What will happen if you try to drive your car with your foot on the brakes? Well first you won’t move forward, it will wear out the brake drum, it wastes precious fuel, the engine gets heated up, finally you might even get a breakdown. In the journey of life we want to reach our goals and dreams as fast as we can but we are held back by our own inner demons which don’t let us move in the forward direction. Here are 5 inner demons you need to battle…

1. Comfort Zone

We all want to do great things in life but the biggest obstacle that we face is our comfort zone. We love our comfort zone and we don’t want to come out of it, the smaller our comfort zone the more unhappy, dissatisfied and frustrated we are and the bigger the comfort zone the more adaptable, satisfied and happy we are. As long as you stay in your comfort zone, you won’t learn and you won’t grow. So constantly keep expanding your comfort zone and this can be done by learning and taking on new challenges that take you in the direction of your dreams and goals.

2. Distractions

When I talk of distractions, there are are two kinds one external and the other internal. In this podcast, I want to focus on the internal distractions. The main cause of internal distraction is somebody said something to us or somebody didn’t say something to us. It could also be due to somebody did something to us or somebody didn’t do something for us. Would you watch a horrible movie 100 times? heck no! Then why do you see horrible scenes in your mind 100 of times, they just sap your energy. So how do we handle these inner distractions? List things that are incomplete in your life, things that bother you, loose ends that you have in your life that robs you of energy.Prioritize according to the ones that are robbing you of the most energy. Find the 20% of the things that are sucking 80% of your energy.Either complete it or just let it go, it is not worth the energy. Do what it takes or release it to the universe. Or say this prayer, “God I can handle only this much, the rest I am passing it to you, please help me.”

3. Fear

Whenever we try to do something challenging, something new, something for the first time fear will almost certainly come up. For example when I was doing rappelling for the first time, I was secured with safety equipment, with experts supporting me but standing at the edge of the cliff I was very fearful taking that first step, I was imagining the worst possible scenarios, what if the rope broke? what if I landed down head first? those pictures held me back from taking the first step. Then with the instructions of the experts I got a little confident and then took my first step and making my body perpendicular to the rock face and then slowly walking down as told by the experts, half way through I started enjoying it and began descending as if I was a pro. Fear is a very natural thing coming up to protect you but it can also become an obstacle to your success in life. So how do you handle fear? simple, face it. Once you have weighed the pros and cons and have good people to support then don’t think much, take the plunge. Recently, I started a new business, I had this fear whether it would work or not still I took the plunge and found that it was not that scary at all and in the long run I will reap great benefits.

4. Procrastination

Procrastination is putting of important things that can make a difference in our lives. We all are guilty of procrastination. Most of us tend to avoid things that are unpleasant, complex or overpowering. We also procrastinate because we link lot of pain to doing something. So how do we overcome procrastination.Analyze what causes you to put things off and then find your own solutions. Link lot of pleasure to taking action and lot pain to not taking action. For example, let’s take exercise, exercise is very important to ourselves fit but we still postpone doing it why? because we link lot of pain to doing it but if you link lot of pain to not doing it you would be motivated to take action, like if I don’t exercise I will become fat, low on energy, can’t do my work, can’t earn, can’t take care of my family, might die early, oh my god, I don’t want all this, I better exercise. Don’t procrastinate on things that are positive and truly important for your life, you can procrastinate on the negative things and the ones that are less important, for example if you get angry, tell yourself, I will not get angry now, I will get angry tomorrow.

5. Negative beliefs

Being a freelance trainer for the past 28 years I have come to the conclusion that everything boils down to the beliefs you hold in your mind. We have picked up beliefs from all around, parents, teachers, friends, books, movies at some point in life maybe those beliefs worked for you but as you grew up chances are those beliefs no longer work anymore but we keep on holding to those beliefs. If we wish to give our lives a new direction, we should sit down and make a list of all the disempowering beliefs that are holding us back, most people don’t do this. When I thought about this, I realized that my biggest negative belief was, “ I can’t speak in front of a group of people” and I wanted to become a trainer, how could I become a trainer if I kept holding on to this belief? So what do you do? Let me give you three simple steps to change your negative beliefs: step 1 change your negative belief to a positive one, so I changed my belief to, “I am an excellent speaker” Step 2 take new action to support your new belief, so I started speaking to small groups of friends, neighbours, and family members. Step 3 Keep taking action over and over again till it becomes a solid unshakable belief so I started speaking at clubs, housing societies, schools, colleges, management institutes, corporates I did it over and over again and soon my old negative belief just disappeared and was replaced by the new belief that “I am an excellent speaker.” You can change any belief that is holding you back, believe me.

I am Rajiv Kumar Luv. My passion in life is to make a difference in the lives of people so that they achieve their personal as well as professional best. I am absolutely committed to specially helping youngsters become leaders in their chosen fields. In the past 28 years, I have trained over 100,000 people from all walks of life. Through my two-day program “Leadership Through Personality Development” I help the youth plan their career, build confidence, make better decisions, manage time and develop their employability skills to meet today’s real-life challenges. You can learn more about me and the work I do by visiting: http://www.thepersonalityboss.com