Nobody wants to repeat the same year 75 times and then call it a life. We all crave growth and progress. And we want to improve and live a better life.
It doesn’t matter whether it is in your career, finances, or relationships, we all want to do better.
Think about it, living paycheck to paycheck every month is stressful. If you don’t make enough money, you will have to constantly live in fear. You’ll have to worry about paying the bills and putting food on the table every month.
The same goes with your career and relationships. You don’t want to feel stuck and are not improving.
Most people fail and are living in mediocrity because they lack growth and progress. They fail to create positive changes that make their lives better.
And in this article, we will talk about the 10 things that hinder your growth and progress in life. So, if you want to see yourself making progress and living a better life, stop doing these 10 things…
1. You choose to stay in your comfort zone
That’s right, the moment you choose to stay in your comfort zone, you will never grow or improve. Why? Because if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you will keep getting the same old results.
Unless you make a change – getting out of your comfort zone and doing something different – your results are expected.
Sadly, most people refuse to change, and they don’t want to venture out of their comfort zone because it can be uncomfortable.
I still remember the first time I recorded a video for my YouTube channel. It was uncomfortable. It scared the hell out of me. But I chose to do it anyway. And the more I do it, the more comfortable I get. As of today, I have published about 100 videos on YouTube.
Great things will never come from your comfort zone. Therefore, if you want to achieve great things in life, you must be willing to challenge yourself, get out of your comfort zone, and step into the unknown.
It may be scary, but once you got used to it, your comfort zone will expand, and you will experience growth and progress in life.
Read: 15 Ways How to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live Great
2. You doubt your abilities
The second thing that can hinder your growth and progress is your doubt. Les Brown said it well:
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
When you doubt yourself, you will never go all out. You will then do things with a half-hearted attempt. And you know what? If you don’t go with 100%, you will never succeed.
Hence, stop holding yourself back and don’t doubt yourself.
You may not have the talents or the skills to achieve greatness in life at this moment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
You can always learn. You can always improve. Every master was born a beginner. Before you can do great, you must allow yourself to do good. And before you can do good, you must allow yourself to do bad. You must give yourself the chance to try.
So, if you doubt yourself, you will never give yourself a chance to even try. And if you don’t try, you can’t improve. If you can’t improve, you can’t get better. You can’t do good and become great.
And that will surely hinder your growth and progress in life.
Read: 8 Ways Highly Successful People Overcome Self-Doubt
3. You have the victim mentality
Do you have the victim mentality? It is a mentality that refers to a state of mind in which you feel helpless and as though the world is up against you.
If you are someone who always blames, points fingers, and makes lousy excuses, then you have the victim mentality.
You think that everything is NOT your fault.
- When you are late to work, you blame the traffic.
- When you didn’t get the promotion you expected, you blame your colleagues.
- When your blog isn’t growing, you make lousy excuses that you don’t have time to work on it.
- When you lost the sale, you said it was the client’s fault.
Do you see a common pattern here? As long as you play the victim’s role, you will never grow and make real progress in life.
This is because when you think you are the victim, there’s nothing you can do about it. It was not your fault, and the responsibilities are with someone else, not you.
Hence, you can’t change it. As a result, there will be no growth or progress.
The key is to learn to take full responsibility for your life. No matter what kind of success you are seeking in life, you can never achieve them if you don’t take 100% responsibility for it.
I strongly suggest you get this book and read it right away – The Success Principles from Jack Canfield.
In the book, Jack shared many great principles and insights that can help you change your life and succeed. But the most important principle of all, the first principle in the book is to take full responsibility for everything in your life.
Why? Because if you don’t take responsibility for your life, you cannot change it. After all, how can you change when others are in control of it, right?
Thus, learn to take full responsibility for your life right now. Get the book and read it right away. You can thank me later.
4. You stop learning and improving
Yes, when you stop learning and improving, you hinder growth and progress.
I’m a reader. I make sure I read about 1 to 2 books a month. And I have been doing it for the last 20 years. I must say that reading books have changed the way I looked at life and has helped me grow to become a better person in life.
Of course, you may not like to read. But that doesn’t mean you can’t grow. There are many ways to learn and improve.
If reading books is not your stuff, then you may choose to attend classes, seminars, or workshops. The key is to constantly feed your mind with great stuff that can help you grow.
Rather than spending time watching Netflix or mindlessly scrolling on Facebook, use your time for self-improvement. Read, listen, and learn.
If you have no idea what books to read, check out my best success books list.
5. You have limiting beliefs
Elephants are the biggest mammals on earth. They are strong and have the strength to push over a tree. If you put a leash on a baby elephant, she can’t escape because she is just a baby elephant. She will tend to develop the limiting belief that she can’t break free as long as the leash is there.
Are you the same? Are you acting like an elephant? Do you have limiting beliefs such as you think that success is hard, or that it is always not enough money?
Stop buying into these disempowering beliefs. Your limiting beliefs will hinder your growth and they will stop you from making progress in life.
Limiting beliefs are mental conditioning that prevents you from succeeding in life.
