We have all gone through this, believing that giving up is the best decision for us. Unfortunately, that is further from the truth because giving up is the easy choice.

Staying motivated is the hardest thing you will do especially after you fail, but you have to keep motivated. You have no idea what you are missing on once you give up. Success could be right around the corner.

Giving up is so alluring

We have all been there, tasted the juices of failure and relished in giving up. With a shrug and an aching heart, we step back and we always have a reason for not doing something. The reasons are always plausible and often people agree with us that it’s the best solution, but why do we actually give up.

The first month in the new year is always the most productive, because we start with our goals and by the end of the month, we realize that it’s not for us. Our reasons at the time make sense, but regret always swings a bat at us when we get older, so why do we give up.

• Thinking the outcome is more important than the journey – We all make this mistake, we think the end-result is more important than the journey. That’s further from the truth, it’s great to win the race, but the journey is more important. Think about it, what did you enjoy more, the journey or the end-result. Winning isn’t as important as how you got to where you are at this moment.
• Letting your failure control your life –Don’t ever let failure control your life, it will cause more harm than you believe. Take your time when it comes to letting go of failure. I get it, it’s painful, heart-wrenching. Yeah, I know too graphic, but failing feels as if you’re the biggest joke ever to walk on the side of the road. You get it right, but letting failure control your life is the worst thing you can do to yourself. Don’t live in that mentality.
• Lack of discipline– This one is of course a bummer, yeah discipline, without it you might as well be peeling potatoes, though back in the days peeling potatoes was for people who wouldn’t amount to anything. No, your life is far more important than wasting time peeling potatoes. Discipline is something you have to work at so you must do it on a daily basis. Will it suck, of course. I had a teacher who used to scream at the students for not doing any work before the school bell rang. Even now I can imagine her telling the students to do something constructive. What I am telling you is discipline requires work.

Also Related: Failing Your Way To Success – Why Failure is a Crucial Ingredient for Success?

Success is right around the corner

Before, you can stay motivated, you have to understand that success is right around the corner. It is easy to not believe that, but what people have about success is wrong. There’s no such thing as instant success, despite people believing that you can wake up one day and become successful. It can take a while, but maybe not as long as you think it might.

Instant success is a myth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful if you put in the work or the effort. That’s the thing with success, you get whatever work you put in and if you don’t put effort then you won’t become successful.

You will always wonder what if

You will always wonder what if when you give up. It’s a natural response and the worst thing is regret. That can cause unnecessary grief and pain on your journey. There’ll always be a part of you that feels as if you can do more and that you allowed your failures to stop you.

The problem with regret is it never goes away, it will always be there. Your future self, will waste time thinking about what could have happened if you didn’t choose the easy way. Once regret hits you will spend so much of time thinking about it that every decision after that will push you back further.

Struggle doesn’t equate to failure

Struggle is nothing to be ashamed of, people will lead you to believe that hard times make you weaker, but that isn’t the truth. You are who you are because of the struggles you went through.

There will always be hard times, you can’t run away from that and you shouldn’t. Hard times builds character, it pushes you forward if you let it and it makes you stronger. We all have a story of our struggles, successful people have enough of those stories to have a whole wall dedicated to it, but those stories defined them.

Who would you be if you didn’t fall when you tried to walk as a baby? What if you never struggled in class, sports, making friends and everything just came easy to you? We all have to struggle at something so that we can grow, it’s part of life and it becomes easier to accept once we realize struggle and failure are two different things.

Also Related: How to Figure Out What You Want Without Losing Your Mind?

You will always surrender to defeat

We all go through challenges and how we overcome them defines us. Giving up can appear as if it’s the only solution that works, but take it from me it does more damage. When you allow yourself to give in before even trying that becomes your mantra for everything you do.

What follows after is a willingness to surrender to defeat. I know how hard it can be to try to chase away the thoughts of failure. It’s as if your swatting away flies, but it sticks to you like glue. The best way to not let that define you is to not give up. I know it sounds easy, but it isn’t that simple. You will constantly beat yourself up about it, but it’s important to know you can’t give up on yourself. You have to work at it every day.

Adapt the wrong mentality

You don’t want this to become the mantra you live by and so you have to continue to fight it. If you give up, it becomes second nature to you so anything you try to do you will give up before you make it work. Don’t adapt the wrong mindset because you don’t want that to become your status quo.

Whenever you are battling a bad habit and or trying to accomplish your goals and you give up, you will always do that. I have been there, done that and I know that it’s hard to beat it. How successful you become ultimately depends on you because of your belief system. If you believe you are not going to win then you are right, the same goes for the person who believes they are capable of achieving success. This isn’t some flash card stuff, this works because what we achieve is reflected in how we see ourselves.

