Need a result? Make friends with your head

The ability to achieve results is related to a certain set of skills that we acquire and the ability to apply them. Depending on the field of activity, the set of skills will be different. For example, it is important for the organizer to be attentive to the little things, collected, multitasking. For a professional dancer, in addition to plasticity and a sense of rhythm, diligence and the ability to communicate are important, both with partners and with teachers.

The formation of the right skills is associated, first of all, with the ability to determine which skills are needed, and the number of attempts. We made 20 attempts – the result will be one, 100 attempts – another, 10 thousand – the third.

It would seem that dialing the required number of attempts is a simple matter. Know yourself every day, take the time to develop the skill and you will come to the result. For some reason, though, it doesn’t always work. Regularly training skills will not work if there is no understanding and clarity in the head: what, why, how. The lack of answers to these questions prevents us from finally switching to proper nutrition, starting to play sports or developing in a new business.

I often hear: “Oh, okay, all this psychology of yours … You just need to take it and do it!” Or: “Yes, he’s just lazy.” And we begin to repeat to ourselves: “Come on, why are you sitting!”, “Just take it and go to the hall already!” We scold, criticize and reproach ourselves, we buy an annual subscription, we go to one training session, the second, and then we abandon everything.

To train skills, we need clarity, not only in actions – where and how to run, but also in what is happening inside us. Why are we so arranged that training becomes hell for us, and for someone it becomes a pleasure and a way of life?

I will disappoint you: the point is not always that we do not want, but the other really wants to. The key reason is in a set of thoughts that can limit the movement even to a beloved and desired business.

These thoughts make us give up trying. Because “we didn’t live richly – there’s nothing to start”, “I didn’t try hard enough to ask for a raise”, “I’m a woman – where should I organize a business?”. We can talk about an obvious thought for us, as well as a vague sensation in the body, which tells us that even poking into the chosen sphere is useless.

In 2010, before starting my own business, I worked for a company and was going to go to Canada to study management. The head then told me: “Maybe you will open a business here? He will feed you while you study.” This idea seemed crazy to me. Me and business? How is that in general? There are so many successful entrepreneurs around – I can’t become like them.

In 2012, I already had my own business that fed me. I earned more than many of my peers. I may not have achieved the same results as famous businessmen, but I managed to see that business is different.

Another common idea that limits many is that you can’t make mistakes. It is not necessary to formulate it in this way – often we simply experience an irrational fear of mistakes: “everything must be done very well”, “this is a failure, I did not foresee this.”

Guided by this thought, we are really doomed to failure. But mistakes and the ability to recover from them and move on form our competitiveness.

And sometimes we are sure that “it is imperative to bring everything to the end,” and if this does not happen, it means that we are simply not trying hard enough. At the same time, we can feel a strong disgust for what is happening, suppress it and force ourselves to act.

This is a very common situation in families with hereditary professions: great-grandmother, grandmother and mother and father were doctors, which means that I should follow in their footsteps, although I have no such desire. Trying to suppress reluctance takes a lot of effort, discontent grows, results worsen. But in fact, it would be necessary to abandon the “foreign” profession and look for your own.

Does that mean you don’t have to try? No, it doesn’t. But we need to be able to be flexible and refuse what does not correspond to our desires and values, and at the same time make efforts in those cases that we ourselves have chosen.

Finally, another reason that prevents you from moving towards what you want is categorical thinking: from “no one knows anything and cannot give me advice” to “you must definitely listen to everything that they say to me.”

In the first case, isolation occurs: we are not able to see the difference between reality and our fantasies, we can think that we are moving in the right direction, but in fact we are only moving away from the goal. In addition, isolation means loneliness, the experience of which is even more demotivating. In the second case, the importance of evaluation is so great that we give up any attempt to act.

In each of these options, we play a game with ourselves, trying to drive our own thoughts and true desires away from ourselves. We argue, bargain and spend a lot of energy on it. If we notice such manifestations behind us, we can understand how and why they slow us down. The more traps we see, the better prepared we are for tomorrow.

Having dealt with our own motivation and finding answers to the main questions, we can move towards the goals that are important to us. We will no longer waste energy on resisting ourselves and will be able to direct it in the right direction.