How to Overcome Self-limiting Thoughts

Thoughts are like passing cloud formations in mind. You can choose to jump on them and go for a ride, or you can simply watch and let them pass on by.

When I wanted to start Approach Your Actions (AYA), I had so many thoughts crossing my mind. Thoughts on developing blog theme, building website, logo designing, colors of my website, building my email list, and most importantly the value I would like to add in my readers life etc. There were also these scary thoughts in my mind that what if fail or not do well — that almost delayed the launch of AYA for six months. Yes, six months – 180 days, that’s the power of thoughts. Thoughts can make you and break you both. I am happy that I only delayed this and did not deny to this wonderful creation. Overcoming mental hurdles is difficult but doable.

How often have you experienced self-limiting thoughts or self-doubts popping up in your mind when you try to implement your idea or live off your passion.

I am sure it happens to many of us. Whenever these scary thought monsters haunt in our mind, two things happen: Either we procrastinate or we completely give up chasing our idea and go back to our comfort zone.

The ancient book on humanity Srimad Bhagwad Geeta quotes something very insightful about self-doubt.

अज्ञश्चाश्रद्दधानश्च संशयात्मा विनश्यति |
नायं लोकोऽस्ति न परो न सुखं संशयात्मनः || [Chapter 4:40]

ajñaścāśraddadhānaśca saṃśayātmā vinaśyati .
nāyaṃ loko.asti na paro na sukhaṃ saṃśayātmanaḥ .

Meaning…

The ignorant, the faithless, the doubting-self goes to destruction; there is neither this world, nor in any other, happiness for the doubter.

If you notice, these thoughts are our imaginary fears or may be sometime genuine concerns, for which we have no idea how to overcome them. Quitting almost always seems the most convenient option than discovering the solution. However, going for the solution search is always worth every effort and at the end leaves us with most fulfilling experience.

What Are the Common Self-limiting Thoughts and How to Overcome Them?

I’m not an Expert:

Yeah, I know quite a bit about fly fishing, but I am not sure I know enough to convert this hobby into business, or can teach someone or can write a book about it – I am just not enough and also there are  so many who knows more than me and better than me – “I am not enough” – this thought is always first to cross our mind. Many possibilities thus meet a pre-mature death in our mind.

Nobody is born expert, but there is a road map to develop expertise. First step is to start reading about it. We’re so fortunate that we’re living in this internet age where Google Guru are always there with ocean of information on any given subject. For any given idea there are books, blogs, videos, podcast, forums and research data. Study them for 6 months, if you’re genuinely concern about developing expertise.

There is one pitfall though, when you are learning through reading, you never feel enough, and this holds you back from taking actions. Instead, why can’t our action and improvement mission go hand in hand? Start doing now with whatever knowledge and resources available, and keep learning and improving on the go. See how we learn swimming! It’s never sitting on the edge of water holding “how to” books…but throwing ourselves into water and moving our body we figure out how to float and not to sink.

Stop waiting, take actions.

What Other People Will Think:

This is actually the biggest disease. I have yet to find one person who has not got this disease. What other people would think of me if they find out what am I up to? What if I fail? What if they make fun of me or think how silly I am doing something like this? – These and many other such thoughts hold us tight.

Why do we care about people so much so that taking care of our own passions becomes secondary? Why we always need green signal from people before initiating anything that only matters to us? Why do we need support from people in doing things we love? Why do we even think about people when it comes to live our own life the way we want?

Don’t people have their own business and own problems to solve? Yes, there do exist some jerks who have nothing better to do in life except criticizing others, they’d even criticize Steve Jobs for I-Phone design. There were always ill speaker of all great people in the history, but could they stop these achievers? Hell, NO! These naysayers didn’t even exist for them in their mind.

People will always say something nice or bad, there are only these two possibilities. This is their job, let them do theirs, you do yours. Also, don’t compare yourself with others, each of us is unique in our skills, thinking, and actions.

When excuses are easy than actions, we even blame unknown people for our inability to stand up for our passions.

Result Oriented Attitude:

This is good and bad both. However, being result driven and result obsessive are two different things. Being result driven is all about being proactive, doing homework, taking conscious actions, learning from mistakes and avoiding them in your next attempt etc. While being obsessive about expected result is like keep worrying weather our airplane will fly or not without yet even taking off from the ground.

Over obsessiveness for results is about being all thoughts and no actions. Therefore, the remedy is focus on your actions. Make your decisions/choices and take the ownership of your results with open mind an heart. Don’t be shy to learn, correct, implement and improvise. Be action warrior and let the results follow your actions.

