And by playing small, I mean not doing all that you can, not reaching your potential.
Probably, if you’re being truthful, the answer is yes, right?
There’s not that many people I know of who are truly hitting their greatness in all aspects of their life, all aspects of their business.
We tend to play small.
I think we do that because it’s easier and it’s safer.
It’s safer to play small, you’re not putting yourself out there, you’re not risking things, money, time, what other people think of you.
You’re not risking anything.
So it’s easier to play small.
It’s easier to stay mediocre, even though you say you don’t want to!
It’s easier to stay that way.
I want to tell you about things that, in my experience, have always kept me back and what I’ve done over the years to push through to finally break into my greatness.
Listen, your greatness is going to be different from my greatness.
When I say your greatness, your greatness could be a $2 million a year business.
Your greatness could be just making an extra $500 to pay off the car bill this month to help out your spouse and your family.
Your greatness might be making enough money on your business so you can stay home with your kids.
Your greatness will depend on you.
There’s absolutely no judgment here.
Your greatness is your greatness, and only you know what that is
We’re going to talk about why aren’t you there.
What’s stopping you?
We’re going to talk mostly about business, but the stuff I’m going to talk to you about today is something that affects all aspects of your life.
So let’s get into it.
Four psychological traps that can keep you in mediocrity and away from your greatness.
I think you’re going to recognize these as I say them, but maybe you haven’t thought about them as traps.
1. “It’s not working” or “it stopped working”
What do I mean?
The first part, “it’s not working.”
Many times, we give up on something way too soon.
We give up on something saying it’s not going to work, where in essence, we just haven’t given it the time.
For example, I’m in a YouTube challenge right now.
I saw a guy who is crushing it with YouTube.
However, he showed a really cool graphic, where for the first four months, he was stuck getting very little traffic on his videos, very few views, not many comments.
Not much of anything on his videos, but he kept pumping them out every single day.
Pumping them out, pumping them out.
One month went by, not much.
Two months, three months went by, not much.
Then the fourth month, all of a sudden, some traffic, some views, some comments, some sales kicked in in the next month after that.
Most people after that second month, certainly after the third month, would have said…
“You know what, this isn’t working and I need to find something else.”
It comes down to believing what you’re doing that will ultimately lead to success.
Belief stems from who you’re listening to
You can have a belief that you know what they’re teaching works, because countless other people have had success before.
It’s just a matter of you getting in there and doing what they say, doing it over and over again until the results kick in.
I think this is the universe’s way of sorting out who’s really serious and who isn’t.
That’s my belief.
Because if success happened right away, everybody would be successful and the meaning would be less.
Success doesn’t happen right away.
In fact, sometimes success happens way down the road.
In my view that is the universe’s way of testing you to see how serious you are, how badly you want it.
“It’s not working.”
That’s a trap that you’ll say to yourself after you tried something for a while and it hasn’t been happening for you.
Anybody ever experience that?
I know I have.
I have been guilty in the past of trying something for a while and moving on because I thought it didn’t work.
Mostly it happened because I didn’t really have the belief in what I was doing.
Or I thought I was doing it wrong, where in reality, I just haven’t let it go long enough to see the results.
It happens in all aspects of life and business.
It happens in blogging.
Sometimes in blogging, people will just start blogging.
Even though they’re really good bloggers, it takes a while to get that readership.
If you give up too soon, you’ve given up on a lot of good stuff—like the results!
The other part of it’s not working is — it stopped working.
This is when you see a blip of results.
You start to see some results then you say…
“Great, this is fantastic! This is working. I love it. Let’s explode this thing.”
You get all psyched.
You’re really going for it.
All of a sudden, your results drop off again.
Not good, right?
You start to think…
“What changed? What did I do wrong? What’s happening here?”
If you’ve ever read the book by Seth Godin called The Dip, this is a well-documented phenomenon in many aspects of life.
You get an initial rise in results and then it dips down.
It will ultimately come back up if you keep going, but there’s always a dip, not always, but a lot of times, there’s a dip.
This dip, to me, separates the men from the boys, if you will.
Not being sexist here, but you know what I mean.
It’s what separates out the super serious from the wannabes.
You get a little bit of success and it goes to your head
Lots of people bail when they see the dip or they go off and try something else.
Or they think…
“What am I doing wrong?”
Again, it comes down to belief.
Stick here in EMP and you will have the belief, all right?
This stuff just happens.
This is not a one-time thing for me.
This stuff is coming from my experience because I’ve done it, I know, so I’m not judging and you shouldn’t judge yourself.
You shouldn’t feel bad.
This is all part of growing up in your business and in life.
So understand that stuff.
2. Buying into the sexy
It’s the shiny objects.
I know you guys have heard all about this, but I’m going to ask you to think about them again because this is a trap to your success.
It’s a trap to keep you in mediocrity.
It’s a trap to keep you away from your greatness.
Always buying the sexy, the something new that comes along.
Here’s the thing.
Another good book recommendation is called “The Slight Edge” from Jeff Olson.
The Slight Edge is a great book.
I’ve read it three times now.
I think I’m going to read it every year.
What it comes down to is—there’s a small series of things that you do in anything you want to do successfully.
Baby steps bring you up from no results to success
What happens is we do that and then for whatever reason, we stop doing those things.
It makes no sense.
Sometimes it’s shiny objects, something else comes along.
Maybe these little things aren’t giving us success as fast as we want or sometimes, honestly, we just get distracted by life and we forget to do these things again.
They haven’t become habits yet.
For example, let’s go to different aspects, not just business.
In weight loss, in your health, you can do small things every day to help yourself lose weight.
You could eat better.
You can take a 20-minute walk every day.
Gradually, over time, you start to see some results.
