1.You’re choosing acceptance instead of growth.

The movement towards self-love and self-acceptance has been a phenomenal thing; we’re all learning to accept ourselves as we are and move forward with confidence and awareness.

But some of us are taking it too far. Instead of pushing ourselves to grow in new ways, we’re affirming ourselves that we don’t need to change at all. And this is a dangerous affirmation. Your life only grows, expands and moves forward if you’re able to recognize where your opportunities for personal development lie. And if you aren’t acting on those opportunities for growth, you’re choosing to remain stagnant and stuck.

2.You’re only associating with like-minded people.

The cool thing about adulthood is that you get to choose your community. You are rarely forced to socialize with people who don’t share your political, spiritual or alternate beliefs. And while this can be fantastically soothing for the ego, it is detrimental to your personal development.

By making a point to socialize with people whose views challenge yours, you’re deliberately forcing yourself to expand your thinking and consider your beliefs from new angles.

When you entrench yourself in a community of like-minded people, you’re keeping yourself comfortable and affirmed but you’re also limiting your opportunities for growth.

3.You’re weighing the risks instead of the rewards.

Too many of our decisions get made by considering the worst-case scenarios instead of the best-case scenarios. While security is certainly something to keep in mind, it shouldn’t be the main guiding principle in your life.

In the words of Nelson Mandela, May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. Because your hopes are going to lead you somewhere a whole lot more incredible, if you’ll let them.

4.You’re refusing to give up control.

There is a tiny, type-A control freak that lives inside of all of us even in the most laid-back of people. We want to be wholly in charge of our destinies, our decisions, our outcomes and our rewards.

And so we close ourselves off from other people. We close ourselves off from external influences. We close ourselves off from living our lives in any way other than the one we have determined is the absolute most optimal fashion.

And we forget to make room for growth. We forget to make room to open ourselves up to external influences, because that would mean giving up control. But it would also mean welcoming in some absolutely beautiful changes.

5.You’re pigeonholing yourself.

The brilliance of growing up is that we establish a sense of confidence and competency along the way. We hone in on the skills that we can profit from and do them to absolute death showing the world that we are worthy of something.

But we too often forget that we are worthy of so much more than the one or two things that we have chosen. That being the best in our field doesn’t mean we couldn’t thrive in and excel in other areas. That mastering one skill or career choice doesn’t mean our talents are limited to that field.

We forget that we are still capable of growing, expanding and developing ourselves outside of the realms that weve entrenched ourselves in. And as such, we limit our opportunities for exploration.

6.You’re pointing fingers instead of solving problems.

It’s easy to blame anyone and anything out there for the problems that we are going through. Our partner left us. Our boss is an asshole. We’re saddled with student loans. We have a family to take care of.

But if we took a brief moment to step outside of the finger-pointing charade, we’d realize that an infinite number of people find themselves in our exact same situation and handle it wildly differently.

More often than not, the problems we’re facing are exaggerated and perpetuated by our attitude toward them. And if we could turn our attention away from our limitations and focus them on the possibilities at hand, we’d find ourselves significantly less entrenched in our problems and significantly more capable of moving beyond them.

7.You’re refusing to trust your own abilities.

Its easy to listen to what everyone else wants to tell us.

What’s a little trickier is trusting our own intuition. It’s hard to turn down naysayers and choose to be the bold and optimistic, but it’s also the fastest path to personal growth.

When we trust in our own abilities to make the lives that we want happen for ourselves, incredible things start to happen. We are able to transform our own realities in ways that we never thought possible and in ways that the naysayers will never see happen for themselves.

8.You’re failing to challenge your assumptions.

You aren’t qualified for that job so you don’t apply for it. You don’t know any people at the party so you don’t go to it. You think that the person you like or the opportunity you’d kill for wouldn’t ever give you a second glance and so you write yourself off before ever trying for it in the first place.

The more you refuse to challenge your negative thinking, the more it perpetuates itself. You tell yourself you’re a loser and so you keep losing. You lose by default. You lose by omission.

But it doesn’t take much to break the cycle. Because regardless of which ways you’re keeping yourself stuck, one fact remains: You are the only person who has the power to turn it all around for yourself.

And the only question left is whether or not you’re going to choose to do so.

Who would you be if you trusted in your capacity to prevail, to triumph through and through? Who could you be if you believed that no challenge could ever ruin you, could never not be confronted and eclipsed? What could become of you if your life wasn’t what you were constantly pinning yourself against but rather was what you found yourself forever being invited into? Yes, what if the world was on your side? How might you handle your days now, what would you allow for yourself if you were trusting in the state of all things, trusting that, in fact, the world has always and will always be on your side, bidding in your favour?

Imagine the chances you would take then. The chances you would take if conspiracy didn’t threaten your faith and future any longer, if you realized and acknowledged with both humble appreciation and absolute clarity that your world, and all the hearts and faces who’ve ever come and gone from it have, in the big picture, never been less than life’s great effort conspiring to distinguish you, to brilliantly define you in all your legacy.

Let me ask you, what if the point of everything, every little gain and every little loss of ours, what if it happens because the experience of it can help us become more substantial, more meaningful, when showing up as either a gain or a loss in someone else’s life?

We can leave others hoping that eventually something good will come for them, leave them hoping for that one person who will see that they, too, deserve to be treated like someone worth holding on to.

Wherever you are on that spectrum right now, that spectrum of being a gain or a loss in other peoples’ lives, what if life has always been about getting you to this point where you understand you have a choice in how and what and who and why you are, you have a choice in whether you live off hope or live through belief, a choice in which you inspire others to live with too?

How might your life take shape then, how might you begin looking to the world if you saw it as a realm which forever openly supports you, your healing, your growth, if you lived like everything is a choice, a choice to be or not to be meaningful, to be great? Would you let love in, would you allow yourself to love openly, boldly, or at least with more ease? How could you begin to, how much aliveness do you need, how much aliveness do you want, how much aliveness does it take to become all you feel an urge to be, all you feel you are called to be, all you’ve ever hoped and all you’ve ever quietly believed you really can be, how can you begin today to live as if you already are every bit of that dream?

Listen to your heart, to your roar, feel your momentum rise within you, hold on with the greatest and deepest breath you have and hear what is being asked of you, what you are asking of you. Don’t react.

Right now just listen to what your heart is after, believe that you are alive on purpose, that you have been made to create an answer for this single calling, this single roar, this single yearning of your heart.

Then, choose to believe, choose to promise yourself that you will keep your quest and question alive within you, promise yourself that you will add to everyone’s life and not just take from it. Now, step out into your life, into your promise, in a new way. The world will help you but, for it to, you must believe and live like you have what it takes to help yourself too.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on 01202 743961 or 07957 672335 or visit my Contact Vanessa Page to book your complimentary True Worth Strategy Session.