Pushing forward in time of difficulty
Do you have a dream or goal which you would like to achieve, and yet somehow at times, you feel as if your goal is seemingly far from your reach. You had taken steps to try and make it work, but it still feels like you have been walking in the desert for hours in search for an oasis, and yet the destination is still nowhere to be seen.
In most motivational articles, people were encouraged to remain positive, to not give up on their dream and to work harder each day. People DO recognise potential setbacks during their pursuit of the dream but would usually choose to ignore it until the occurrence of the first one. When such happens, instead of embracing the setback and disappointment, some of them chose to submit themselves to failure.
What can a person do to overcome such immense emotion or strong urge to give up? These are perhaps the options which one can consider:
Reconditioning / Recovery - Allowing YOU to submit yourself to disappointment, and sadness for a limited period.
A "quiet" role model / mentor - Research and study on the successful person you would like to be, and what challenges they faced during their initial pursuit of their dream, and what they did to become what they are today?
Recognise the bottleneck to your goal - What made you feel uncomfortable in moving forward?
1 - Reconditioning / Recovery
It is rather normal to feel down when met with setbacks, and such emotional turmoil could cause people to give up on their dream as if their world had been hit by a meteorite so hard that they are unable to stand up to any challenges anymore.
A successful person is one who would rise up as soon as possible to prepare themselves for the next challenge, conditioning themselves to be stronger each day.
"A strong person is not a person who doesn't feel fear, but a person who feels fear and move forward anyway"
In my opinion, I would like to draw to another option, and that is to embrace the disappointment. Take your mind off your dream for the moment, feel the disappointment, let your mind go as deep as possible (a full dive), and ponder upon your dream. Is the dream something of your passion? If it is, should it be something that you could give up easily? In the movie "Inside Out", a person has to acknowledge the sadness within before being able to move forward (Trying to cheer the person up, or asking the person to think positive does not really help at this stage).
Once you have recognised that this is something which you should not be giving up so easily, the next question is where should we begin the recovery process?
As a starter, find some activities that would take 80% of the load off your mind (E.g. Watching a movie, reading a book, appreciating nature, do something light which interests you, etc...) and perform these tasks for the next few days continuously. Once you have reconditioned your mind to a relaxed mode, think about your dream and passion, and what can you do differently, this time, to move forward.
2 - A "quiet" role model / mentor
As suggested by most experienced coach, it would be ideal to get yourself a coach, and them to guide you to become the person who you would want to become in the future. However, if you are a shy person, you may first consider getting a "quiet" mentor online by googling for the success story and the past of your predecessors. Search for their blogs, social network profile, websites, video postings to find out more about their past experiences. Learn from those experiences!
3 - Recognise the bottleneck to your goal
Recognise the bottleneck to achieving your goal, and identify the tasks that make you feel uncomfortable. Once you have listed down all the "obstacles", tackle it one at a time.
Placing yourself in an uncomfortable position helps you adapt to the situation you are placed in
E.g. A person who is fearful of giving presentations (With no experience in giving presentations) was asked to present to a group of colleagues. After a few sessions, he/she would have adapted to the situation, and becoming used to giving presentations to the colleagues.
Or...
A new salesperson who feels shy talking to strangers at roadshows, and he/she has to do it as part of their job. What usually happens is that they tend to feel nervous in the beginning, but as soon as they talk to more strangers, they realise that it is not as scary as they thought things would be. In this case, they too would have adapted to the situation.
To find out more about yourself, or to share your thoughts, contact us at: coaching@wisepolyglot.com www.wisepolyglot.com
Author: Kendray Lau