For whatever reason, we stop doing those things and we go back to where we were.
They’re not hard things.
They’re easy things to do.
In business, it’s doing what I call your “money test”
Doing that thing every day to grow your business, that thing that will most likely give you results.
It’s not hard.
It can be prospecting three people.
It could be placing an ad or reviewing the ad to see how it’s doing.
It could be something very, very simple in your business that you do every day that starts to give you results.
But for some reason, you get away from it.
It’s a psychological trap that something is sexier, something is better, something is going to give me results faster.
In reality, if we just kept doing those simple little things every day, our results would not only go up, but eventually, they would go up exponentially.
But we stop doing it.
It’s a trap.
3. “Nobody knows how bad I have it”
You’re got to play the hand you’re dealt.
Everybody has excuses.
Everybody has reasons why they can’t get things done.
For me, it’s my busy schedule and I play the age card.
“I’m too old for this stuff.”
I fight that.
Somehow in my subconscious, that got into my head.
The excuses can come.
There’s always somebody else out there who has it worse than you, who’s getting more results than you.
I know that that hurts and I know you want to fight back at me.
You want to give me a list of why you can’t do stuff and I’m not judging you.
That list is valid.
I get it, but you need to push through because there’s always somebody out there, who’s doing it and has it worse than you.
Who has more kids at home, who works more hours than you, who has a worse disease than you do.
There are always people worse off than you, who are getting results.
You need to think…
“Okay, then why am I letting it stop me?”
It’s a trap.
It’s justification.
Here’s something I need you to write down because it’s a key.
Excuses are your subconscious’ way of justifying your mediocrity
Let me repeat that.
Excuses are your subconscious’ way of justifying your mediocrity.
I urge you to go on to your Facebook wall today and post that and see what response you get.
You might get plus and minus.
Some people will say…
“Right on, you’re right.”
Other people will say…
“You don’t understand my problems.”
Then you’ll have a chance to have some conversations here.
So, let me say it again…
Excuses are your subconscious’ way of justifying your mediocrity
That’s what it is.
It’s keeping you safe.
It’s keeping you from getting out of your comfort zone and maybe risking stuff.
Your excuses are keeping you from your greatness.
Everybody has excuses!
I do, you do, everybody does and some of them are really good ones.
Like I said, there’s always somebody out there who’s worse off than you, who are getting results.
So you must breakthrough.
The last one I won’t spend a lot of time on because I’ve talked about it before…
4. “I’ll do it tomorrow”
Complacency and a lack of urgency are the two worst weapons for people who aren’t with their back against the wall.
If your back is against the wall, you need to make money, you must get results.
That puts you in a different class.
You need to do things.
You must break out of your comfort zone.
There’s no way out, right?
You got to do it.
For the majority of us, that’s not our story.
Maybe our bills are getting paid by a job we have or a job our spouse has.
Maybe we’re not against the wall financially.
We’re not against the wall emotionally.
We’re not against the wall spiritually.
We’re comfortable and we’re complacent because of that comfort.
So a really super powerful trap that our mind, our subconscious plays on us is that…
“I can do that tomorrow.”
We must watch for that.
We need to watch that language coming out of our mouth or in our thoughts because that’s our subconscious’ way of keeping us in mediocrity.
I know this is stuff you probably don’t want to hear, but I hope you’re getting value.
Again, there’s no judgment.
I understand because I’ve gone through each and every one of these more than once.
It’s only when I realized that this was really my subconscious playing against me that I was able to grow more and become a better marketer and better person in my life.
These four triggers, the it’s not working or it stopped working, this looks better over here, the shiny object, the excuses or the complacency, these traps –
How do you fight them?
Well, number one is what you’re doing today by reading this post…
First By Becoming aware….
Become really aware of your thoughts and your words, so that you can identify what’s going on.
You can take power over this, over these traps, just by becoming aware of them.
Most people go through life not even knowing what’s going on.
They don’t even know they’re falling victim to their subconscious.
They just go through life, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They go through life and they’re not a pilot.
They’re just getting through the day.
People in business, just trying to get through the day.
I hear people ask…
“How was your day?”
Answer…
“I got through it.”
That makes me sad.
Listen, I know we get tired, we get complacent.
Sometimes I have days where I’m getting through the day, so I’m not judging.
Awareness is the number one thing.
Then the second thing, once you’re aware, then you…
Next You Fight back
When you fight back, then you recognize…
“Hey, maybe it’s not that this thing isn’t working. Maybe I haven’t given enough time yet. Maybe I need to keep going.”
“Maybe this shiny object really isn’t better.”
“Maybe I must have the belief in what I’m doing,”
“Maybe my excuses are a bunch of BS and I need just to get up there and get on my computer and get going.”
“Maybe I need to create some artificial deadlines, so that I’m not complacent.”
“Maybe I have to figure my way out of this box, out of this trap.”
So awareness, number one and then fighting back is number two.
Once you’re aware, you can fight back, you can breakthrough!
You can escape mediocrity
There’s a lot of us who are stuck in that pot of mediocrity.
In fact, I think almost all of us, because almost all of us can be better than where we are now.
I think we can all agree on that.
So if you want to learn more about moving out of mediocrity and into your greatness…
Then I strongly encourage you to sign up for a FREE 10-Day Online Recruiting Bootcamp.
You’ll learn even more ways to improve your mindset, connect with your prospects, and increase your chances of building a successful business.
Plus, you’ll learn all about about the specific tools and techniques to connect with prospects online, so you’ll never have to act desperate, chase down or strong-arm prospects, or deal with cold calling and rejection, ever again.
These methods allow you to build your business automatically—where prospects reach out to you (instead of you having to reach out to them).
So if you’re ready to get started…
Until Next Time….
~Nerissa