These are a few reasons why people give up, what are yours? I would love to know why you have given up in the past, write a comment below and I will respond as soon as possible.

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                                                                                      VANESSA

For most of my life fear pushed me back into the corners of my mind. I felt as if I kept myself hidden then I wouldn’t be afraid if I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t always like this, growing up I was like most children. I was confidant. Nothing could stop me, a force of nature, many my teachers exclaimed. I was nine, it’s when everything changed, I noticed how different I was to my peers.

They loved pointing out how clownish I was, for a while I thought that was great until my siblings pointed out it wasn’t. For years, I had the clown title engraved on my forehead. Where I went, it followed me like a tail, always getting in my way. People saw me as blonde, idiotic and a person to be made fun of. Never once did I stand up for myself, now I realize that was detrimental to my existence. It could be I was afraid that this was what my life would be like and standing up would bring awareness to it. So, I kept quiet.

That’s the problem with fear, we often see it as this red flag warning us not to step in the unknown, but it’s more than that. Fear is like the high school bully that sneers when you want to stand up for yourself. It’s the punch you get, when life throws you a curve ball and you quit. There are so many times I quit, letting life slip out of my reach. Years of disappearing finally caught up to me at eighteen when I was hit with a depression so hard I fell into it.

Fear made me seek validation

High school bullies are the worst, but they exude this confidence that makes us give into them. I had a couple of high school bullies and I always tried to validate my existence when it came to them. I wanted them to appreciate me so much that I caused myself harm.

I didn’t know what to do at the time, thinking that it was best to agree to what they said. It could be I was looking for a sister figure and that’s why I craved their attention. My sister left when I hit puberty and I had no one really to help me navigate my teen years. When, someone who was close to my sister’s age paid me attention, I was happy they gave me validation. Though, what I realize now is validation always comes at a cost to our self-esteem.

We believe if we can make someone happy then our lives would be better off. My self-esteem went into the dump, literally. I hated myself, I was willing to embarrass myself all so I could make some one happy as if I was a trained monkey at the circus. When I didn’t get validation, I went through depression. Loneliness crept in as it often does and for years I succumbed to it. When my back was against the wall, I couldn’t stand up to myself thinking if I did I’d loose all respect.

Also Read:  Lessons Learned From Being an Unemployed Graduate

Fear stops you loving yourself

In our pursuit for validation, the ultimate price we pay is to stop loving ourselves. That’s what happens when fear creeps in. Validation as I said comes at a price and one thing I discovered along the way is that eventually you stop loving yourself.

If you are trying to please everyone, eventually you sacrifice yourself. I had a friend who once pointed out I wanted to please everyone, at the time it annoyed me because it wasn’t true or so I thought. I laugh at the foolish kid now who was so wrapped up in seeking love that she seemed not to understand where she was going wrong.

If I look back, it started before high school, when I believed I had nothing to offer unlike the popular kids. I wanted to be like them and so I started pleasing everyone. At the end, I lost who I was, stopped loving myself and that feeling never went away until I was in university. It’s so easy to drown ourselves into pleasing others that we miss the whole point of life.

We forget who we are

Wanting to fit in is normal, but after a while we loose who we are and become a stranger. For years, I didn’t recognize who I was in the mirror. When I was around people, I’d smile, say the right things, but when I was by myself, a sadness would hit. So powerful it was like opioids. I was drowning in a sea of pain that the only way out was to take painkillers

Every day, for months, I took five painkillers to drown out the pain. Fear had made me a ghost in my own body. I was so used to living this way that I didn’t know who I was. I went to university and my need for approval made me vulnerable. More than ever. I was in an apartment that I didn’t mind, it had its issues, but I loved having the whole space to me. I had friends who needed a roommate and I agreed. At the time, my whole insides screamed no. They were so different from me and instinctively I knew it wouldn’t work out, but I still went to live with them.

For months, I went through a turmoil. I felt as if I was useless and nothing I did was good enough. The thoughts I had as a kid came back and I was back to where I was, drowning in a sea of pain. I got so ill because my body and mind couldn’t take it anymore. I forgot to eat and had convulsions in the middle of the night.

I was taken to the hospital, the doctors had to pump my stomach. For reasons unknown to me even to this day I have no explanation for what happened that day. The two weeks that followed were the worst, my friends turned on me when I needed them most and not getting their validation made me miserable.

I remember lying on the bed, thinking it would be best to kill myself. I almost went through with it, I had the painkillers and I calculated how many I had to take to kill myself. It was a terrifying experience and if I hadn’t spoken to my sister I probably would have done it. I believed I was the worst person who walked on the earth.

