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What Is Really Holding You Back?

Posted By: Randy GageSeptember 21, 2015

Ask most people what’s holding them back, and they can commonly give you a long list. Unfortunately, the list is usually wrong. Because typically, it has a lot of external factors: outside people and things that ignore the real issues, and avoids accepting their role as a co-creator in their life.

Your spouse, ex, or cheap boss are not the reason you aren’t achieving your goals. And the government, economy or Dow Jones average are not the reasons either.

When you list external influences like these as holding you back, you’re simply playing the victim card and not taking responsibility for your own life. This is quite common today, because there are millions of memes circulating in pop culture to support the premise that nothing is your own fault. Everything can be pawned off to your upbringing, society, or the system. But this is giving away your power. Do it often enough, and you become powerless.

In the real world, everybody doesn’t get orange slices and a trophy after every loss. So instead of losing and shifting blame, it’s far better to take personal responsibility, possibly lose a few matches along the way, but ultimately win because you refuse to let things hold you back.

The Real Secret of Success…

The true road to achievement is about getting out of your own way: Discovering the beliefs you possess, and the behaviors and actions that you are doing – which are holding you back from achieving what you say you want.

Oftentimes people do include some personal responsibility items on their list. When I did a Periscope broadcast on this topic, quite a few people said the thing holding them back is because they are lazy or procrastinate. It is true that bad habits can prevent you from achieving your goals. It’s important to have daily habits that empower you and facilitate moving forward. But recognizing you have bad habits only gets you halfway home, because they are symptoms, not causes.

The secret to ending a bad habit is simple: Identify it and replace it with a better, empowering habit. The empowering habit produces wins, which give you the encouragement to continue. But you can’t stop there...

You need to do the critical thinking and ask yourself why and how you developed that bad habit in the first place. I’m about to suggest four possible causes that could be holding you back. If you are practicing bad habits, they are symptoms caused by one of those scenarios.

So let’s get into it. What are the real culprits that holding you back? Here’s my take:

1) You’re Sabotaging Yourself Because You Have Worthiness Issues

This is probably the most frequent scenario. You consciously strive for success and achievements, but you’re subconsciously sabotaging yourself. You do this when you’re infected with limiting beliefs.

These can be smaller and situational, like believing you’re too young to be promoted for a certain position. Or they can be bigger and foundational, such as a religious belief that you aren’t deserving of happiness, or will only be rewarded with it in another life or the afterlife. Either kind can cause you to self-sabotage your own success and happiness. Which leads us to possibility number…

2) Fear of Failure

This fear is certainly understandable. We’re incessantly taught that failure is bad and should be avoided at all costs. We’ve created a media (and social media) atmosphere where failures are ridiculed and shamed. Most people are fear-based, so the basic tenet of any strategy they develop begins with the premise of how to avoid failure.

But this basic premise is wrong.

Failure is not the opposite of success. In most cases, failure is actually a step (or two, or ten) in the success process. Once you understand this, you can liberate yourself to attempt and achieve epic things. Unless you have number…

3) Fear of Success

This is another frequent scenario, and again one that most people are completely unaware of. In fact, almost no one who has fear of success knows it. They often ascribe their problem to fear of failure. But the real culprit is fear of success, which is an offshoot created by worthiness issues.

This is driven by our desire to be liked and fit in. And the odds are extremely high that you are surrounded by people who give you permission to stay where you are – or would be seriously threatened should you achieve a high level of success.

There are at least a few billion people on the planet infected with the mind viruses that money is bad, rich people are evil and it’s spiritual to be poor. If the people you love are in this group, you’ll probably have some reservations or trepidation to becoming too successful. The real fear is you won’t fit in, or they won’t accept you any longer. Once you recognize that anyone who really loves you wants the best for you, you kill this fear and free yourself to achieve what you want. Unless you suffer from scenario number…

4) You Haven’t Developed the Necessary Skills/Knowledge

There’s no shame in being in this situation. The only shame would be staying there. Because between the Internet and other technologies, knowledge and training has never been easier to obtain.  There are at least ten million skills you can develop simply by searching videos on YouTube. Millions more that can be learned by videos, tutorials and articles on others websites, shows, books and other resources. And almost the entire catalog of all human knowledge is accessible by a few searches and keystrokes today.

So all this takes us to where the real breakthroughs live...

To achieve your goals and dreams is a lot more possible than you may have believed just 15 minutes ago. Because you can now stop being a victim and blaming external factors for holding you back. You can do the real work of questioning your beliefs, analyzing where your habits come from, and determining what skills or knowledge you need to acquire.

