Do you feel like you’re not moving in the right direction? Like life stays the same no matter what you do? Feeling like you can’t get ahead in life can leave you feeling hopeless.
With this article, I hope to take away some of that pain. You’ll learn how successful people become that way, and what they do to get on the right track when things aren’t going their way. As you’ll see, feeling like you can’t get ahead in life is nothing but a mindset, a habitual way of thinking that you can change with consistent action.
Can’t Get Ahead in Life Financially?
It’s common to feel stuck. This is especially true when it comes to entrepreneurship and your financial situation. For example, it’s possible that …
- You own a side hustle to make some extra income, but growth is slower than expected
- You always spend more than you want and struggle to stick to your financial plan
- You have the courage to start your own business but aren’t making any money
- You depend on family members to make ends meet
- You have a hard time paying of student loans, car payments, or credit cards
These situations aren’t easy to overcome. Tackling them takes courage, especially in entrepreneurship (By the way, I wrote about building your courage in this article).
What’s the solution? This, of course, is specific to the situation, but a step in the right direction can only take place when you identify your fears and deal with them accordingly.
Related: In Business, What Feels Like the End is Often the Beginning (4 min. read)
How to Deal with an Underlying Fear Effectively
Your comfort zone is a beautiful place where nothing ever grows. Comfort closes us off to growth and keeps us from living the life we desire.
The truth is that new opportunities only present themselves when we deal with our fears. In entrepreneurship there are many things that can prevent us from being satisfied:
- Being unable to feed yourself and your family
- Not having enough money in your emergency fund
- Having insufficient monthly income to sustain your operations
- Spending a lot of time on your business but not making any revenue
- Struggling to identify new opportunities and brining in new clients
The first step to dealing with these fears is to identify them. We must name them and ideally write them down so that we remember, word for word, what exactly it is that is making us afraid.
Next, we must take rapid action. You don’t have to solve the problem all at once. Consistency beats intensity; Taking small steps (ideally fast and without much thought) is more sustainable than putting in a lot of work all at once. Little effort will often do the trick.
Once you feel comfortable addressing your fears, it’s time to do the same with your limiting beliefs.
Related: Working Your Life Away? Entrepreneurship May Be Your Way Out (5 min. read)
Some Great Books on Mindset
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Mindset
by Carol S. Dweck
Awaken the Giant Within
by Tony Robbins
Related: The Perfect 9-5 Exit Strategy: A Fail-Proof Guide to Escaping a Dull Job (8 min. read)
When You Can’t Get Ahead in Life, You Must Believe That You Can
Limiting beliefs hold you back from achieving your goals. They manifest themselves in your mind through repetition, often with little evidence that they’re true:
- “I’m not good enough.”
- “I will never be successful.”
- “I’m bad at this.”
These beliefs often diminish our confidence, up to the point that we feel as though our confidence is killing us. The best way to change this way of thinking is by following a three step process: identifying the limiting belief, finding evidence that it’s not true, and repeating an opposite but positive affirmation until it becomes a new belief.
You might believe that you will never achieve your business goals. You feel like you’re a determined entrepreneur, but for some reason, you convinced yourself that you’re not good enough to reach success in your endeavour.
Once you have identified the belief, you can undo it the same way you created it: through repetition. Choose the exact opposite belief of the one you’re currently holing and try to find evidence for its true.