5 Setbacks that Stop You BIG Time

Have you ever felt that you want to succeed but whatever you do there seems to be all kinds of things that are stopping you? While it is true that life happens, it’s how we respond to it that makes a difference. What usually happens is that we get accustomed to how we perceive the reality and unnoticed we react to it, again in a habitual way. Here are the 5 most common automatic reactions I see around me and how they influence your life.

1. Poverty mindset – If you consistently prime yourself with “I don’t have money”, “there is never enough”, then you set yourself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy. This doesn’t mean thatlying to yourself that you have money if you don’t will work. What it means is that as soon as you focus on “I don’t have ” and “I can’t afford”, you miss the opportunity to mobilize yourself to look for a solution instead of dwelling on the problem.

2. Powerless Attitude – You know you feel powerless when you just don’t seem to go anywhere from where you are. You will notice that you see no direction you can take and no solution by the way you look at things. Every time when you find excuses and  complain you delude yourself that you do something about the situation you are in while in fact you don’t really take any action that will bring a positive change.

3. Doubt dwelling – If you don’t believe in yourself, in what you do, that things will go in a better direction (with your active help) then  nobody else will and even if they will, your disbelief will soon discourage them. Going down a negative spiral is trapping you into inaction more than anything else. And the worst part about it is that it had the ability to signal others to stay away from clouds of gloom and doom.

4. Resistance to change – Life would be a Heaven on Earth if only everything was perfect and unchanging but that movie is not played in the cinema of real life. So,  you either go with the change, meet with your fear, go out of your comfort zone, or you resist it and stay the same and sooner or later start regreting that you do not live the life you wish you could.

5. Avoiding the NOW –  Most often, when you don’t make amends with your past (appreciate it for happening whether bringing you good or bad experience) you drive the car of your life into a forward direction looking back. Do you think you really are going far without looking at the road and the direction? Others, live in the perfect future trying to imagine it into being. And, that’s all good as long as you don’t expect to have your Olimpic medal to arrive by the mail while you do nothing to get tit in the mean time. Living in a dream for the future is like trying to catch the air around you. The past moment is already gone. The future moment is not there yet. What you have is the present moment and this is where you can determine what the future would be like for you and how you perceive the past.

Setbacks are like blind spots – different coping strategies which once upon a time we started using in order to deal with what comes our way. Maybe at that time these strategies were helping us and maybe they are still helping us in a way. There is a pay-off, something we protect ourselves from.  But, does this  align with who we are or want to be now. Once we become aware what we do and what is the protective reason to do it, we c an decide differently. We can decide to take the leading role in our life and not allow old habits to rule our life!

Tsvetanka Petrova, CPC

The Start-up Set up  Coach

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