What limits you from progressing?
Just as it’s important to find your purpose and vision, it’s important to know what’s stopping you.
I have plenty of hobbies that all make me smile.
I have plenty of people surrounding me that make me smile.
One could argue that I already have everything I need to be happy and feel fulfilled.
Yet, I still felt like there was something missing.
The equation just didn’t add up.
What could it have been?
Right…
Time.
Energy.
Willingness.
Focus.
Action.
Discipline.
Resilience.
Commitment.
I started mapping out all the thieves in my life that distracted me and took all my time and energy away.
I noticed my willpower to anything meaningful was lost entirely.
And focus… does that still exist?
What is discipline even?
There are some serious issues here.
Because even when knowing what your purpose is, that’s just not enough.
We have access to all the knowledge in anything really, but our problems still very much exist.
There’s something else missing here.
Action.
Yes, that’s it!
But often times there’s something in the way for us to act.
And if there isn’t, we create that obstacle ourselves instead.
So, the real easy solution would be to just get rid of those obstacles, right?
Yes, sounds simple enough.
But to remove them you must first know of them.
Sort of like a loop, I realize.
You must act but can’t do so because of something in the way, but to remove that something, you must first know of it and to know of it you must act.
To break out of this loop will not be easy, but I know it can be done.
So, by looking at the purpose and vision, we should already have a pretty good idea on how to get there as well.
That’s not what we’re after here though.
I managed to realize what stopped me from progressing any further because I set the time to do so.
And funnily enough, time was one of the biggest obstacles – again, a loop.
Not having enough time but need time to figure it out.
I believe time is what stops most people.
Feeling like we don’t have enough of it.
That’s perhaps where to start looking?
What are you doing with your time?
Is it really spent on the things you want to?
Again.
24 hours in one day.
8 to sleep and 9-10 for work.
6-7 hours remaining.
I’m sure they can be used more productively…
Scrolling on social media?
Binge watching Netflix?
Falling in the traps of YouTube?
Watching sport on tv?
Doing chores?
Picking up the kids?
Those are all your time thieves…
And there’s plenty of them that can be removed.
Maybe not sport but that’s not every night so it’s fine, and if it is, some priorities are to be set.
It’s actually very easy to find out what takes your time away from you when having it written down.
But it can’t be done without actually dedicating the time for it.
That’s what I did.
Here’s a simple way you can do it too.
I mean, I’m not talking hours here, just a few minutes will do.
By knowing what takes up all of our time it’s extremely easy to just remove them.
This is where willpower kicks in.
Which I did not have a lot of after working a full day.
Another obstacle, how to get around it?
Social media, as addictive as it is, is very tempting when you just don’t feel like doing anything else, because it’s a so damn easy escape.
And worse, when you’re tired, it’s even more difficult to quit because we feel great satisfaction from using it.
Another thing keeping us on there for long times is the fear of missing out.
We scroll one more time just find out what the next post is and to avoid the fear of having missed something.
We’ve made this an obstacle for ourselves – and the developers are not making things easier for us either.
The simple solution would be to just not enter those apps in the first place.
The way I freed myself up from this was to make them less accessible and less enjoyable.
I split it into different stages.
First, turning off any notifications to avoid being disrupted.
Second, putting the apps far away from my home screen to avoid noticing them.
Third, setting up screen time blocks for the use of those apps.
Fourth, removing them entirely and turning off the watch history on YouTube to avoid new recommendations.
And then I made the important tasks and the things I wanted to do more enticing and easier to access.
Putting the book on top of my laptop.
Making the shoes visible to encourage a walk.
The distracting things now became an entire process to access them while the correct things were the easy choice.
Lazy as we are, which one do you think I picked every single time?
To start reading was now the simple choice to make.
But to actually keep reading and take in what the book has to offer… that’s a different story.
Our focus is limited to non-existent because it’s constantly pulled away from us today.
So, at first, even though it was easy to begin with, I saw no point in doing it because I couldn’t focus on what I read.
Discipline, discipline, discipline…
Yes, but that’s now my next obstacle to tackle because I had none of it.
No focus, and no discipline.
How would one achieve anything?
It’s simple, remove the no’s.
Focus, and discipline.
Those need to be trained up.
Committing to things and trusting yourself is the starting point.
But here we go with yet another couple of obstacles.
I didn’t fully commit to things because I didn’t trust myself.
When I said I would stop eating sugar, I still ate it the next day.
When I said I would start pursuing some of my goals, I still found myself stuck on YouTube.
Anything I said I would or wouldn’t do was just words that my brain eventually stopped listening to, because they were not real anyway.
I realized I wouldn’t get anywhere in life, other than regret, by continuing letting all these obstacles guide me.
I started saying to myself “as if my life depended on it” whenever I said I would do something.
Because of it, I reached a point where I kind of just forced myself to do whatever I said I would do.
Your obstacles and action taking is pretty much an endless loop that seems impossible to escape.
But the thing is, by removing social media and online streaming altogether for a majority of the week, you will already feel more energized, you will already have more time leftover, and you will eventually start using your time better.
A lot of those other obstacles will suddenly start disappearing and you’re left with everything you need to get going.
If you know your vision and purpose but still don’t do anything about it, then it probably isn’t strong enough or seem waaay out of reach.
It’s a difficult task to navigate through all your obstacles.
They’re often interconnected with your vision and purpose.
But just by knowing of them will make it easier and more encouraging to do something about them.
Finding them alone is not enough, but it is great progress, and it is a step forward.
Hopefully you now know what your obstacles are and have realized that they are in fact obstacles.
Removing them is as easy as finding an alternative thing to do instead – or nothing at all…