You put hours and hours of hard work into your business. You work almost round the clock until your vision goes blurry. You save and implement every business idea you get. You simply work hard.
But you don’t see the results. And that’s not fair, isn’t?
I am going to share with you some of the “hidden” obstacles that stop you altogether or delay you from achieving your personal or business success.
I call these obstacles as hidden because, you might not realize that they’re affecting your progress; because they don’t hit on you directly but mostly haunt you indirectly (or without your knowledge).
Here you go….
Do you live in the present?
Have you ever realized that you often drift here and there? It is natural. You might have experienced this – whenever you are doing something, your mind won’t be at that particular task, at any particular moment.
Let’s say you’re in a classroom. Do you pay attention to the lecture or do you dream about your girlfriend/boyfriend?. I’m talking about something similar – but on a larger scale that could affect your progress.
When you’re writing your blog post, where are you actually? Do you put your full attention into your blog post or do you think about the kitchen sink tap that needs a dripping fix?
Living in the present is about giving yourself fully to the current task you’re doing. And this is very crucial for your personal and business success.
Are you having tea with your hubby? Be there fully mentally and physically. Do not check your emails partly and have a 1/2 conversation with your hubby. You can do neither of them properly.
Are you writing a blog post or a newsletter to your subscribers, or are you planning your marketing campaign, give it your full attention. If you get distracted, you won’t be able to finish that important task in time.
You might also make a poor progress and when the deadline approaches, you might panic and this will directly affect the quality of whatever you are producing!
Multi-tasking?
Well if you prefer to handle more than one task at a time that’s fine. I’m not against multi-tasking, coz some really prefer to live that way and they’re more productive that way (your truly is that way, didn’t you guess?).
But you must be having, say, 3 to 4 tasks at a time to handle, and not 100 tasks spawning at your head?
You can listen to music while typing your blog post while reading posts from your feed reader. But you cannot also be talking on the phone to your friend, and instant messaging and try to finish your online shopping at Amazon.
Only certain kind of tasks can be combined and are humanly possible with multi-tasking. And this really varies with person. Some can write more productively and more focused when they listen to music. For others, music could be a great distraction when they’re writing.
So you know your capabilities and limitations. Never cross those limits and waste your precious time.
If you find out that you cannot combine two tasks without losing yourself in the chaos, never combine them again!
Do you learn from your mistakes?
Everyone makes mistakes. In fact, mistakes are an integral part of our lives. Making mistakes is not fatal.
And you cannot be a perfect human being (or should I call “ideal”) who doesn’t make any mistakes. In fact, such a human being is yet to come to planet earth.
But the above paragraph doesn’t give you a generous opportunity to keep making mistakes again and again. Whenever you make a mistake and pay a price for that, step back and analyze what had just happened.
Unearth the causes of the failure, find out what went wrong and learn from your mistakes.
Find out what works and what doesn’t. Make it a point that you’ve learned you lesson and just move on. Never repeat that mistake again.
“ Never regret. If it’s good its wonderful. If it’s bad it’s experience – Victoria Holt.Do you judge others?
This one is a time killer and tampers your self esteem. From what I’ve seen this is also not good for your health.
Why waste your precious time in researching about others? Why are you peeking over other’s shoulders and judging? Why do you bother in the first place?
If someone’s action or behavior directly affects you, see what YOU can do to change the situation. Never blame others for whatever happens. Take responsibility.
Do not waste your time and resources in judging others; you simply don’t have control of others. But you have total control of YOURSELF.
So stop judging and blaming others and start changing yourself to fix things or make them better.
Do you have clear goals?
So you want personal and business success?
Have you defined your version of “success”?
For some, getting the best employee award could mean success. For some others, making it to the top 10 in their field could mean success.
Without having a clear end point or a goal (long term or short term), how can you work on things that will help you achieve that goal? And that’s where your success lies, right?
And when you do set your goals, get as specific as you can. Also split them into easily achievable chunks.
“Finish writing one ebook before the end of the year” is a very vague goal. Get specific by defining the title of the ebook and create a plan.
Break the bigger goal into smaller chunks. Plan on investing a few hours per week or per day (depending upon your workload) and start working on it immediately.
Not having a clear goal and not taking action on the little steps that are needed in achieving that goal is a top failure.
Surprised?
Some of these obstacles might sound odd to you. For some people the obstacles mentioned above could mean nothing.
But believe me, even if they don’t haunt your progress directly, they might indirectly affect your personal and business success.
What now? You’ve been warned. So stop, analyze, weed out and move on.
About Jane
Hi Jane,
I totally agree with the “hidden” obstacles you laid out. Sometimes, I lack focus on what I am doing because I tend to multi-task incorrectly and so many things are running in my mind and in the end I tend to panic when I have deadlines to meet.
What a wonderful post Jane!!! I got a lot of learning through this post. I always try to judge others, what they did, how they behaved with me and this one thing kills most of my time and that way I face dearth of time to think about something good. Thanks for this post. I got a new view of life through this post.
Thanks for the engrossing read, Jane. I couldn’t agree with you more–these are some points that most of us seem to neglect but they ultimately spell out the difference when it comes to productivity and being successful in every endeavor.
These obstacles are real and can be unforgiving when we let them hinder us from becoming successful and accomplished. Rightly said. Thanks!
These may be hidden obstacles but when you know how to prioritize and compartmentalize your duties, they’d automatically surface and easier for you to jump around it
Multi-tasking is fine, as long as you know how to do your thing and come up with good outputs if you do that
I’m a strong believer of multi-tasking but that should be done only to the extent to which one can handle it. Thanks for the great share.
Hi Jane! You have a very creative blog and this is a good way to talk to your readers in a personal way. Thanks for sharing your views. I agree on all your points. When you do something, you just can’t call it a success if you haven’t focused on it with your whole heart and attention. Great post!
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If you tend to judge others, you should also take responsibility for your own self. Nice article by the way
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, these obstacles are often concealed because we fail to assess ourselves and the direction we must take to ensure that we are right on track. Success will definitely come to those who who take the time to pause and analyze.
One important thing you should consider is to recognize and make amends on your own mistakes. That’s one of the best ways to avoid hindrances to success.
I agree with your point on not judging others. You’re just wasting precious time doing so. Thank you for posting!
One should have an open mind to the things that happen in his life. Experience may be the best teacher after all, but if you don’t accept the fact that you can commit mistakes, then it’s a long way to success
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Establishing clear goals lead to better ideas and a more organized strategy to success. I’ll be keeping myself posted with more from your blog!
Your blog is very nice. Enlightening too! Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m not very good at multitasking and I think it’s one of the many hidden obstacles to one’s success as well
In today’s life setup a business is easy task but getting success in it very difficult because there are so many competitors in the market , so to get success in the business with using the hard work , this shared some tips to get it..
Engrossing share Jane.
I completely agree that these obstacles are hidden because we fail to realize the adverse effect they cause to business till the loss is clearly evident . I too have just started my own small business and at times I too failed to gauge market competition as I was too much in love in my product.