It is a fundamental part of human nature to aspire to a future that is better than what we currently have. To the point that for those in even the most dire of situations, “hope” is what keeps us alive and going. After all, if there’s no hope that things could someday be better, there’s no reason to even bother trying to make it happen. Yet the reality is that hope alone is not enough to actually change our situation for the better. It’s hope, combined with action – and the sometimes scary moment of ‘taking the leap’ – that is necessary to lead us down a better path.
In this guest post, Stephanie Bogan of Limitless Adviser shares what it is that leads us to inaction and getting “stuck” – even and despite having an aspirational hope of making our advisory practices and our lives better – and why our ability to take the leap (or not) isn’t driven by figuring out the “right” methods and tactics to make the change, but changing our mindset and thinking differently about what’s possible in the first place.
So how do you find a path to better – or exponentially better hockey-stick-style growth – from where you are today. The starting point is to simply write down your revenue, income, hours worked every week, and time off per year. Then write down what you hope it could be if there were no constraints. And then double those goals… and reflect on all the negative thoughts that come to mind telling you it can’t be done, it won’t be possible, or that it’s too good to be true.
Because it’s only by facing our demons – those ‘limiting beliefs’ that we tell ourselves about what can’t be done, even though it clearly can because other advisors have – that we can get clear on what we’ve just been ‘tolerating’ (or outright avoiding), why we’ve gotten stuck in that pattern, and what steps we need to start taking if we really do want to achieve a different and better outcome instead.
Ultimately, the key point is to understand that what limits our success is not actually figuring out how to get to the next level, but the stories we tell ourselves – sometimes unwittingly or entirely subconsciously – that lead us to deny ourselves what’s actually possible. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the path of making a change won’t still entail challenges and a potentially significant amount of discomfort. But if the reality is that you’ve already allowed yourself to become “comfortably-uncomfortable” with your current level of under-success… why not at least redirect that discomfort towards your advantage?
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