It’s mid-February and progress on your resolutions, new projects, goals, and habits are in full swing, right? 😉
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2019.
At this point, most are aware that new year’s resolutions have an abysmal success rate. Brian had a good post on that, how he keeps his commitments to himself, and tools and strategies our clients have used as well. You can read that here: Be Like the 9% Who Achieve Their New Year’s Resolutions
And there’s even more to why most people, to paraphrase The Slight Edge author, Jeff Olson, aren’t consistently achieving their biggest dreams and goals.
This is true whether you want to improve your confidence, your dating life or relationships, your career or financial freedom, your health and fitness, or anything else.
There’s a reason you’re not being consistent – or maybe even starting – the habits and activities you know are what you need to do to get to wherever it is you want to be.
Actually, there’s probably multiple reasons depending on how you’re looking at it. But one of the big, core ones was really well said in an Instagram post by entrepreneur, speaker, and author Gary Vaynerchuk that I came across.
There’s always a deeper reason.
The answers – at least the answers that most empower us – are always within.
“You’re just not confident…you’re insecure” may seem like harsh feedback, but it’s the honest, REAL answer. It cuts right to the core.
As Gary talks about in the post’s caption, insecurity and lack of self-esteem is the biggest issue in our society.
Whether it’s the perfectionism that Gary and his fan touch on in the video, more conscious lack of belief in yourself, or lack of belief in the goal or the steps and habits to get there, so much of it relates back to confidence and deep self-esteem.
If you’re being a perfectionist about starting something, launching something, taking a risk, letting people see what you’ve been working on, asking for that raise or most anything else you want, it’s because you don’t believe in yourself, the thing (goal, project, steps, habits, etc), or both.
If worrying – insecurity – about what people think is stopping you from moving forward, you don’t believe in – or love – yourself or the thing enough.
If worry about failing is stopping you, you don’t believe in yourself or the thing succeeding enough…and your ability to handle failure.
If you’re procrastinating or chronically getting distracted specifically when it comes to the thing.
If you’re making excuses or prioritizing other things when it comes to your actual behavior.
It all relates to lack of belief.
Sometimes that’s ok. Maybe the value of the thing you claim you want actually isn’t high enough for you to step into the tension and habits it takes. But get honest with yourself about what’s really going on.
This thing you want to do or work on but aren’t: Do you really not want it bad enough, or are you maybe making things bigger, riskier, harder, scarier in your mind than they really are? Do you not believe in your ability to handle failure, handle criticism or lack of validation, and then progress and succeed?
Another piece of this is your emotional and mental state around the goal, steps, and habits.
Are you in:
-Avoidance
-Have to
-Want to
-or Choice?
Brian has a post about this that focuses on practicing connecting with women, but this applies to everything you do in life. Brian goes deeper in his post, but in a nutshell:
Avoidance
Pretty self-explanatory. You’re not getting up earlier to meditate, going to the gym or eating healthier, working on that side business, or approaching and talking to women.
Have To, Should, or Need To.
You’re doing it, but not because you want to. It feels heavy. You’re not enjoying it. You’re forcing yourself, pushing, using pure willpower. Like dragging yourself to a job you hate, Monday-Friday. And when it’s not so viscerally vital that it’s the only thing keeping a roof over your head and food on your plate, it’s usually not sustainable. It lends itself to burnout. And it’s a fucking shitty way to live.
Want To, Desire.
You want to do it. You enjoy it.
But, as Brian says in his post:
“Wants and desires feel good if you believe they are possible for you to attain…especially if you actually enjoy the process. Then all you need to do is put in the work and you can accomplish them. But when you want something and you don’t really believe you can get it, or that you don’t deserve to have it, or if it suddenly becomes harder to achieve than you expected, that’s where you can quickly drop back down into the “Have To” stage and begin a further spiral downward.”
Choice (Having, Choosing, Expecting)
In simple terms, you’re doing it from the most solid place inside you. You’re enjoying it.
And you’re confident about it.
“You have a knowing that the results will come and are also happily choosing to take on the process as part of your life – not solely an unpleasant means to an end.”
So really examine the things you’re not working on or doing like you say you want to be. What lack of confidence or belief, or what insecurity is running underneath the hood? And are you in a state of Avoidance, Have to, Want to, or Choice?
If what’s holding you back is fear (which mostly comes from lack of confidence) levels – tension levels – of what you want to work on being too high for you at this moment, a Confidence Journal aka Tension Journal is a great place to start manageably expanding your comfort zone.
The man you naturally are underneath the bullshit barriers and insecurities is confident, driven, and succeeds with relative ease.