Loving Perfectionism and Being a Perfectionist:

Insist for perfection should result in top notch preparation and confident execution of your plans. In stead, many of us just keep over thinking and over worrying about making our goals, planning, vision and mission all perfect, and then re-perfecting them. To keep crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s will not lead us anywhere. Let things roll on first, you can always come back and improve later.

That being said, I would add that sometime in some projects, corrections come with high cost, it’s always better to find defect in the beginning stage of planning than in the stage of final execution, at least that’s what I learned in software testing industry. So give enough thought to your idea but don’t indulge in endless thinking and planning.

You need to take ACTIONS to be PERFECT, You don’t have to be PERFECT to take ACTIONS, As only ACTIONS create RESULTS and RESULTS bring PERFECTION.

Letting Distractions Win Over Your Determination

You are following certain diet for your health goals, and in your close friend’s birthday party there appears this favorite strawberry cake – how do you deal with this situation?

You are saving money for the down payment to purchase your first home, and you notice this tempting offer of 60 inch Smart HD LED TV at 50% discount (however, even discounted price eats up your 3-month’s saving), how would you go about it?

You are committed to read 20 pages of a book per day. Today, due to some extra work you had to stay late in the office, you came home late and you’re tired too…would you still stick to your reading commitment and finish 20 pages before you call it a day or will you skip the reading?

Yes, distractions become more apparent when you are practicing self-imposed restrictions. On the path of development and progress, hurdles are bound to come.

This is a challenge. I know, not easy one.

So allow yourself to get distracted sometime, if remain determined is difficult for you. But then own up to your actions, and work out to balance things out on the next available opportunity.

Eat that cake today, but run two miles extra tomorrow.

Go to sleep if you’re tired but next morning make sure you read 50 pages in stead of 20.

And how about buying home first and then based on the size of your living room you buy appropriate size of TV later on? (Trust me on this, I bought an expensive 3 peace sofa before I buy my home, and now that sofa looks hideous in open concept living room of my house. In stead of three peaces, sectional sofa would have been more appropriate choice! But can’t do anything now.)

In short, know the difference between your temptations. Don’t jump out for the one which you cannot recover.

Be flexible with yourself, but also make it up for your goals. Ultimately your goals are for your own benefits. Right?

Giving Up Way Too Early:

Whenever we meet with challenges or initial failure, the first thing happens is we lose interest in continuing. Quitting become so compulsive in our heart.

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.” – Buddha

Failing is embarrassing, I agree. Especially when we haven’t worked on how to perceive failure, dealing with failures becomes really demotivating. We have made our mind very conditional about how we perceive everything. We somehow programmed our brain to look at success and failure differently.

We believe success is good, something we should talk about and feel proud of, and failure is bad and something we should be ashamed of or avoid talking about it.

Simply, change your category for failure. Take out failure from the list of bad category. Create entirely new category and name it “Lessons Learned From Failure” category and place your failure into this. You won’t feel the same when you meet failure next time.

Always remember, failure comes with two important things:

1. Information: Failure has messages in it, look for them. It has hints, suggestion, lessons and other relevant information that can be used effectively to be successful. Failure is a guiding post which points out the correct direction. It very clearly says what works, and what doesn’t. Use this informations for your own benefit.
2. Motivation: Failure provides a great motivation, wisdom, and maturity that further shapes your personality and build your true character. You then would be able to think differently and act differently in any chaos. This helps you to lead yourself and others effectively.

Remember, the only failure is to fail to learn from your failures.

On a different note, if you look at carefully you will notice that human brain is designed in a way that it can ignore affirmative statements but it cannot ignore questions. When you ask questions, your brain immediately look for the answers. Whenever, negative thoughts overpower you and make you feel like giving it up, always ask your mind this question:

“When it comes to work for the achievement of my goal, what’s bigger – my problems or my willingness to work despite all hurdles?”

Remember, every choice comes with it’s corresponding consequences. If you want to buy a car, you also need to pay for auto insurance – things come with strings attached. Whatever we choose, determines what we will receive at the end. If you choose not to quit and continue hustling, you will be decently rewarded at the end.

Choose wisely and thoughtfully.

Call To Actions:

1. Find out your self-limiting thoughts and note them down.
2. Deal with your fears and genuine concerns with confidence.
3. Take pen and paper, and note down your options to overcome your self-limiting thoughts. Chose the one which best resonates with your dreams and desires, not comforts and convenience.

Don’t surrender to your self-limiting thoughts easily. Learn to overcome them, and live your best life.

Be a victor, not a victim!

Have fun

Bharat Jhala

(Image Credit: Joshua Earle)

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