Thoughts and Actions That Block Entrepreneurial Success

It’s hard to believe that your thoughts can play a huge role in whether or not you’ll experience success or failure. Not only that, but they might also even cloud success, forcing you to downplay it instead of proudly celebrating it. This is especially true if you happen to be a woman, but both men and women experience issues that can block success.

• Having Imposter Syndrome – This is a true condition that a lot of men and women have. No matter how much success and kudos you achieve, you feel like a fraud. A good book on Impostor Syndrome will help you realize that you’re uniquely qualified for what it is that you do and show you how to accept that.

• Comparing Yourself to Others – You’ve heard of the term “Keeping up with the Joneses’” right? Well, it applies in business, too. Entrepreneurs often make a huge mistake thinking they need to be just like their competition but, in fact, the main reason you study your competition is to see how you can be different. You’re a unique person with your own way of doing things and this is what makes you uniquely upscale.

• Being Too Skeptical and Negative – Sometimes experience can make people become too negative and distrustful, which can cause you not to put your feet through a door that can mean great success for your business. Try to trust that you know how to study a situation and determine whether it’s for you or not.

• Being Preoccupied With What Others Think – If you spend all your time thinking about what everyone around you is thinking, you’ll never be able to truly be successful. Instead of thinking about what others think, consider what you think. Can you look in the mirror every day and be proud of your actions? That’s what’s important.

• Overthinking Every Situation – It’s good to look at situations from every angle, but once you do that you should be able to make a decision. Overthinking stems from a fear of failure. While it’s not a bad thing to worry about failure if you’re too afraid of failing you may end up procrastinating on a decision, which can make it worse. Trust your instincts.

• Dwelling On the Past – In business there is a term called “sunk costs” that you must learn. This theory says that only future costs matter when making a decision. Therefore if you spent thousands of dollars on an idea, and after giving it your all you still lost money and had to get out, leave it in the past. If you make every decision based on past actions you’ll never get to move forward.

• Believing That Perfection Exists – One of the biggest blockers of all is thinking perfection exists. Even thinking that any type of perfection exists can cause a problem with procrastination and not getting things done or changing your mind too much. It all boils down to accepting that good enough is good enough. You can always improve later.

Overcoming these success blockers takes accepting and acknowledging that you do them and that they exist. If you have often called yourself a perfectionist, take a hard look at yourself and you might find that you’re not a perfectionist at all, you’re just scared to be wrong and to fail. Let that go and move forward so that you can put some success under your belt. The more you know how that feels the more you’ll want to experience it.