Part Three: What’s Holding You Back?
In part two of “What’s Holding You Back?” I pointed out that events such as illness, loss and huge changes, in general, can steer us off course from achieving our intended goals. And sometimes these happenings can actually change our goals entirely.
Here’s the third of the four factors I’m talking about besides fear that holds us back…
Having a lack of clear, well-defined vision.
You say “I want a new job” but you don’t say what kind of job and what must be present in that new job to make you excited to get up and go do it every day. All you know is that you don’t want you have now, or, if you’re unemployed, that you want “anything” so you can pay the bills. You say, “I want someone special in my life to love and who will love me.” But you don’t succinctly describe the qualities you’re looking for in a mate. The Universe needs more details than “anything to pay the bills” and “someone special” to help fulfill your request.
But you might have noticed that sometimes the Universe does respond with a job offer when you want one, just anything to pay the bills. Maybe the Universe does fill your order to have someone special in your life, a person who probably also vaguely asked for someone special. In which case, you get someone who might not stick around for long. It’s a 50/50 thing at best.
What’s holding you back from reaching your goal of having someone special in your life or having a job that suits you best is a lack of clear, well-defined vision for what you want. And, of course, this is tied to your power to choose because, make no mistake, even though it may seem like you aren’t choosing the stuff that happens or what you get in your life, you are.
The reason you make choices which don’t seem like choices at all you is because they are so unconsciously made. You feel as though life is happening to you. Instead of living your life on purpose, you see life as something you’re in, and IT is moving you along somehow. It’s full of surprises, too – some you deem as good and some you deem as not so good. And you feel sort of powerless. Like you’re on a life raft in the stream drifting along at the mercy of the current.
Stephen Covey , one of the most well-respected self development experts of our era, thought the concept of having a well-defined vision was so important he dedicated at least two of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to the notion… “Be Proactive” and “Begin with the End in Mind.” He even numbered them first and second in the list.
If you’ve never read Covey’s perennial bestseller or you have and want a short refresher, look at QuickMBA.com’s excellent summary at http://www.quickmba.com/mgmt/7hab/. The site aptly sums up the habits, and in particular says about the first two:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Change starts from within, and highly effective people make the decision to improve their lives through the things that they can influence rather than by simply reacting to external forces.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Develop a principle-centered personal mission statement. Extend the mission statement into long-term goals based on personal principles.
Repeating a simple analogy that I’ve used before… creating a well-defined vision to give to the Universe is like plugging coordinates into your GPS unit. When you feed the machine the exact information about where you want to go, then it plots a course to take you there. But it can’t do a thing for you if you don’t know where you’re going.
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Angela Loëb helps people rediscover and use their gifts so they bring who they are to what they do in life. http://about.me/angelarloeb
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