Remove friction from your life asap

Self-improvement is primarily the process of getting out of your own way.

You’ll never be perfect or get rid of all these problems, but you can make them less severe.

You can stop getting in your own way so much. You can stop making your life harder than it has to be so much. All you need is a slight edge — enough momentum to get you going.

You Let Anticipation Scare You Out of Potential Success

How many times have you been in a situation where the anticipation of the event was much worse than the event itself?

Nine times out of ten in life, the worst that can happen in any situation is getting a no. And, if you’re bold, and try enough times, you’re probably going to get the results you want in the long run. Remembering this can help. Also, it helps to reflect on all the times your anticipation-based fear was wrong.

You don’t realize how much you’re missing out on by letting your anticipation get the best of you.

Read also: What is overthinking and how to overcome it

You’re Letting Your Past Define Who You Are

I’ve been trying to come up with a name for this feeling. That feeling of deep regret after you do something you know you shouldn’t have done. You made a mistake, did something you’re ashamed of, did something that makes you feel like you’re not going to bounce back.

I’ve felt deeply stuck after moments of either major mistakes on my part, or situations that I didn’t necessarily cause, but felt I could’ve avoided.When you feel deeply stuck after a past event, there’s not much you can do about it.

Time heals, cliche, but true.

It’s what you decide to do after it subsides that matters. You can let those situations define who you are. You can let the trauma from your past dictate how you’re going to behave in the future.

Or you can see the past moment for what it really is. It’s just something that happened.

You Care Too Much About Being Right

I stopped thinking in terms of right or wrong and instead think in terms of useful or not useful. I have my biases but I try my best to change my mind if they’re not working for me.

I focus on trying to get it right rather than trying to be right. These days, I see so many people stuck in a psychological prison because they need to be right.

Some people need the world to be out to get them, even when it isn’t. Some people need to believe that they’re helpless and powerless when they’re not.

Everyone views the world through their own lens, frameworks. These frameworks guide your decision-making. What frameworks are you using that are making it harder to get what you want? What frameworks are making it harder for you to be happy?

Which would you rather have? The framework? Or the results?

You Focus On What You Lack

There are a lot of things I wish I could change about myself.

But, guess what? Either I can’t change those aspects or it’s not a good use of my time to try to change them. Instead, I focus on the things I do well, the things I like about myself, and the avenues I can pursue based on all the above.

You get some blessings and you get some flaws. Other people would love to have some of the blessings you have, just like you’d love to have some of theirs. You can go a long way to learn pretty much any skill or trait. You can mitigate some of your weaknesses and you should.

But focusing on what you lack blinds you to all the potential upside in your life.

Read also: Mastering productivity: How to get more done in less time

You Think Way Too Much

You’ve been thinking of starting that business for how long now? You’ve been thinking about switching careers, moving to a new city, traveling, whatever.

You’re always thinking about executing that next big move in your life. Well, when the heck are you actually going to do it? I look back at my own life and see how much time I wasted thinking about executing certain moves.

It took me five years to go from working a job I hated to owning my own business and having freedom. But had I just ruthlessly executed, it probably would’ve taken two years tops.

What kept me in loops of thinking too much? All the things I’ve mentioned so far really. The anticipation of what would happen kept me from launching many products and aspects of my business. But you have to launch to find out if your idea works. Thinking too much about past failures in business kept me from executing ideas in the future. But the past is just a moment of time.

The moment you begin to act, you turn off that mental chatter. Action is the only antidote to that mental chatter. And every time you act instead of think, you’ll look back and wonder why you spent so much damn time thinking in the first place.

Contributed by Ayodeji Awosika

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