How to Improve Yourself
The Truth About Perceived Limitations
Limitations are circumstances or situations that stand in the way of goals that you want to achieve. Perceived limitations are the way that you interpret a situation and see obstacles that aren’t actually valid.
It’s the truth as you believe the truth to be rather than a fact. An example of this is when a dog looks in the mirror and sees his own reflection. He won’t go near the mirror because he perceives it to be another dog. He growls and fusses, but doesn’t move because his perception has limited his movements.
Intelligent Ways to Overcome Self-Perceive Limitations
Work Harder and Smarter
Hard work is a faith that you will win. It’s the actionable belief that whatever is in front of you stands no chance against your determination and resolve. Always remember that limitations are weaker than your hard work. Stay consistent with effort and don’t feed into your feelings and emotions that are inconsistent with your goal. At the same time, work smarter as well. The difference between these two is based on how you approach the task.
Hard work would mean spending long hours to complete the work without any shortcuts, and not giving up even though it’s a tedious job. Smart work would be aiming for the same results but with planning and prioritization of tasks.
Stop Procrastination and Laziness
Don’t wait for the deadline to start working. Sometimes, overcoming limitations can be done by realizing that life is short and every minute counts. When you maximize your day, you put yourself in the habit of reaching for your full potential which happens to be far outside of your perceived limitations.
Stick to Your Vision
When you lack vision, you have no direction to take your life. With no direction, you limit yourself to external sources and opinions that should hold no weight on you.
Having a vision means seeing yourself as if you are already the person you want to be.
For example, if you want to be a famous ballerina. You need to practice hard and learn how to block out negative opinions.
None of us strive to be average. We strive for our envisioned self-defined greatness. Having a vision requires action, so if you aren’t willing to take action then you’re settling for average at best.
You’re Right – You Could Improve!
Lying to yourself is the worst thing you could do in any situation in your life. Lying can keep you stuck in your comfort zone, and you’ll never know what you could have achieved.
The dreams that you’ve always wanted to chase will remain dreams when you lie to yourself and tell yourself that you’re good enough and that you don’t need to level up.
You have all the skills and the knowledge that you’d like to have – so why bother chasing something more? Moving ahead in anything in life requires that you be honest with yourself.
Examine where you are in life and what you’re striving for.
Many people want to do better; they want to achieve more – but they don’t want to face what they need to do to reach a higher level of success.
Only by looking at the areas in your life where you’re lacking will you ever achieve something better. There is always room for growth in every area in your life – whether that’s starting your own business, improving your relationships, working on bettering yourself – or whatever.
Stop adjusting your satisfaction to fit your comfort zone.
If you’re not truly happy with your current reality, you end up staying right where you are. You don’t level up personally or professionally.
You have to raise your expectations for your goals in life – whether it’s for your career or your personal satisfaction. Some people don’t want to face the fact that they need improvement because growth often requires a pruning stage.
You have to let go of some things to achieve something else. Don’t get caught up in the trap of small thinking. An example of this is someone who works in an online business.
They want to create a product and get it out there to potential customers. He knows he’s going to need affiliates to help him promote the product, so he sets a goal of finding ten affiliates and then never works on improving that goal.
Six months down the road, he still has just ten affiliates. Regardless of where you are right now or whatever happiness it is that you’re pursuing, there is always room for you to improve. If you’re honest with yourself, you will find what it is that you’re after.
Every Expert Was Once a Newbie
It can be exciting to get into a niche that you believe in, but it can also be scary because, with every niche, there’s always something to learn or improve on. So it can be easy for a newbie to develop the mindset that only an expert can succeed to a certain level.
You have to realize that every single expert in any niche stood in the same place that you are now.
They certainly weren’t born knowing everything there is to know.
Experts learned – and it wasn’t an instantaneous knowledge, either. They learned as they went along. Made mistakes. They backtracked. Let go of what didn’t work and held onto what did.
They are the experts because they’re just like you – but with some time and effort mixed in. That’s the only difference. You actually have a bit of an advantage over someone who’s an expert in a niche.
Some people want to learn about the same niche, too. But they feel a lot more comfortable at the thought of learning what they need to know from you. They would prefer to learn from you because you haven’t been in the niche as long as a professional.
Experts can sometimes be intimidating.
They’re so used to doing what it is that they do that they forget what it’s like to be brand new. So they’ll use jargon associated with a niche that a newbie won’t understand.
The expert won’t explain it because he’s forgotten what it’s like to be new. You haven’t. So you’ll be the one explaining things as you go along because you realize that if you didn’t know what it meant, then those wanting to learn probably don’t either.
Experts can sometimes fail to give enough details in the steps that it takes to reach their level of success. They’ll sometimes assume that people have already mastered the previous steps.
But not you. Not someone who’s starting out. Newbie instructors help make other people feel encouraged. You make them feel like they’re capable, and you’re just as much cheering for their journey as you are your own.
When you’re just getting started, you’ll take the time to explain terms and details, and you’ll pause along the journey to make sure everyone understands what’s going on.
Plus, a newbie will also often talk about the emotional side of the journey – the hopes and dreams of what it is that you’re doing because they also feel that same connection.
As a newbie, you’re not someone who has arrived, and now you’re up higher looking down on those who want to learn from you. Instead, you’re right there toiling beside them, looking for the same thing.
You want your own dreams fulfilled.
It’s easier for newbies to make a stronger, more loyal connection to people than it is for experts to – especially if those experts are big names.
People wanting to learn can tend to think that the expert has already “arrived” and can’t possibly understand their frustrations, fears, drive and hope to succeed.
How Do Others View You Compared to Your Own Mindset?