For instance, if you believe it is too late to start a YouTube channel, guess what, you’re right. It will be too late for you because there are too many others doing it.
But you can also choose to believe that it is the best time to start a YouTube channel. If you think so, then you will start to act that way and begin creating videos for your channel.
Do you see how your beliefs can either limit or help you progress forward in life?
Read: Mental Conditioning: How Most People Get Trapped By Limiting Beliefs
6. You have a fixed mindset
Another key thing that hinders your growth and progress in life is you have a fixed mindset.
What is a fixed mindset? It is a mentality that describes people who believe their intelligence, talents, and personalities are fixed and cannot change or grow.
On the other hand, there’s a growth mindset – a mentality that describes individuals who believe their talents, skills, or even circumstances can be changed or developed.
Therefore, it is obvious what you should do – get rid of the fixed mindset and develop a growth mindset.
People who have a fixed mindset believe that they can’t change their situation. If they are lousy at math, then so be it. They choose to believe that their math is bad and they can’t do anything to improve.
On the contrary, people who have a growth mindset will believe otherwise. They believe that if their math is bad, they can improve it through learning, hard work, and input from others.
Read: 15 Ways to Build a Growth Mindset
7. You don’t have a goal, target, or vision to work on
Ask yourself, why do you wake up each morning? Do you have something to look forward to? If you don’t, you need to find one right now.
Set a goal that challenges you to grow and improve. Give yourself targets to work on. And most importantly, have a vision and mission that inspire you to get out of your comfort zone and do better.
Most people are living in mediocrity because they don’t have a clear goal in life. They are living aimlessly like a lost sheep. And they follow wherever the crowd goes.
As Tony Robbins famously said…
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
Setting goals and achieving them may seem like something easy to do, but most people get it wrong. They set the wrong goals, they don’t plan for them, and they have no idea how to make their goals work.
And this is why I recommend you join Goal Setting Formula, a program I created to help anyone achieve any goals they want in life.
8. You don’t plan and leave life up to chances
When was the last time you plan for your life? Or do you prefer to live randomly and leave life up to chances?
If you don’t plan for your life, just remember this saying from Larry Winget:
“No one ever wrote down a plan to be fat, broke, stupid, lazy, unhappy, and mediocre. Those are the things that happen to you when you don’t have a plan.”
You see, if you don’t plan, you don’t know what to do. And as a result, you will become reactive and respond to things that come to you.
But when you plan and you know what you need to do, you become proactive. You go and make things happen than waiting for things to happen.
This is why planning is so vital for your growth in life. You have to understand that success is not created by accidents, but by design.
Meaning, you can only achieve greatness if you plan for it. And if you don’t plan, greatness and success will hinder you.
Read: 10 Simple Steps How to Plan Your Year in Advance
9. You procrastinate
Procrastination is another thing that hinders growth and progress. You know what you need to do to improve yourself and achieve your goals, but you procrastinated. You delay doing the work. And you tell yourself you will do it ‘someday’… But someday never arrives.
If you want to make real progress and create results in life, you must get rid of procrastination.
We all have dreams and goals we want to achieve in life. Both losers and winners have goals and dreams too. The difference? Losers choose to procrastinate while winners choose to do it even when they don’t feel like it.
Think about extraordinary people like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or Muhammad Ali. They are able to achieve outstanding success because they choose to take action even when things are tough.
They don’t procrastinate.
Do you know that Tiger Woods used to train while it rained heavily, even if it was 3 AM? And do you also know that Muhammad Ali didn’t count his sit-ups until it hurt? Kobe Bryant started his training at 4 AM so that he could get ahead of others.
Extraordinary people don’t give procrastination a chance. They choose to take action and work on their dreams even when they don’t feel like it.
If you want to overcome procrastination and become unstoppable, attend this web class from John Assaraf. In the web class, you will discover the 3 keys to crushing procrastination forever.
10. You give up and quit easily
The last thing that hinders your growth and progress in life is you give up and quit too soon. The moment you choose to stop doing it, you stop growing.
You cannot improve if you quit, right? It’s common sense, yet, a lot of people quit on their dreams and give up on their goals.
It may sound contradictory, but you will experience the most growth and make the most progress when you choose to NOT quit and continue to push through the hardships.
Many people are afraid of making mistakes or experiencing failure, and they thought that failure is the opposite of success, which is not.
Failure is not the opposite of success, it is a part of success.
When you fail, you learn the most. When you make a mistake, you don’t quit and you learn the right way to do things.
This is why you must not quit or give up. You will grow when you learn from your mistakes and failures. And you will make the most progress when you find out what went wrong and how to do it correctly.
So, don’t quit and don’t give up. Choose to push on until you get what you want in life.
Read: 7 Steps How To NOT Give Up On Your Dreams
Conclusion
So, these are the 10 things that hinder your growth and progress in life. If you want to improve yourself, experience growth, and make real progress, stop making doing these 10 things mentioned above.
Do you like what you read? Let me know what you think by leaving your comment below…