Stop Saying You're Fine by Mel Robbins
Discover a More Powerful You
I highly recommend this book as a great guide for refining your goals, accomplishing your goals and helping people who are stuck in life and don't really know what their goals are. Excerpts from the book follow.
Being stuck is the feeling that you are trapped by the life you have created is terrifying and infuriating. Deep down, you know you want something more, but maybe you don't know what it is or you simply don't have a clue how to get it.
If you can reclaim control over 5 percent of your life, and spend that time doing something productive, energy-inspiring, and action-oriented you will quickly restore order and balance to your life.
There's a battle going on in your brain, and it's keeping you from getting what you want. To win any fight you have to know what you are up against and how to fight back. Your brain is a formidable opponent and it fights dirty. At crucial moments throughout your day, your brain is putting the brakes on your desire for action and inserting thoughts and feelings in order to keep you from moving forward.
Your brain is constantly producing propaganda to project a false sense of your personal limits. Think of it as an overeager natural defense system that is designed to protect you from stepping into situations that involve too much risk. You need to develop tricks to outsmart your brain at its own game, by devising tricks that let you accomplish higher goals.
Admitting to yourself, let alone others, that you're stuck can feel monumentally difficult. Unless you are actively attacking your problems and impressing your friends through your efforts to fix things, frequent conversations about feeling stuck can be a major social downer.
It might seem that shrinking your dreams makes them easier or more manageable, but the truth is that when you shrink your dreams you kill them. The smaller version is not what you desire. It's a lie. The little thing is not what you want, the big one is."
The test of your goals and dreams
Test #1: Is it embarrassing?
Test #2 Is it selfish and a little crass?
Test #3 Is it specific and detailed?
What if I truly don't know what I want? You need to get out into the world and do something new and exciting and big. What you need is action, not thought. So stop thinking and just pick.
When you announce to other people what your dreams are, you enlist the outside world in holding you to your commitment. There are three simple reasons why you must do this. 1) you can't get anything done in life without the help of other people. 2) Other people accelerate your pace and broaden your ideas. 3) Your relationship with people is the most important aspect of your life.
Get people to help you. Describe your desire to them, then ask the following questions
1. If you were me, what specific things would you be doing to get started/learn more/etc.
2. Do you have any books that you would recommend I read?
3. Do you know anyone who come give me some more advice/counsel?
There's no faster way to accelerate this process of changing your life than to surround yourself with people who do the same thing that you are interested in. You cannot underestimate the power of proximity when it comes to forming connections.
The longer you wait to get started on your goals, the more you think and the more you lessen the impulse to take action.
Life will back you into a corner. The only way out is through. As soon as you see multiple ways to have what you want, you will push through. Remember to be like water. If something gets in your way, flow around it.
Action removes doubt. The moment you take stock of the situation and start actually doing something about it, you begin to feel better. You feel a sense of control returning to you.