Now to end what’s holding you back and achieve the goals you have, you need only answer one relevant question:

How can I get better?

-RG

31 comments on “What Is Really Holding You Back?”

  1. I listened this conference in France two days ago. I only can say that I understand many things and maybe for that my life will change for ever.
    Escuche esta conferencia en Vivo en Francia está semana. Solo puedo decirles que a partir de allí entendí muchas cosas y quizás por eso mi vida pueda cambiar para siempre...

  2. I listened you in the convention of my company, here in Lima. I understood a lot of thing about me and why is the reason that i don't started professionally in my business. Thank you Randy for your advices. Always help me a lot!!! Regards from Lima, Perú

  3. UNlearn and Unlock.. Unlearn the beliefs that aren't serving us and learn; cultivate empowering beliefs..
    Unlock your MIND by doing the "inner work"; hold your beliefs up to close scrutiny.. as we UNlock our MIND, we UNlock our "prosperity powers" -> innate potential..
    Dealing with fears is an integral part of UNlocking and Unlearning disempowerment
    #grateful RG!

  4. TheLauraSteward Randy_Gage “Adam’s Army” a great story of life. Living from within 86400 seconds at a time. I really think this kid get it!

  5. Why not stop over and hit the LIKE button so you can see inspirational and motivational posts in your news feed. Let us help inspire you to Live Your Dreams. Never give up!

  6. Randy_Gage How can I get better? Learning the skills & getting excellent at what you do, but can u make a fortune in any field?

  7. RG.. this is SO on point. I think we must also look at the daily habits we have and replace them with new ones that move us closer to the intention we hold. Steve Pressfield's book, "The War of Art" attributes the biggest percentage of the problem to the most insidious force on the planet known as 'resistance'. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it; in fact it's so powerful we're developing a transmedia dramadey/mystery based on the premise!

  8. I enjoyed this. It made me laugh when you wrote  about getting out of the way. I used to have a saying that when I was not getting anywhere I would look around and see that I was the obstacle. I think this probably fits into a number of categories. One's sense of self-worth plays a big role in progress or lack thereof. Just today I was speaking with a successful business woman who is asked to speak at diverse events about team building. Each time she is asked her first question (to herself) is, "Why are they asking me?" If we could only stop holding ourselves back we would find achievement a little more often. Anyway, nice post.

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  • 31 comments on “What Is Really Holding You Back?”

    1. I listened this conference in France two days ago. I only can say that I understand many things and maybe for that my life will change for ever.
      Escuche esta conferencia en Vivo en Francia está semana. Solo puedo decirles que a partir de allí entendí muchas cosas y quizás por eso mi vida pueda cambiar para siempre...

    2. I listened you in the convention of my company, here in Lima. I understood a lot of thing about me and why is the reason that i don't started professionally in my business. Thank you Randy for your advices. Always help me a lot!!! Regards from Lima, Perú

    3. UNlearn and Unlock.. Unlearn the beliefs that aren't serving us and learn; cultivate empowering beliefs..
      Unlock your MIND by doing the "inner work"; hold your beliefs up to close scrutiny.. as we UNlock our MIND, we UNlock our "prosperity powers" -> innate potential..
      Dealing with fears is an integral part of UNlocking and Unlearning disempowerment
      #grateful RG!

    4. TheLauraSteward Randy_Gage “Adam’s Army” a great story of life. Living from within 86400 seconds at a time. I really think this kid get it!

    5. Why not stop over and hit the LIKE button so you can see inspirational and motivational posts in your news feed. Let us help inspire you to Live Your Dreams. Never give up!

    6. Randy_Gage How can I get better? Learning the skills & getting excellent at what you do, but can u make a fortune in any field?

    7. RG.. this is SO on point. I think we must also look at the daily habits we have and replace them with new ones that move us closer to the intention we hold. Steve Pressfield's book, "The War of Art" attributes the biggest percentage of the problem to the most insidious force on the planet known as 'resistance'. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it; in fact it's so powerful we're developing a transmedia dramadey/mystery based on the premise!

    8. I enjoyed this. It made me laugh when you wrote  about getting out of the way. I used to have a saying that when I was not getting anywhere I would look around and see that I was the obstacle. I think this probably fits into a number of categories. One's sense of self-worth plays a big role in progress or lack thereof. Just today I was speaking with a successful business woman who is asked to speak at diverse events about team building. Each time she is asked her first question (to herself) is, "Why are they asking me?" If we could only stop holding ourselves back we would find achievement a little more often. Anyway, nice post.

    Leave a Reply to Adriaan de Kuijper Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


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