5 ways you’re blocking your own growth

I’ve got stuff on my to-do list I’ve been meaning to do for ages.

From boring chores like tidying overfilled closets, to life-changing plans like sorting retirement savings, it sometimes takes me months (or years!) to get started on projects that are important to me.
Often I know what to do, I know how to do it, but I still can’t get started. Or if I do, I mysteriously get sidetracked and never finish.

Has this happened to you too? I don’t know about you but it happens to me constantly and it makes me feel like a total loser.

One of the perks of being unemployed, as I am at the moment, is that I have tons of free time to make plans (writing more, learning more Korean, making new friends, planning trips). And at the same time, having a lot of time to witness the excuses I come up with for not starting.
When I was busy working I would tell myself lack of time was the issue, but despite having more free time than ever, I’m still not doing much.

I believe seeing your own patterns is the first way to overcoming them, and it’s not been fun facing my shortcomings, but it’s been beneficial.

So, there could be many reasons you’re not making progress on your own goals at the moment, but you might want to consider if any of the below rings true:

1. You worry too much about what other people think

You know that critical voice in your head, that tells you that you can’t do it, you’re too old/ too young/ too fat/ too ignorant and you’ll look stupid (or your own flavour of that)?

When you’re self-conscious, you project your insecurities onto others and imagine this is how everyone will judge you. Which of course they won’t – some might, but not all.
You talk to yourself in a mean way you’d never talk to anyone else (because you’re a nice person), and that puts you off trying. But certainly, no one will judge you as hard as you judge yourself.

Imagine you go to the gym regularly and are super fit, and you see a new gym member coming for the first time looking clumsy on the equipment. Do you think “What an idiot” or do you remember fondly your own beginning and think “Well done, keep going”?

It is said that people who are already good at something will never criticise the learners – the most critical people are the ones who wouldn’t dare to try. If everyone around you is a criticiser, maybe you need to wider your circle or, you know, wear earplugs.

A final thought on this, there is a saying that goes along these lines:

Young people worry about what others think
Middle-aged people stop worrying about it
Older people realise no one was ever looking at them to start with

That’s right, everyone is so preoccupied with themselves that they won’t be looking at you for too long.

So fair to say you should dance like no one is watching because it might be true that no one is, especially while you’re a beginner.

2. You don’t trust your own judgment

Similar to the above, if you have an inner voice that is less than supportive (many of us do), you’ll likely spend a lot of time doubting your own decisions.

What if you need another course, another book, or a private coaching session to figure out your next step? You wouldn’t want to get it wrong, and risk looking stupid (as we’ve just seen above).

But I’m willing to bet you know whether this is a genuine need to get you unstuck, or if you’re using this as an excuse to postpone doing the thing you’re afraid of doing.

I, for one, am guilty of throwing money and courses at my problem. You wouldn’t believe how many resources I have read about blogging, writing, online business creating, all the while thinking “I already knew this” and not managing to write a single post. Over like, several years.

While at the same time, being envious of people who just went ahead and started, and were objectively not very good at the beginning, but several years later are making a good living of their crafts.

So if you have already done the learning and the research, and deep down know exactly what to do, your mission is to get out of your own head and get your butt in action. Or as they say “develop an action bias”.

Think more, do less, and see where that gets you.

3. You expect to be great from the start

If you’re a perfectionist you might suffer from this type of black or white thinking:

Unless something you do is good, it is completely useless. You don’t give yourself space to be average, basically good enough, or just “meh”.

Your brain understands that you can’t be great at something until you’ve practiced it, so you logically know what you must start from the beginner level.

But that doesn’t sit well with you.

You make a few average attempts at a drawing, a book, a business. You end up with a bad sketch or few pages, you get no clients or no social media likes in the first weeks. You conclude it’s not the thing for you and fold instead of just getting on the learning curve and embracing the suck.

This is especially true if you’re a fan of whatever you’re trying to accomplish and you’re measuring yourself against what your idols are doing now, or were seemingly doing when they started (which is probably not their actual starting point, more the point where they became visible. If their start point was rubbish you can bet it won’t be online).

I actually read a really good reframe on this recently, from life coach Martha Beck:

Whenever you’re creating something, if we get really obsessed with making it work right we’re missing the point. Perfection doesn’t really happen. The point is who we become by trying to get that thing.

Take the focus off the thing you are trying to make perfect and realise that in the attempt to make it, you are growing. You are the creation you are really working on all the time.

Meditate on that.

4. You expect to have worked out before you start

You might have heard this one from manifestation specialists and overall enthusiasts: “Jump and the net will appear.”

If you believe this I applaud you. I personally only trust it’s true if you are willing to do a whole lot of prep before the jump. Otherwise, be ready for the net not to appear.

I’m a planner by nature and I like to control the full process and know all bits will work well before I start. But this way it means I sometimes can never start.

Because even with the best planning abilities, none of us can see into the future. The fact is, it is unrealistic to expect to know how things will pan out in advance.

In the words of Martin Luther King:

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, you just take the first step”

So if you’re like me, maybe you just need to bite the bullet and start before you’re ready, because chances are you’ll never really feel ready anyway.

What you truly want to be ready for, is for crap to happen and the plan to change on a daily basis.

This is how software companies operate (they launch the Beta version and sort the issues with updates later), how pilots fly from A to B (constantly re-routing around the weather until destination), and how you likely learn to walk when you were little (get it wrong, fall, start again).

You get there by course correcting. You need to go through step one to be able to tackle step two.

So do jump, trusting you’ll know what to do next if things don’t work to plan.

5. You don’t believe you can do it

This one is a biggie, and one I’m only just getting my head around too.

You can have the right tools and resources, the right systems, the right ideas, the time, and the money. You can make a hopeful start, get the courses and the coaches, get a damn vision board.

But if you don’t think you can succeed, somehow you’ll tank the project. That’s if you even get started.

Maybe you won’t put your all into making it, or you won’t go all out telling people about the project because you’ll be too shy about it. Even if you finish you’ll never feel pleased with the results and keep finding faults in your own work. Because somewhere in your brain there is a voice saying you’re not the type of person who should be doing this, or you’re not doing it as well as other people. You’ve permanent imposter syndrome, cured by doing the thing.

I’ve only started reading about this topic now so I am sure I will write more about it later.

If you’ve got a trail of unstarted or unfinished projects behind you, especially ones you were really keen on and enjoyed doing for a bit, ask yourself whether you feel worthy of success. The answer might surprise you.

Anyway, it’s up to you what you do from here, but maybe start by noticing when these occur, and little by little you’ll start shifting the dial to the direction you want it to go. I know you can do it.

You got this!