6 tips to overcome any obstacle holding you back
Great people throughout history often fail quite miserably before finally reaching their goals, said international business strategist Dan Waldschmidt.
“Ideas, brilliance, genius – they all mean nothing without the guts, passion and tenacity necessary to make your dream a reality. But often, people fall back on excuses and give up on trying to reach their goals,” Waldschmidt said.
Waldschmidt is the author of “Edgy Conversations:
How Ordinary People Achieve Outrageous Success” (www.edgyconversations.com).
Most have dreams, and many have big ones, but few actually see them through, he said.
Waldschmidt offers these six tricks for jumping off the excuse train and forge the path to your goals:
Avoid the need to blame others for anything. Mean, small-minded people are so cranky and eager to point out others’ mistakes. They hope that by causing others to feel inadequate, everyone will forget about how woefully off the mark their own performance is. Don’t blame anyone, for any reason, ever. It’s a bad habit.
Stop working on things that just don’t matter. Not everything needs to be done in place of sleep.
If you work for a boss, then you owe them solid time. You can’t cut that out. You can, however, cut out television time, meetings and anything else that gets in the way of achieving your goals. Replace entertainment with activity toward your goal.
Refuse to let yourself wallow in self-doubt. You’re alive to succeed. Stop comparing your current problems to your last 18 failures. They are not the same. You are not the same. Here’s something to remember: Your entire life has been a training ground for you to capture your destiny right now. Why would you doubt that? Stop whining. Go conquer.
Ask yourself, “What can I do better next time?” And then do it next time.
If you spend a decade or two earnestly trying to be better, that’s exactly what will happen. The next best thing to doing something amazing is not doing something stupid. So learn from your mistakes and use the lessons to dominate.
Proactively take time to do things that fuel your passion.
Exercise is a great example. Living in the moment requires you to live at peak performance. A huge part of mental fitness is physical fitness. A sparring or running partner is a great way to refresh physical competition. Physical activity accelerates mental motivation.
Apologize to yourself and those around you for having a bad attitude.
Do this once or twice and you’ll snap out of your funk pretty fast. When you start genuinely apologizing for being a bad influence on those around you, you learn to stop whining and start winning.
Shreveport-Bossier City is full of entrepreneurs, executives, artists, medical professionals, students, educators – the list of accomplished women overcoming their personal obstacles goes on and on. In this special issue, CityLife showcases a few of these women who stood up and said, “I can do it myself.” Danielle Richard, local web and graphic design entrepreneur behind Richard Creative, embodies that attitude and maintains multiple work projects, an incredible level of community involvement and volunteering, and her bustling family – all thanks to extreme organization and a Zen-like calm.
Lena Parker has found true love in her horticulture adventures, and shares that love with budding and blooming gardeners alike, fostering a community encompassing all ages.
Stephanie Salter, a Boomtown employee, worked her way up the ladder to become a big asset in her management role at Boomtown Casino.
Candy Smith-Jett, owner of Smith’s Towing & Recovery, offers her advice to women on vehicle maintenance and how to deal with being in a “man’s world.”
These are just some of the women encouraging a thriving network who identify their dreams and say, “I can do it myself.”
Kayleigh Plette contributed to this article.
Cover photo by Dallas Goins
“Ideas, brilliance, genius – they all mean nothing without the guts, passion and tenacity necessary to make your dream a reality. But often, people fall back on excuses and give up on trying to reach their goals.”
– Dan Waldschmidt
