all becomes worth it if it's driving you closer.
Where is The Best Place to Start Change
The best place to make a massive change is with a tiny change in your habits. No one is telling you to try and change your whole life in a day.
A great place to start is by building the habit of reading. Reading books is a great way to enhance your perspective with new ideas.
The key to successful habit change, though is to start small. Most people try and make substantial habit changes.
It's not smart to go from not working out to trying to run a marathon the next day. You need to build up to your goal and prove to yourself that you stay consistent.
Habits start to add up. What begins as reading one page a day for a week turns into — reading one book a week for seven years.
The accumulative knowledge you will gain will be immeasurable. It will start as something that seems not to be making a difference. Then one day, something will click in you, and you will change. It takes time, though, and that is why most people quit on this journey.
Life is Short - Habit Stacker is King of Change
Habit Stacker provides resources to help you improve your habits. The first way we do this is through our online course Habit Mastery. The second way is with the Habit Stacker mobile app.
Olympian and founder of Habit Stacker Ian Warner, teaches the Habit Mastery course. He walks you through practical techniques that you can use to improve your life. No fluff or non-sense! You get instant access to over 45 different videos breaking down how to build good habits.
The Habit Stacker app is what you use to live out your habits from day today. It's a habit tracker that lets you know what you need to do each day. The app sets your daily routine board for you each day, so you all you have to do is get the task done at the top of the list. You can look back and see your streaks for each habit. Old habits die hard but with the right tools, you will be pushing your bad habits to the side.