What is personal growth to you? To me, personal growth is essentially overcoming spiritual barriers preventing you from achieving personal and professional growth in your life.

You can read all the personal growth quotes you can find, but ultimately that fades away leaving you in a worst place than before.

Growing as an individual is tough, but there are thousands of courses, guides, and programs that can walk you through the process of breaking down those self-imposed barriers so you can grow.

In fact, the personal development industry is a $10+ billion dollar (as of 2018) industry, and it keeps growing exponentially every year.

The fact is that we all want to improve our lives which is why we’re always buying the latest (and next) course or training program that promises to help us get to the next level.

There’s nothing wrong with investing in yourself, in fact, investing in yourself is the best investment you can make.

However, when it comes to personal development, the vast majority of people still don’t know how to apply the concepts they learn, or in most cases, they just lack the willpower and motivation to execute.

The key to a lifetime of happiness lies in personal growth. Why? Because real and lasting fulfillment in life comes from consistently improving the quality of your life while doing the things you love.

Through our experiences, life hands us opportunities to grow, but we seldom see the opportunity because we rather focus our energy on the negative aspects of it.

Take for example if you lose your job and end up finding another job but at a lower level.

Naturally, you’re going to experience some hardships, and not just from a financial standpoint, but also your pride, your reputation, etc.

However, if you see it as an opportunity to learn from previous mistakes and start fresh with a clean slate, you may actually have a better experience climbing back up.

So, what are some of the most common personal growth barriers preventing you from reaching success in your life?

Let’s review them.

Procrastination

If you have ever experienced having trouble persuading yourself to do the things you should be doing or would like to do, that’s procrastination.

Let’s say you have your own business and you need to share on social media daily, you know is important and you have to do it, but when it comes down to it, you seem to constantly find excuses and activities (such as YouTube) to avoid not getting them done.

The good news is that procrastination is not laziness, is just the inability to motivate yourself to get things done.

How can you fight procrastination?

Break down your daily to-do list into smaller portions so you can finish them quicker, and that will give you the fuel you need to keep pushing forward.

For everything you do, learn how to set up systems (daily processes) that encourage you to get things done, instead of avoiding them.

Here are some simple tips to get you going:

• Setup strict deadlines
• turn off your phone
• reward yourself when you complete a task
• set up daily non-negotiable tasks

Understand that breaking a habit takes time, don’t punish yourself, instead stay focused on the task until you complete it.

Not Taking Action – Decision Paralysis

Whether you have things carefully planned or not, unless you make the decision and execute, nothing will happen.

We often experience decision paralysis, which is when we just can’t make a decision regardless of how well-thought-out things are.

In the grand scheme of things, not taking action leads to living a mediocre life and prevents us from achieving the things we want in life.

The funny thing is that we often blame others for our shortcomings, but often fail to realize that the reason we’re not reaching our goals is not because of other people or circumstances, is because of our own inability to take action.

Indecision is simply the result of a fear of failure and by not making a decision you can’t fail – right? But if you don’t make the decision and take action, how would you know whether you will succeed or not?

Make the decision and take action, adjust as you go but don’t stop taking action.

Staying In Your Comfort Zones

Staying in your comfort zone is like knowing that the girl you like is there waiting for you to ask her out, but you don’t because you’re scared to do it.

As the saying goes, “Everything you want is outside your comfort zone.”

We rather stay in our own environment that we know well and we can control, which is where we have a sense of certainty that we can deal with anything that comes our way.

Stepping out of your comfort zone is challenging you to explore other possibilities so you can grow as a person, to reach your full potential.

The funny thing is that we set our own limitations, they are self-imposed and controlled with what we believe we can or cannot do, what we like or dislike, what we think is right or wrong.

In order for you to grow, you need to continuously stretch yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually to avoid standing still and remaining imprisoned by your comfort zone.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “A man’s mind, once stretched to a new idea will never go back to its original dimension.”

You control your actions, your actions control how far you can go.

Personal growth is a choice and it’s an active process that requires you to step out of your comfort zone.

Is important to recognize how much of our mind still remains unsolved, how our mind can control our actions and our emotions based on what thoughts we have.

The pessimist is going to always look for things that could go wrong. But the optimist will look for the things that WILL go right.

Why? Because the thoughts we put in our minds either produce positive energy or negative energy, and that energy is what we use to take action.

Suppose you’re working on finishing a project for work and you keep telling yourself that you’re not going to meet the deadline.

By putting those thoughts in your mind, the level of energy and enthusiasm you put into finishing your project diminishes over time, and the end result is exactly what you thought.

On the flip side, if you keep telling yourself that you will beat the deadline, you’re going to be energetic and pumped up to beat the deadline.

Your actions always reflect your thoughts, so make sure you start with having a positive mindset and always try to put out positive energy with anything you do.

If you decide to go for your dreams (and you always should), keep in mind that there are always going to be obstacles, what matters is how you handle them and how you chose to move forward.

Here are 3 uncommon success tips to help you keep moving forward.

You Don’t Have To Feel Good All The Time

No matter what the media tells you, no matter what your friends and even family tell you, is natural to not be 100% on top of your game every single day.

Just like illness, you’re going to have good and bad times, but what you need to keep in mind is that the bad times will pass.

You Are Already A Success

Have you ever heard anyone tell you that “you’re already a success? If you haven’t, that’s because of how many of us are wired.

Whether you know it or not., you have already gotten the things you have been wanting, there is nothing wrong with you, you work perfectly.

The very fact that you are reading this right now suggests that you have faced hardships up to this point in time, simply because you’re human.

Success Is No Harder Than Failing

Whether you’ll end up successful or as a failure is entirely up to you, you control your actions and your actions control the level of success.

Know that success is a lot easier than failing. Living in a constant state of being down and unhappy is very difficult and unnecessary, if you have the time and energy to live like that, success will be a doddle in comparison.

Everything is already inside of you, look around you, what do you see, this is what is going on inside of you.

If you do not see the picture of success you were hoping for, change the picture.

You have success today, it’s just a matter of defining those areas of your life that you want more of.

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