Your mindset is how you view yourself and the things that you do. Some people have a positive mindset. Others have a negative one. Still, others are a mix of the two, depending on their mood at the moment.
Regardless of which one best describes you, your mindset can wield great power over how you live your life and what you do and don’t accomplish. One way that your mindset can impact your success is by asking yourself what others say about you that you blindly accept as the truth.
You’ll want to be careful here – because the words that someone says can be truthful, but they can also be a perception on their part that contains no truth at all.
There’s often a great divide between how others view you and how you view yourself. Your mindset can be a great tool to help guide you toward success, or it can cause you to stagnate.
In some cases, you can become so convinced that your negative mindset is right that you’ll give up on chasing your dreams – especially if that mindset is reinforced by haters.
You can start to think of yourself as a loser who can’t do anything right – when in reality, you’re successful and well thought of. People like you, and they want to hear the advice that you have to share.
But all you can focus on is what the few haters have said – that you’re not good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough, or worthy of being followed for your knowledge.
You have to realize that people are going to hate no matter what you do.
Even if you did everything the way they thought you should and said all the things that they thought you should, they’d still be negative toward you and about you.
Because the problem is not you, it’s them. And the quickest way to derail your success is to pay attention to the audience that you’re not going to be serving anyway.
It can be hard, but you have to learn to tune out the haters.
If you struggle with low esteem, this may be particularly problematic for you. Know that haters aren’t your audience. They’re not the ones who want your help anyway – so it’s okay to weed them out and don’t ever feel bad about giving someone the boot.
Pay attention and focus your energy on the people who love what you have to offer and how you present it to them. Even if you don’t feel like you’re all that, you still have the knowledge that they want.
The shiny excitement that you bring to the table appeals to them. You make learning fun. You give them hope. They can succeed because of the value you have to provide them with. Let that be your mindset.
Are You Afraid of Change?
Change is what happens when a situation, something or someone becomes different than before. Change can indeed be scary – even when you know that the change would be good for you or for the happiness that you’re pursuing.
One of the reasons that people fear change is because it’s outside of your comfort zone.
Change means that you have to learn more. You have to grow. You’ll be put in a situation again where you don’t have all the answers.
This isn’t a bad thing, despite what you might be thinking. You need to grow. Your dreams, your relationships, your business and everything in your life need to improve continually.
Anything that isn’t growing runs the risks of dying. You don’t want that to happen just because you may be afraid of change. What can help is to identify what it is that you’re worried will happen when change comes.
When someone fears change, there’s always a root cause below the surface.
Once you figure that out, it can make the change easier to accept. You might be afraid that if you level up in your business, you might lose some of the clients that you now have as a result of that change.
But look at it this way: before you had those clients, you had to change something to get them. Maybe it was learning something new or stepping outside your comfort zone.
Maybe you’re afraid that if you change something in your life, it will bring on more responsibilities. If you change from a newbie to an expert because you’ve taken steps to level up, you might be asked to speak at a conference or to teach an online webinar about what you know.
Keep in mind that you don’t know all the ins and outs that change will bring in your life.
All you have while you fear it is just the feeling of fear, and that’s not rooted in reality.
The majority of your fears never come true. You don’t have the expertise or knowledge or grace to go through a change until you’re actually submerged in the process of change.
Standing on the brink of it wondering and worrying what change might do to your life is a pointless exercise. You will never know until you do something. Changing can mean that you’ve taken a step outside of your comfort zone, and you see that you can do far more than you ever thought you could.
That, in itself, can be scary – because once you’re out of your comfort zone, you’ll never be able to fit back in there again. It’s like squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube – it won’t go back in once it’s been released.
How Profits and Patience Play into Your Perceived Limitations
Perceived limitations can make it difficult to chase what it is that you want out of life. You can convince yourself that you just don’t have the money you need. This can happen quickly – especially if you’re focusing on people who are living the dream that you want.
You can convince yourself that you’re too frustrated to learn – too frustrated to figure out how to make what it is that you want to actually work. These are excuses that can be rooted in fear and impatience.
You build your dream a step at a time.
It’s not the wealthiest, the smartest or the most successful people who succeed – but the person who doesn’t give up. Perseverance is always the key because it finds a way around any perceived limitation you might have.
You have to find a way around any obstacle that you feel is standing in your way if you truly want your dream to come to life. If you don’t, then maybe you just don’t want it badly enough.
When you want a dream to come true, you’ll find a way around, over, under, or through whatever is standing in your way.
Find your why.
Look within and determine why it is that you want what you’re after.
This why can be the powerful force that drives you toward success. For example, one mother began business after going through a contentious, horrid divorce.
Her why for starting her business was because she wanted her children to see that life can always be rebuilt regardless of how dark things appear in the moment.
When you have a reason driving you, you’ll still have the obstacles. You’ll always have the fear, you’ll still struggle with your mindset – but instead of sitting down and quitting when things get hard, your why can be what pushes you to go on.
You might sit at your keyboard and feel nervous your whole way through that webinar or tutorial, but your why will keep you there, and you’ll keep taking that next step that you need to take.
If a lack of money is one of your perceived limitations, that doesn’t need to be the thing that holds you back. You can barter for the things that you need – even if your finances are severely limited.
Even those on a shoestring budget can build their dreams.
There are plenty of sites online where you can hire someone to do what you need done and pay a low fee.
You can offer to intern for someone or to be his or her assistant in exchange for them teaching you what you need to know. You can trade skills. You’ll always have something else that someone needs.
You can partner with someone such as in a joint venture. You can find what you need and learn what you need as long as you stop being the one limiting your success.
Don’t accept the idea that you can’t do something from others or even from yourself. Whenever the thought arises that something may be too big of an obstacle for you, challenge it.
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