YOU FAIL BECAUSE DEEP DOWN, YOU DON’T THINK YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU WANT
Many (or most) of the bullet points above are actually top-layers for this underlying cause: believing you don’t deserve what you want. Many of us, at our core, have buried beliefs and feelings about ourselves that aren’t so savory. Maybe we were teased a lot growing up, or our parents and teachers told us we wouldn’t amount to anything, or we were punished for being smart by our peers. Whatever happened, something happened. And something inside us makes us feel uncomfortable with the idea of accomplishing too many great things as a result.
Entrepreneur and business consultant Sebastian Marshall wrote in his book Ikigai:
Last night, I was talking with my friend. I said, “If you did this, I’m pretty sure you could get your first client at $400/hr within 90 days.” It would have to be his main thing for the next 90 days, but it would likely work.
His core goal right now is total financial freedom. And I laid out a plan that would get him there.
But will he do it? I ask him.
He cringes and says … “No. I won’t.”
“So, that’s a million dollar question. Why won’t you?”
He replies, “I don’t know. I don’t even like thinking about it really, but I’ll try to. I don’t know, fear? I have to confront my potential and the fact that I’m not living up to it? It doesn’t feel right? I don’t feel ready? I don’t think I deserve that much? I think I’d have to study longer first? I don’t know.”
Why don’t people do it?
Hell, I offer to make people money for free, draw up a simple, clearly workable business plan, offer to help out. 80+% of them don’t take it.
It’s another self-esteem conundrum: you always find a way to get rid of what you feel isn’t rightfully yours. The heights and burdens of success make some feel like a king and others like a fraud. For many, getting what they want summons that worm-tongued voice in the back of their mind, prodding their insecurities and fears until they find a way to destroy everything they worked for. It may be a relationship with the best person you’ve ever loved; it may be a dream job you can’t bring yourself to take; it may be a creative opportunity of a lifetime which you ignore for more “practical” pursuits; it may be merely hanging out with people who you actually admire and feeling like a ghost.
Whatever it is, the sludge pool of doubts bubbles up and finds a way, always finds a way, to ruin it for you — to make you ruin it for you — and that’s the hardest truth. It’s you. There is no other in this equation. And as much as you deny it, that fear will always linger and remain as an invisible barrier, a clear film separating you from happiness, pushed through and never broken. These issues can be overcome. But it’s painful and gut-wrenching. And then there’s always just another layer, simmering further below, more fear, ever-present, something we all eventually face over and over and over again.
But if you don’t believe me, believe Yoda:
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