Stop blaming your mom, dad, neighbour, pet, weather, chair or the new diet for your miseries.
You feel like despite your efforts, you seem to be stuck in some invisible rut, then it’s time to sit back and honestly review your choices or habits.
Maybe you’re sabotaging your personal growth with your negative mindset and habits. No better time like to make course correction.
1. Procrastination as a Habit
When faced with a difficult or uncomfortable job, the tendency is to push it for later.
You’ve to deal with it either ways, so why not do it now and get it over with?
By delaying or postponing tasks, you’re creating more tasks for yourself in the future. And also wasting time and energy dwelling on how NOT to do it.
Whatever may be the excuse you gave for postponing the task, the actual reason may be boredom, fear of failure, insecurity, lack of motivation, perfectionism or just frustration.
The next step now is to break this negative mindset and change the attitude.
- You can break the task into smaller more acceptable tasks.
- Create a supportive group who can act as accountability partners.
- Don’t allow your fear of failure dominate your thinking.
- Look at failures as a learning experience.
- Set up S.M.A.R.T. goals for yourself. It’ll break the task into achievable chunks.
Procrastination is postponing. And postponing will not help you move forward.
Your call.
2. Negative Self-Talk
It’s like a slow poison that corrodes your mind. Seeping into your thoughts, it can impact your confidence.
Negative self-talk is pessimistic, creates self-doubt and is harshly self-critical. It limits your self-belief.
This kind of attitude ensures you fail even before you start.
You’ve to revive your mind to get out of the negative self-talk.
- Practice self-compassion. Be nice to yourself. And stop being so harsh or critical.
- Offer yourself positive affirmations. Prepare a list of affirmations and go through them daily. Better still, make it your screensaver.
- Be grateful for the opportunities, friends, family, life. Being grateful makes you value what you have.
- Practice mindfulness and try meditation.
- Move away from toxic people around. They’re dumping their emotional garbage on you.
Take care of yourself.
3. Fear of Failure
Taking risks as young professionals is part of the journey towards your goals.
If you don’t take chances or risks, you’ll be stuck in that spot.
The anxiety or self-doubts are natural defence mechanisms, working to protect you. Don’t fear failure. Instead use them to prepare better for the eventualities.
In case you fail, get up, dust yourself, and move on. Use the failure to learn new lessons, about what to do and not to.
- Reframe your failures as a learning opportunity. Write down what worked, how to improve on it, and what went wrong, how to avoid it in future.
- Be realistic in your expectations. You’re the best person who knows your strengths and weaknesses. Use them to set your goals.
- Be resilient. One failure is not the end of the road. Have the courage to restart. Apply the lessons learnt this time. Avoid the mistakes from last time.
You win some, you lose some.
So keep moving.
4. Stop Comparing
There’s no end to this. You measure yourself through others.
You’ll often hear your peers or colleagues brag about how they did this or what they’ve achieved or how you’ve messed up when they did it so effortlessly, and so on.
And social media is not helping here. Reading such posts or viewing their enviable pictures adds to your misery.
Don’t fall for any of it. Those are the half-truths that are being projected.
Constantly comparing yourself with others devalues your own worth.
- Review the parameters you’re comparing. Is it professional growth, personal finance, efficiency, social standing, people skills? Begin work on developing those aspects of your life.
- Focus on your personal progress, what’s working for you. Enhance your skill set, strengthen what you have and acquire new ones.
- Choose your role models carefully. Keep away from people you are subconsciously comparing yourself with. Evaluate their influence; are they the right kind of people you need to emulate?
As a young professional or a newbie, everyone looks like they’re way ahead of you; more capable more experienced, more together. Learn from them but don’t feel bad about not being ‘there’. You still have to cover some distance to reach there.
5. Lack Of Self-Reflection
When was the last time you sat down to introspect, self-reflect?
Don’t take this lightly. In all the noises around, it’s possible that you aren’t listening to yourself.
Self-reflection helps you to get a better insight into yourself, increases self-awareness, assists in personal development.
- Start journaling. Note down the hits and misses, lessons learnt. This will help you to re-evaluate your choices to make better decisions.
- Try meditation. Or, just sitting quietly, without those earphones, without any company.
- Take time to introspect. You need to check in with yourself from time to time to see if you’re headed in the right direction.
Self-reflection will help you set on the path of personal growth. You need this to succeed in life.
6. Perfectionism is not a Habit
Perfectionism is the need to do something perfectly. It’s a personality trait, and can work both ways.
On one hand, it pushes you to set high standards and work towards it; on the other hand, it leads to unrealistic expectations, from self and others.
Before it gets out of hand,
- Set realistic goals for yourself. Goals that are achievable.
- Accept imperfection. If it does not impact the work or cause disturbance, it’s okay to be imperfect.
- Don’t be too harsh or critical of yourself. The imperfection does not reflect your inefficiency or incompetence.
- Practice self-compassion.
Perfectionism, though a noble trait, can have negative consequences on your path to progress, if it is not moderated. Your high standards can hinder or slow you down.
Focus on what’s important, not being perfect.
7. Avoiding Discomfort
This discomfort is more personal than physical. You don’t want to put yourself out there since you’ve found your comfortable spot.
Will it help you reach your goals if you’re stuck in your comfort zone? It’s for you to ponder over.
Look at discomfort as a catalyst for growth. Whether it’s a new location, or new project or a new team, you must be open to change even if it’s not comfortable.
Comfort makes you complacent and less ambitious. You can’t reach your goals with this mindset.
Take calculated risks, seek new challenges, set new targets.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to learn as you head towards your goal. You’ve just started your journey.
Take a moment to reflect on your habits, commit yourself to making positive changes, and unlock your true potential.
The journey of personal growth as a young professional is long but transformative if you’ve the courage to accept the changes.
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