3 Things That Stop You from Living the Life You Want

Disclaimer: This article is meant to provide general information. For advice related to your specific situation, please consult a doctor or therapist. See our disclosure here.

Do you feel that you’re not where you’d like to be in life? Do you feel that your progress does not match your expectations or your effort?

If there’s something you strongly want in life, whether at a personal or professional level, feeling that you’re not there yet can be frustrating. If you want to improve your life, you need to start with identifying the self-sabotaging behaviors that hold you back.

Read on to discover three major things that stop you from living the life you want.

1) You Don’t Know Your Weaknesses

Most self-development advice focuses on developing new skills or strengths. It’s rare to see advice geared at helping people understand their weaknesses.

However, setting life goals without considering your weaknesses is a recipe for failure. It’s crucial to have a good awareness of your weaknesses because it can help you accept yourself more and set more realistic goals.

Thus, it can also help you avoid disappointment and frustration. Besides, without knowing your weaknesses, you cannot develop strong strategies for bypassing them.

Use online personality tests to identify the innate traits that might hold you back. This overview of ESFJ weaknesses perfectly illustrates how you should approach the weaknesses inherent to your personality type.

2) You Don’t Set Clear Goals

When they think about the future, people have an ideal image in their minds about how their lives should be. What differentiates them is that some think of the future in terms of desires, while others think of the future in terms of goals.  

When you’re guided by desires and let your desires in the hands of chance, you put yourself in a passive position. And this mindset can be a critical cause of stagnation.

Take control over your life by setting clear, well-defined goals. Think about all the things you want to achieve and break them down into series of actionable goals.

Setting goals gives you focus and helps you stay on track despite the typical daily distractions. 

3) You Have A Fear of Failure or a Fear of Success

Paradoxically, some people fear failure, and others fear success. Both of these feelings can be equally strong and debilitating.

And they’re both rooted in anxiety. Fear of failure is usually easier to understand; nobody likes to fail in business or their personal life.

And it’s devastating to know that you can fail at your dream job or in your relationship with your ideal person. Fear of failure can stop you from pursuing any dream at all, so you remain satisfied with the ‘what if’.

Fear of success can also hold you back. However, it’s not the success that you might fear but rather the changes that success can bring into your life.

Success can mean unwanted attention, pressure, or more responsibilities. Do the behind-the-scenes effects of success scare you? This might be the reason why you are not where you want to be in life.

Feelings of dissatisfaction are hints that you need to be more proactive about what you want. Write down your goals and the things that hold you back. Develop strong counter-strategies for each vulnerability or obstacle.

About Ronnie E.

Ronnie is the frugal Latina of the group. Hailing from the beautiful Andes Mountains in Bolivia, she lives and breathes frugality. She loves to figure out how to spend less money and takes on the challenge of finding great deals and cheaper options every day.

Check Also

3 Budget-Friendly Crafts You Can Do with a Sewing Machine

Love sewing but don’t have the time? All these sewing projects below can be finished in 30 minutes or less - and on a budget!