Exercise: What’s Kept You From Succeeding?
Sometimes it is simply your own stubbornness and stuck thinking that are holding you back.
This exercise asks you to be completely frank with yourself — asking some tough questions in a kindly voice to help you break through some of those nasty internal barrier success.
So grab a pen and, working swiftly, answer the following 10 questions for yourself with as much blazing honesty as you can muster:
- What has stopped you from succeeding before this?
- What’s your most likely form of self-sabotage?
- If you found yourself engaging in that self-sabotage, how might you handle that?
- What are you afraid might happen if you fail at this project?
- How might you address the situation if that failure actually occurred?
- What are you afraid might happen if you succeed at this project?
- How might you address the situation if that success actually occurred?
- What qualities do you possess that can help you move through this project?
- What question has not been asked that you need
- What is the truth? (Start by writing, “The truth is…”) You may notice that imagining the worst of both failure and success, and then imagining how those eventualities, helps you feel a bit more in the driver’s seat.
Fear paralyzes;curiosity cures.
Writing down the answers to these questions encourages you to give voice to the monsters under the bed, disarming them once and for all.
