Identify And Overcome Emotional Blocks To Success

What is holding you back from fulfilling the vision you just wrote?
Has it ever occurred to you that what is preventing you from enjoying success is not the actions and attitudes of your parents, or the lack of opportunities, or just plain bad luck, but your own feelings and attitudes about yourself?
Many people work hard for success, but never seem to achieve it. Something always stops them before they can accomplish their goals and achieve their personal dreams and aspirations. In most cases, what is holding them back is that they don’t feel they deserve success. At some point in their lives they became saddled with the belief that they do not deserve good things in life.
Our strongest beliefs about ourselves become ingrained at a very early age, usually, when we are completely unable to make reasonable judgments about ourselves or our surroundings.
A small child sees something very bright and shiny. It looks so beautiful, so desirable. The child sets an infantile goal. “Put that bright shiny thing in my mouth.” He reaches for it. Suddenly, a parent snatches it away. “No! Bad!” The parent tosses the piece of broken glass into a big can and puts a lid on it. The child internalizes, “My parents will take my goal away from me because I am bad.”
An impressionable pre-teen sits in Church and hears a sermon from a pastor he has been taught to have complete confidence in. The pastor is preaching about how people who live for the love of money, instead of focusing their life on loving relationships with their family and friends will lead empty, unfulfilled lives. The youth internalizes, “I’m not going to make money, but make everyone like me.”
In both cases, the parent and the pastor are trying to communicate good, positive messages. But the recipient of the messages lacks sufficient understanding, and internalizes limiting emotions. It has happened to all of us. Often, those who find their way to success are so brash and self-confident that they have simply learned to ignore negative input and feelings and press ahead. But, there is a more gentle and enjoyable path to success. Change your internal feelings and attitudes about success so they support you rather than limit you.

Step One: Self Acceptance
The first step on the path to emotional freedom is self acceptance. If you want to grow, you need to be able to look squarely at your mistakes, large and small, and say to yourself, “I blew it, but I love and accept myself just the way I am.” Success is not about avoiding mistakes, but moving past them. If you continue to beat yourself up over past errors in judgment, they will dominate your thoughts and emotions preventing you from learning from them and moving on.

Step Two: Forgiveness
From a place of self-acceptance, you can truly forgive anyone who provided negative influences that helped form limiting and sometimes self-destructive behaviors, attitudes and beliefs. It is easy to rationalize that these individuals weren’t trying to harm you and therefore don’t’ need forgiveness. They may not need forgiveness, but you need to forgive. Only after you forgive, can you let go and find freedom.
In some cases forgiveness seems undeserved. This is often the case in abuse or divorce. But holding onto unforgiveness never hurts those who wronged you. It only hurts you. In fact, unforgiveness gives the one who wronged you a type of control over you. By holding on to unforgiveness, you are allowing the injury to last a lifetime. Choosing to truly forgive can start a chain reaction of healing that will open a doorway to a joyful and productive life.
The most important person to forgive is yourself. Embarrassments and disappointments create deeply rooted resentments. Unfortunately, many people resent themselves. This creates a sense of disqualification, as if one feels disqualified to enjoy success because of something they did in their past.
Often what we believe disqualifies us was not even an action. It may have been a belief we held, or an emotion we experienced.
Once you have chosen to love and accept yourself just the way you are, and broken the chains of unforgiveness that have been holding you back, you can begin to move forward to become the person you truly want to be.

Step Three: Realize you Deserve to Succeed
If you grew up in a guilt culture, you may not feel you deserve many good things to happen to you. Guilt, often injected into our psyche by our parents, teachers or ministers, can create a strong sense of unworthiness. I grew up in an East Texas evangelical tradition. “I am unworthy” is a mantra of Southern evangelicalism. To succeed, you must first change that mantra to “I deserve to be successful.” “I deserve to have good things.” “I deserve to enjoy life.” I deserve to be rich” “I deserve to have people look up to me.”

WFA Franchise Consultants