I am telling you this story to give you an example of how fear makes us forget who we are that we’re willing to do anything to drown out the pain. If I had known who I was, what those girls said to me wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. I wouldn’t have believed in any of it, but I didn’t. I had spent so much of my life trying to fit in and seeking approval I was convinced I was an evil, fake and loose human being. And it’s funny cause in university I was a prude.

We are afraid to take risks

This one looks different depending on the person. I took risks, but the risk I didn’t take was believing in myself. I wanted to be someone, to be great or at least worth more than what I was made to believe. I never believed I was good enough.

The first time I did public speaking was in high school and I was shaking most of the time. I forgot my words. It was rather embarrassing, but I still wanted to prove a point. I was terrible at school so I wanted to do something that I could call my own. I tried my hand at performing a song, I had forced a friend into doing it and to her it wasn’t important so as a result it didn’t end well.

The one risk I was afraid to take was believing in who I was. Anything seemed more important than that. People at school called me a hunchback because of how I walked, I never looked up, but stared down at  my feet as I walked. I didn’t mind being Quasimodo or so I believed

Don’t be afraid to take risks even if it takes you out of your comfort zone, you will never know where it takes you. I learned that after twenty years that the biggest risk you can take is believing in yourself, but it’s more valuable than gold.

My journey is different from yours, but I know is that fear pushes us back in so many ways. The one way to conquer it is to know that you are capable of achieving anything you set your mind to as long as you believe it. If you don’t fear has won and you will always look behind you, be too terrified to step out in faith and constantly seek validation.

Also Read: 4 Ways to Conquer your Fears and Take Smarter Risks

How has fear held you back? Comment below

                                                           KEEP  PUSHING

                                                                VANESSA

You have to get lost numerous times to find yourself, sounds cliche, but there’s truth in that. Sometimes getting lost helps you to get discovered. There are moments when you’re not sure if you’re even on the right track and what do you have to do to ensure that you are. Finding yourself is never easy that is why I wrote this post on how to do it. I have realized that sometimes all you need are a few tips to find yourself and that is why I named this the ultimate guide.

It shows you how to rediscover who you are and truly find yourself. The year is almost over and as I look back on the past months, I contemplate what I have actually achieved. I started projects that failed because of bad planning, no strategy and due to me getting caught taking cookies from too many cookie jars.

I started the year knowing that I was capable of achieving great things and I ended the year, not sure what I achieved in the first place. I got lost discovering myself, all my projects cooking up in my mind didn’t make it out in one piece. So, yeah it has been a rough couple of months. Now I’m realizing that I had it all wrong.  

Failure isn’t the end of the road

I thought once if I got what I wanted everything would fall into place. Was I dead wrong? I went back to school to study entrepreneurship, it required me to live with my cousin and I believed that my life would be better. Was I wrong? Fast forward, a couple of months later, she kicked me out of her house and that’s when things shifted. Did I fail?

It’s a question we ask ourselves all the time, trying to figure out whether we’re worthy of success. My brother saw me as a failure, that was a heavy blow to my ego and things shifted again. I wasn’t in control of my circumstances, but up to that point, nothing had worked out for me. I was jobless even though I had graduated at the top of my class, had to go back to school, only to be back where I had started.

That was hard to swallow. My whole life I was hoping someone would fix my mess, I worked endlessly, but I believed that when the time was right things would work out. I believed that all I had to do was find the right job, things would work out. When that didn’t happen, I released a book that barely made a $100. That was crushing, I had a blog that didn’t have any subscribers. 

I canceled my domain name, did another blog that failed just like the first one. What this has taught me is that failure doesn’t define who you are, it builds character. I started the year afraid I would fail and now I relish into it because without it I wouldn’t have come this far. Sometimes the best way to discover who you are is to allow yourself to fail, it’s only then do you understand who you are and what you want. 

Failure isn’t the end of the road, once you fall, you start have to get back up. This is one of the best tips to actually finding yourself. I was so lost and that is why I spent time looking for the best ways to find myself, it wasn’t easy doing it. I was so lost, it has taken me time to understand what it takes to actually find yourself. 

Finding myself wasn’t easy, I also had to understand one blunt truth that failure is inevitable. Often, we forget that no matter how much effort we put in, we can’t escape failure. It was a lesson I had to learn when I was finding myself.

Fear Will Hold You Back If You Let It

Here’s the nugget of truth, fear is the enemy that keeps you at bay. It is the voice that prevents you from pushing back. I have spent most of my life afraid of things that were not in my control and that’s normal. Most of us do that so often, we don’t realize it even when it’s staring at us point blank. Fear will hold you back as long as you let it. It will cripple you because only then can it be a placeholder.

