The more I have been around this 'change' stuff and the more I work to change things in myself, the more I've come to believe the following two things:
First, I think the biggest hurdle in people's quest to become the best possible version of themselves is fear of failure. It hurts to fail. It is embarrassing. It brings shame down on us. There is not much worse than having to say to yourself "well, I blew it again, no surprise there." That has been a major hurdle in my life anyway.
The internet is FULL of stories of inventors, sports heroes, businessmen and others who describe in detail how failures in their lives not only occurred, but were necessary for them to ultimately achieve what they did. I was reminded of this the other day when I saw this old Michael Jordan advertisement:
A few other great quotes:
Winston Churchill: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
Ben Franklin: " Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out."
Michael Jordan: "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."
John Wooden: "Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
These are just a few, I'm sure entire books have been written compiling great quotes about failure!
Second, I think that people generally downplay their successes too much. It is very easy to look at a success and think to ourselves "ya, but anyone could have done that" or "Ya, but I still can't..." We downplay our accomplishments and we wallow in our failures. That is COMPLETELY backward! We should be downplaying our failures (within reason) and celebrating our successes!
I believe that making changes in our lives operates very much like a muscle does. At first, our ability to stick with something, to commit to it, to sacrifice for a goal is weak and feeble, but as we go along and have a few successes (even just a few attempts), that muscle begins to get stronger. Before we know it we've accomplished something. Before we know it, we've moved on to a few other things and now we've accomplished several things. And before you know it, we are able to look in our rear view mirrors and see that those were not small things after all; they were actually pretty BIG things and our attitude becomes "Ok, what next?"
So get out there. Pick something small. Stick with it. Take it seriously. Focus on it. Be intentional about it. Tell your friends and family about it. Celebrate your successes. You can do it. You deserve it.
