Many people have the best intentions to change their life. But their behaviors and actions often default to doing what’s convenient. The limiting beliefs that created those same life circumstances and challenges they’ve been experiencing show up just as they’ve always done. Then they buy into them as they’ve always done and continue getting the same results they’ve always gotten. They aren’t open-minded and teachable-ready to begin getting a different result.

Take a moment to think about how fulfilled you feel with your life. On a scale of 1 – 10, rate your level of fulfillment. Your level of fulfillment is directly related to your sense of purpose in life. But, when it comes to life, who has the time to think about fulfillment? Our lives are so busy and most of us are just trying to keep our heads above water. We pretty much run our days on monochromatic. Who has time to contemplate the purpose of life?

On a deeper level everyone is trying to find their purpose. Remember the classic story, The Wizard of OZ? Remember the yellow brick road on which the Witch of the North sends Dorothy on to find her answers? The road is full of promises and hopes, only to find out in the end that the Wizard of OZ is just a common man. The yellow brick road from this classic story is a metaphor for the pursuit of our life purpose and a yardstick for success and recognition. This yellow brick road represents what our society tells us to do in order to be successful, and live a life of glory and recognition. Following this yellow brick road makes us too busy working, too busy taking care of our families, too busy worrying about our future, and too busy taking care of responsibilities. We invariably set ourselves to be like hamsters on a wheel. It only teaches us to be more fearful, develop a poor self-image and not set authentic and truth goals.

Fear

This is the most common reason for not taking action. We may fear we’re not smart enough. Or fear that we’ll be exposing ourselves to ridicule. We might have an extreme fear of failure, so interestingly enough, we create more of the very thing we do not want. We may reason, for example, that it’s better to fail from lack of effort than to fail after “going for it.” Failing after trying would feel like rejection or be evidence that we aren’t good enough. Since we don’t want to face that possible outcome, we don’t give ourselves the chance to fail or succeed.

Poor Self-Image

What society invariably teaches us is to be wary about how other people will perceive us. It sets us up for a constant game of comparison and judgement. Much of this comes from how we assume people perceive us, thereby holding us back from trying to excel. Right from school days, think about all those experiences you’ve had when you have been compared, criticized or simply made to shut up.

Not Setting Truth Goals

Some of us feel we don’t have time to set goals, so we do what’s in front of us; without a rudder, never considering what we truly want. Others set their goal standards on what the society expects them to do in life. Ultimately, we only allow life to float in front of us and take it one day at a time. We sacrifice our ultimate dreams for the “bright shiny objects” that come our way each day.

“You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it courageously.”

– Steve Maraboli

The good news with all of this is that identifying your purpose in life is a lot easier than you think. All you have to do is step out of your own way and keep everything that the society expects from you aside for a moment. Take a moment to offload all this pressure you have been carrying along. Take a moment to breathe freely. Take a moment to be open to new experiences, letting go of emotional attachments to specific outcomes and evolving your awareness. We are happiest when we are natural and our authentic selves. When we are natural and true to ourselves, our talents and strengths appear effortlessly. When we are able to lead our days with our talents and strengths, we are invariably able to achieve our greatest selves.

Know What You Want

Once you are able to detach yourself from societal expectations and judgements, you’ll have more clarity to plan what you do want. Knowing with clarity what you want helps you to aim your life in the direction you want it to go. If you don’t consciously aim for where you want to go, you’ll go where your subconscious mind believes you should go based on whether those beliefs are supporting you or not.

True freedom comes from knowing what you want, without being a prisoner to what you want. You can anticipate obstacles and let nothing deter you from getting back on track. Rather than aimlessly wander with the hope we’ll get somewhere, why not plan an outrageous future!

Many people become overwhelmed by their carryover list-everything they need to get done that gets carried over to the next day. If we don’t take the time to clarify what we want and put the plans in place, we find ourselves running desperately to keep up every day while falling further behind. We may also find ourselves failing to accomplish our most important objectives, the ones that help us advance in areas that are most important to us.

Think of your planning time as an investment. Use it as a tool to deliberately design and create a future that’s authentic and true to you.

Evolving Your Awareness

It’s a unique challenge to explain how awareness evolves in the life of every person. As you begin, you must realize that you don’t know what you don’t know. Your life is a result of what you have been conditioned to believe and perceive over your lifetime, not because you consciously chose your beliefs. To this point, you may feel like life has happened to you. But remember, we are ultimately the creators of it all. Once you recognize that many of your beliefs are self-limiting, it is your responsibility to do something about it.

It’s important to realize that your conditioned programming and subsequent limiting-beliefs are not your fault. You can let go of any guilt, blame, shame, and so on. It doesn’t matter how it happened. That is in the past. A critical step in this process is to recognize the difference between fault and responsibility. While it is true that your beliefs and perceptions are not your fault, you do not have to be a victim of circumstance. You can take personal responsibility for making the necessary changes to the beliefs that do not support you in achieving the results you desire. By reprogramming limiting beliefs and replacing them with supportive ones, you can accomplish this. But you must show up and do the work.

A crucial stage of awareness is understanding that you must be willing to let go of emotional attachment to your desire. Needy or desperate energy will keep you from alignment with what you want and will block you from attracting your desired outcome. You must feed your intention with positive emotion while turning it over to a higher power. Believe you will receive and release your desire to control, and then allow the miracles to come to you.

As counter intuitive as this may seem, this step gives you the maximum power to attract things into your life by letting go of trying to control how you allow yourself to co-create with your higher power and deliver your heart’s desires in the easiest and fastest ways possible. If you are emotionally attached to how the process must unfold, you will struggle more than is necessary and block inspiration. Letting go of trying to control everything allows the process to flow as you remain open and receptive to inspiration as to what actions to take to move forward in the direction of your truth goals.

About this post

This article has been published with inputs and views from Stephen Barrow, who is the founder and owner of Club Success, an online resource that works with people that are looking to grow and develop in any area of their life. Going by the mantra, “Taking care of your needs is not selfish, it is necessary,” Stephen realized that finding comprehensive answers for life’s major criteria were virtually impossible to find online. He created Club Success to fill that gap. Prior to Club Success, Stephen was a business owner in the real estate industry, where he learned the need to work with people – mentor and guide them – to help them set and achieve goals. Club Success is now his true purpose.