The Top 3 Factors Holding You Back From Changing Your Life (And How to Tackle Them)

Over the 20+ years I have been helping people make changes in their lives, I have noticed some clear patterns that consistently sabotage people's progress and outcomes.

I want to share the top three with you because addressing them can make all the difference when you want to make changes in your life or work. 

Here are the top three factors that hold people back from making the changes they want in their lives (and how to start dealing with them): 

Factor 1: Already overwhelmed and over busy with demands on their time, attention, and energy:  

People are just swamped with everything they already have on their plates, personally and professionally. They want to make changes, but don’t feel they can get to it.

First step to address this:

-          Identify things you could stop doing, even if it is temporarily, so you can work on the change you want to create in your life. 

-          Do an audit of what is getting your time, attention, and energy. 

-          Use your audit to identify ways to manage yourself and your schedule more effectively. 

-          Start saying “no” more to things that matter less than the change you want to make.  

-          Examples: could you delegate something, put a project on pause, or waste less time on low-value tasks like excessive scrolling, unnecessary meetings, and binge-watching TV? 

Factor 2: Feeling stuck because they don’t know how to create or navigate change successfully:  

The mindset of “I don’t know how to do it” stops so many people before they even start. If it’s a change you have never made in your life before, of course, you don’t know how to do it yet. Using that as a reason not to move forward is self-sabotaging. Here’s why:  

If you wanted to play a musical instrument you had never played before, you wouldn’t use the fact that you don’t know how to play it yet as an excuse not to bother. You might jump on YouTube to find a video tutorial for beginners or find a tutor to give you a few lessons to get you started.  

First step to address this:  

-          "Stop saying 'I don’t know how.' Start saying, 'I don’t know how YET, but I’ll figure it out.' Keep telling yourself this as you move forward.  

-          Start researching. Get curious. Be solution-focused, not problem-focused. 

-          Identify the first few small steps. You don’t need to have everything figured out before you start.  

Factor 3: Emotions (especially fear, self-doubt, and lack of confidence) are in the driving seat:   

Your emotions drive how you show up. And emotions like those listed above can hold you back because people tend to retreat from them as they feel so damn uncomfortable to deal with. And that keeps people stuck.

First step to address this:  

-          Treat your emotions as data. What are they telling you? Listen hard. They can give you useful data to inform your next steps and identify how to address them so that they don’t hold you back. 

-          Identify what needs to happen to foster emotions that fuel you forward, not keep you stuck. 

-          Identify how you need to show up to set yourself up for success. Work on developing the emotional state that will support that.   

The bottom line:  

The good news? These barriers don’t have to be showstoppers. By tackling them head on, you put yourself back in the driver’s seat, setting yourself up to create the changes you really want in your life, work, career or business successfully.