There’s no such thing as a fearless person or someone that has a fear deficit. We are all afraid of something, even successful people have their own book of fears that keep them up at night. Big difference is they don’t let it hold them back. When you let fear be the dominant voice then you will never achieve what you want to because you’re too scared. Too terrified of appearing weird, crazy and a failure.  Fear will make it a lot harder to find yourself and push yourself back up. 

Starting From Scratch is Just The Beginning

My first blog I was trying to emulate other bloggers, give their perspectives and I was lost. So confused with what I wanted my blog to be about and called. Doing that isn’t bad, after all the gurus say that you need to follow what others do. That was the problem though, I was trying too hard to be like everyone else and so my blog wasn’t authentic, not in the way I wanted it to be. Sometimes the best way to find yourself is to start at the beginning. 

I had to start from scratch and that was a hard thing to do. I had to close my eyes, understand what my story was and do it the best way I can. What I had to realize is everyone has their own journey, their own story and they have to be authentic. They have to do what’s best for them and tell their version. That’s the beauty in life, figuring out what tells your story and starting from there.

Realizing that we all have to go back to the drawing boards even after it blows up in our faces. That we have to be honest. My story is I had to accept that going back to basics wasn’t the end. Yours could be accepting the truth about a situation, figuring out that you can do something and realizing that relationships will always be hard.  

We all have to start from scratch at one point in our lives because that is how we find ourselves, it definitely won’t be a walk in the park. But in the end it will be worth it.

Work With Passion

I want to do things that matter, that has always been true when it comes to me. The amount of money I have makes no difference if I’m not making an impact. If tomorrow I forget that then I’m just as lost as I was when I started this journey. Sometimes we loose ourselves in what we do and forget what matters. I lived in South Africa for six months, did a lot of things that I was terrified to do.

One of the things I did was climb Table mountain, I’m terrified of heights, and doing that made me come close to death. Standing on top of the mountain, looking down, made me ask questions about myself, like I can’t believe I was bold enough to do that and can I do it again. It made me ask myself whether I was more terrified of the idea than the action. Finding yourself isn’t easy and that’s why with everything you do, you need to work with passion. 

Life is about living boldly, asking questions no one would dare ask and discovering yourself. When you work with passion it will easier to find who you are. You will know what you love and hate, seems simple, but it isn’t. A lot of us wake up and life has become a routine, we have forgotten what made us happy and it isn’t the aroma of coffee in the morning.

We have forgotten how to be passionate about work or it could be that many of us do jobs that we don’t love. I’m not saying quit your job, it pays for rent and you don’t want to do couch surfing. But find what makes you tick and pursue it. I have learned along the way, that it is easy to get caught up in a routine that you loose yourself along the way.  

If passion is one of the reasons that is making it hard for you to find yourself, I wrote a blog post about the reasons why people are terrified to go after their passions.

One Step At A Time

Before you run a race you need to exercise, you can’t jump hurdles before you learn how to brace yourself. Before you go on self-discovery, you need to brace yourself. Then you take baby steps, that way you don’t get overwhelmed with all the things you have to do. This year made me realize that I have to be kind to myself, forgive myself for mistakes I have made.

And I made plenty. I had to fall flat to understand how easily it is to slip into a dark place and that you have to give yourself time. So much has changed within this year, relationships that started strong are now fragmented. I lost friends a long the way, the truth has hit me in the face and dreams that were floating over my head have been ripped a apart. Am I stronger than I was on the 1st of January 2018.

Yes, I am. This year will end and three truths will hold firmly in my mind. The first is that my failure is a learning curve, the second is that I have to be smarter with every decision I have made and the third is that I discovered new things about myself. If it helps keep a journal, track down your thoughts, experiences and be kind to yourself. That’s the most important thing, no one can tell you who you are or where you are going except you.

No one can direct your path expect you. No one can guide you expect you. It takes time to find who you are especially when you got lost in the storm.  

If you want more tips on how to find yourself, there’s this great article from Mind Body Green. It covers mostly what I wrote here on how to find yourself, but a lot of the tips they have are also great. We spend our whole lives trying to find ourselves and it is never an easy thing to do. Not because of the time it takes, but it is due to not realizing the dedication required to find yourself. 

Finding yourself like riding a bicycle takes time, it takes understanding that you will have good and bad days. That there will be moments in your life when things don’t work out the way you want it to. Finding yourself is only half the battle, the next is understanding who you want to be and fighting for yourself every day.

This is part one of finding yourself, part two will come out soon. What experiences have you gone through that have made to figure out who you are? Comment below and I will reply back as soon as possible.  

                                                                          KEEP   PUSHING

                                                                               VANESSA