Five Roadblocks To Achieving Success

I love sales and leadership conventions, reading books on success, and listening to motivational speakers. There is a thrill that comes from being around other professionals; listening to what they are doing right, what they need to improve on, and learning about the steps we must take to reach next year’s goals.

What I love more though, is the thrill of taking action and actually achieving results. So often, we get pumped up from one-time experiences and we develop wonderful plans to change the world but then we go home and reality hits us hard. We lose our enthusiasm little by little. We get back into the routine of doing things the way we’ve always done them, and we eventually find ourselves achieving the same results we’ve been achieving. We wake up six months later wondering what went wrong and asking ourselves why we lost the enthusiasm that we thought for sure would guarantee us success this time around.

I’ve identified five roadblocks to achieving success:

1. We fail to create action plans. Whether it’s a book or motivational speech, we fail to spend 20-30 minutes writing down the key takeaways and actions steps necessary to implement what we have just learned. We let the tyranny of the urgent steal our focus and attention, and within a short amount of time we’ve forgotten what we just learned and we fail to act. When your intent is at its peak, take action and implement.
2. We fear change. Going to the next level will require you to make changes personally and professionally. These changes might be in the way we think or act and may require us to become more disciplined in certain areas of our life. Sometimes these changes force us to make tough decisions that impact other people’s lives. Fearing this type of change will get you nowhere.
3. We don’t know our “Big Why”. Achieving maximum success requires you to know your purpose for what you do each day. It has to go beyond the motivational speeches and the desire for more income and status. Without purpose, we find ourselves unmotivated to take action and do the things we know we need to do to be successful. This can be especially damaging in challenging times. If you don’t know your “Big Why” you’ll never achieve “Big Success”.
4. We lack true accountability. My coach, Barry Engelman, has shared with me time again the best way to avoid accountability is to be vague. Lots of people say they want to be held accountable but few really do. We set goals like “I’m going to start working out” or “I’m going to start calling more past clients”, but we never get specific with the details of these goals. By doing so we can never be held accountable to actions, timelines, and benchmarks. A goal that you can be held accountable to might sound like this, “I’m going to do a cardio workout 30 minutes a day, three days a week, for the next 120 days.” See the difference?
5. We fail to do what we are supposed to do – We fail to act. In the end it’s about taking action and doing what we know to be the right thing to do. Sometimes this requires a leap of faith, sometimes we have to face our fears, and sometimes we need to stop doing the “busy work” that takes us away from true success. It may push you out of your comfort zone, but it must be done. This is not a new problem. The Apostle Paul wrote about this almost 2,000 years ago.

“…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” – Romans 7:18-19

Now, I’m not saying when we don’t implement our strategies and plans we are evil. What I am saying is that this is a true roadblock to success and one that men and women have struggled with for thousands of years. You are not alone. The best solution is to take action.

As you consider these five roadblocks to achieving success, evaluate the areas you are struggling with the most and start making changes. There is a great scene in the movie Braveheart where Mel Gibson’s character Williams Wallace has just made an amazing motivational speech to Scottish warriors about to take on the English Army. As he finishes the speech one of his friends and followers turns to him and says, “Nice speech, now what do we do?” This is the question I encourage you to ask yourself after every motivational experience you have. Answering that question and taking action will lead you to greater success.

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan

Related posts:

1. 8 Key Areas That Affect Performance
2. Reality and Hope
3. Belief in Yourself
4. 11 Traits of the Best of the Best
5. Learning from Failure