You Do Have What It Takes – Why and How?
Even the best of us feel doubtful about our abilities to fulfill our dreams from time to time – unsettled sensations in our gut, head, and shoulders, lingering thoughts, images of defeat, and feelings of guilt interwoven with resignation and frustration.
How do you build the experience of self-esteem, self-expression, and grounded pride in yourself consistently so you can fulfill your dreams?
And… how do you do that especially when there is no apparent evidence of your abilities – financially or otherwise?
1. Aspire to greatness and the extraordinary every day.
You have capabilities already – you would not be reading this article otherwise. You may have a gap to close in your skills, but if you close them every day, you can achieve the extraordinary fairly quickly.
Set rational goals but stretch yourself daily in the accomplishment and the manner of the accomplishment. If you aim for great, you will at least reach good.
2. Build up rationally to breakthroughs.
There could be such things as innate or inborn talents. However, most talent is from consistent application and practice rather than instant recognition. Most people have talents that are not built up to maturity where they produce consistently great results.
Be honest about your current skills and your current challenges. Invest wisely in your education and guidance: Develop a structured plan every month to build your skills up a little every month.
3. Develop a clear vision that is compelling, lucid, and invites others to engage.
You have the ability to create a vision. A big chunk of your brain is dedicated to vision processing. Most of this processing creates or ‘makes up’ what you see – what you see is not exactly what is ‘out there’ but a processed version of what is ‘out there’.
Your brain has the ability to create a vision and then fulfill it within integrity. Creating a vision is more difficult and complicated than most people think – but once you master it, it becomes easier and quicker to the tongue and mind. How do you start?
Done is better than perfect – start with crafting an easy one-sentence first draft mission statement that inspires you at least somewhat. Done is better than perfect.
4. Reduce Neediness
People who are your customers and prospects (or possible investors, partners, etc.) can smell neediness even if they do not mean to smell it out. The first stage is awareness: At the end of every interaction you have, notice where and when you compromised your value or ‘sold yourself short’.
This is how I learned from my first mentor – I would record my conversations and play them back to him at times – he would point out where I could have presenced my strengths and stuck by them – valuable lessons indeed that led to more joy and less stress over time.
Obviously, if you are in starvation, you need to eat. Barring those kinds of instances, question your neediness dictating your business.
Do you really need what you think you need in the timeframe that you need it? If you do, develop a plan to handle that need with urgency.
Or can you step aside from the neediness and have your presentation of yourself come from your vision and what is important for your customers?
5. Build Your Integrity Firewall / Question and be selective about critique.
You have natural, innate integrity – a sense of completeness and things aligned that you were born with. It is still there.
All you have to do to restore your integrity and that good feeling down in your guts is to look for what is missing in your business or life (e.g. practices, tools, skills, communications, tasks that need to be done or put in) and then put those back in. e.g.
If you know that you need to get back in communication and resolve something with someone, schedule a time with that person as soon as you can to do so.
Be true to your values and your boundaries of what you will do and will not do in your business. People are mostly well-meaning – but watch it when people try to give you advice or ‘feedback’ without finding out what you really want or need or aspire to.
Often times engaging in this kind of ‘feedback’ distracts or leads us astray from what is truly important in your business.
6. Practice, Practice, Practice! and Get out of Your Head.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The same way you create undeniable value for yourself – practice every day – practice everywhere and every opportunity you get.
Practicing the above points and more will lead to mastery of getting out of your head, out of neediness and unnecessary distractions – into the world of focus, joy, play, and results.
Myself, my top master-minding experts and my top 30 clients engage in expressions of doubt from time to time. It is not only normal but expected of great people who aspire to great heights.
This is a sensitive area to engage with and requires this last final factor to ease and lubricate the path to balanced, unassailable integrity and success.
7. The last but most important factor: Develop a sense of Play, Curiosity, and Humor
If all the above sounds overly serious to you – it is because you are pretty too serious yourself :-).
Develop a sense of play and curiosity as well as humor in your approach to these points – be prepared to fail and learn – be prepared to enjoy the process of building yourself up to be the full self-expression of your dreams.
If you’re ready to learn more, contact me or follow me on LinkedIn.
Since 1991, I’ve been reflecting on, designing, and implementing methodologies and systems for bringing a transcendent, creative and innovative approach to critical aspects of entrepreneurship.
