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Do you ever have problems starting something in life?
Do you need to make it easy to start, or impossible to stay where you are?
Do you set yourself up for success or just white-knuckle it?
This is my fifth or sixth 75 Hard Challenge and I’m just finishing day 3. Normally I’m really excited in the beginning and takes a couple of weeks before I feel burned out or tired.
This time around, I didn’t even what to start. I know it’s good for me but I avoid it… or tried to.
Do you avoid things you know are good for you? Why?
I don’t know either.
I’ve studied all the self-help information on the topic and I can only find two things that might be the reason. I haven’t figured out which one it actually is, or if either holds true. Are you afraid of winning? or having the responsibility of winning? Or did you hit your upper limit?
Are you afraid of winning and/or the responsibility winning brings? If you do something, have a win in your life, or accomplish something big, you have to do it again. Can you do it again? Can you live up to people expecting more of you? Can you earn it every single day?
I’m reading “Winning” by Tim Grover and it is all about chasing the win, and about how winning doesn’t care about anything except the winner and the loser. And here we are, worrying about the problems of being a winner before we can even get into the game.
I know this was on my mind when I started this challenge. Can I really do it again? Lately, I’ve been lazy and eating badly. I’ve blamed it on a new, but that isn’t the reason, it’s the excuse.
Instead of dwelling on all that, I just started. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I’m moving forward. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
The other likely reason, the upper limit challenge, I first heard from Dan Miller of 48Days.com. He writes books, does podcasts, and training about life coaching. The theory is everyone has an upper limit of what they think they can achieve or deserve down deep in their being. Lots of people surpass that limit, but all of them stay there. When people pass that upper limit of what they believe they should have or achieve they do something that seems to wreck their lives and bring them back below that level of their belief.
I’ve seen this a lot in friends. You can see it in professional athletes that come out of poverty and then end up doing something stupid to lose their careers and all their money.
Give most homeless people a brand new car and in a couple of months, it will have broken windows, dents, and look like it belongs to a homeless person. That person’s upper limit was breached with the new car and they don’t know how to act.
Does either of these things ring true to you? Do you see any problems in your life that could be attributed to fear of winning or of getting more than you think you deserve?
Ben Branam