Are You Giving Up Before Hitting Gold? How to Keep Going When It’s Tough

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 260. My growth on social media, particularly on Instagram, has continued in recent weeks, and I did a little conversation about that last week, and I'm going to continue that today since I myself am learning so much from the engagement that I've been having on my account, which is rocrastinationcoach. If you are not following me yet on Instagram or on TikTok, what I have learned is that all of our psychology is really inside our everyday behaviors and that the general public is interested in hearing about how our psychology intersects with our daily schedule, our behaviors, our resistance, everything else. So I'm going to speak a little bit about that today and talk today specifically about the ways we hold ourselves back, even though we really don't mean to. All right, let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:20]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastinator, procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:44]:
And accomplish the goals you want to achieve.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:47]:
When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:02]:
So I've been posting consistently and a lot on the topic of clutter on social media lately. And lately I've received more than 1.5 million views on those posts. And because I have had a lot of eyeballs on these posts, I have also received a lot of comments. And at first they were on the regular. They were, thank you for understanding. I'm going to go declutter those kinds of posts. But then after a couple of weeks, a deeper level of engagement started to happen. And I don't know if it was prompted by my posts or I don't know what it was caused by, but I did notice the specific change.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:57]:
The change was that the comments were much more emotional. They were talking about the overwhelm, they were talking about the grief, they were talking about the shame. They were talking about the feelings of being paralyzed from making any change in their clutter situation. And this episode was structured by me not to speak about clutter, but to speak much more directly about those forces that are within us, that lead us to not feel like we can take care of ourselves in our current situation. So the situation I've been talking about, the symptom in quotes is clutter. But the psychology is something that we all share whether we have clutter or not. So I'm just going to share with you now seven ways that we hold ourselves back, even though we really want to be making progress. And we really don't mean to be holding ourselves back.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:06]:
So the first one is that we think around the issue that we are being challenged by. And by that, I mean, we say, I don't have time, I don't have energy, I'm too busy. I have so many ideas about how to do this, I can't move. That kind of conversation that we have really just with ourselves, sometimes we're telling other people, but mostly we're having a dialogue with ourselves around the fact that we don't believe that we can do anything in the current situation that is going to be of any worth, value or good. And I want to really put that as the first on the list because this is an easy fix. This is something that you can get really good at fixing. And the way to fix it is by saying time really isn't the issue because everybody is swimming in time. Time is like the air that we breathe.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:13]:
We just happen to count time. We've structured a system where we all understand how to count time, but time is wafting around us like the air is. And we don't go around counting air molecules. And I don't think we should be going around focusing on minutes and hours going by. We should focus on what we are doing, doing. So that is the answer for the number one item on our list today. You need to put your eyes back on what your goal is, what you need to do to get yourself further towards your goal. So if you are saying, I just don't have enough time, do one thing that will fit in the time that you have and it could be just like opening the door.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:58]:
And it doesn't have to be this giant movement, but it does need to move you forward. It does need to remind you that you are not paralyzed. Thank goodness, you actually are in conflict inside. But that is something that you can undo. And let's face it, eventually you are going to figure out how to undo the conflict. So we might as well just save you some more time and remind you. All you need to do is focus on your goal again. Okay, the second item on our list is that we forget that life is one giant experiment.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:36]:
So often I see people really feeling like they can't start until they have the right plan, the right destination, the right vibe in place. And I would argue that you don't need any of those things because life isn't perfect and life doesn't require us to be perfect. And our vibes can fluctuate and be changed. And we can change based on what vibes we're seeing once we start moving. So the important thing again is to make sure you get into movement, to make sure that you are not thinking that every experiment has to be a success. Because like we learn in high school science of any kind, when we experiment, we don't really know what's going to happen. We have to stay open minded. We have our hypothesis and our theory about what is going to happen, but we never really know what's going to happen.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:38]:
And when we do really know what's going to happen, it really wasn't testing, it wasn't science, it was our knowing already what was going to happen. So in life so often we do not know what the results are going to be and we have to become brave, braver in our hearts to say, I am up for any experiment. I can handle any outcome. I just need to remember that I am the scientist. So your job, now that you've learned item number two is to say, what have I been holding back on? And to say, what is my first experiment going to be? Post this lesson from the Make Time for Success podcast. Okay, the third item on our list is believing that we need more help. These comments were coming at me fast and furious on Instagram and TikTok. People who were saying, I need so much help.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:36]:
That may be the case, but I do not want anyone to stay frozen or stagnant or procrastinating because you believe that you need more help. Again, that may be the truth, but you can make a dent. You can get yourself out of this state of despair and distress. And that is really important. The fact that you could say, I know this situation isn't great, but I'm going to get myself out of this situation. I think that is a big healing gesture that you can do for yourself. After all, if you were never going to be able to access help, hypothetically, of course, because you can always access help. If I told you you were never going to be able to, would you allow yourself to stay in that situation forever? No, you wouldn't.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:27]:
So let's get yourself out. Okay, moving on to step number four. Remember, step number three was thinking that you need more help. Step number four is deciding that you're not going to get any help and making the mistake of not getting any help. I know these two steps, step number three and four, sound like the opposite, but sometimes we need to get help actively and sometimes we think we need to get help and we don't really need that to start. So for step number four, not getting help, I wanna remind you that help is so often an accelerant. It helps us to go faster and stronger and more intelligently towards our goals. That is the benefit of talking to someone, of asking for help, of saying, you know what, I'm in distress, of saying, you know what? I don't know how this happened to me, but I'm opening up my heart to your heart to see if you can help and help me craft a path that will find relief for my situation, that will help me to feel re energized and alive again so that I can get an answer to this current situation.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:47]:
Because I don't want to feel stuck anymore. So don't make the mistake of not getting help when you can access help and it's appropriate for your situation. Moving on. Idea number five is thinking that it's all on you. So I feel like, you know that figure Atlas, who's holding up the world with his bare hands and through the strength of his shoulders. I think we all know that image or that reference. And I think that's so often what we're moving around our daily lives doing. We're thinking that, oh, if it's not me, it's no one.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:30]:
Oh, if I don't do this full out, something's going to crash down, like the world or my family or my business or my day. There's some consequence to not being everything for everyone and everything for yourself, but I think that is too heavy a weight to put on our bare hands and our shoulders. After all, we are really awesome creatures, but we're probably not as strong as Atlas and we don't have to behave like we're superhuman all the time. So what do we do instead? We remember that the universe has a role to play in our success. So when you take an action, when you get yourself unstuck, when you finally ask for help, when you finally take that step towards your goal, the universe is going to give you feedback about was that successful. Do you need more of that? Should you abandon that technique, it really is your partner in life. And it's not just the universe, it's other people as well. It's our instincts, it's our intuition, even our animals.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:39]:
I am Looking at my dear, we call him Leonidas or Leonardo da Vinci. One of my two dogs behind me. And our dogs let us know how we're doing. Sometimes there are signs and signals all over the place. If you allow yourself to see that you're not alone in your efforts, that you are never really atlas holding up the world. You affect the world. You have a big part in this world, but you don't have to hold up the world, especially if you don't want to. All right, number six, giving up before you hit gold.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:18]:
So there is an illustration that circulates on social media, and probably in print magazines, too, of two men, each in an underground pathway that they're digging with a pickaxe. And one is huffing and puffing and chipping away and inches towards gold. And the other figure, also with a pickaxe, is frustrated and has stopped chipping away. And they show in the illustration that they are even closer than the other figure, the first figure, and that second figure quits. And that is the lesson for this particular step of our conversation. It probably happens every day, maybe to all of us, that we give up on something a little too quickly. We give up after lots of effort, after lots of struggle, after lots of consideration, but we give up. And then when we give up, we close off that pathway, and we close off that pathway to success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:42]:
I saw a social media message that said failure and success are on the same path. Failure is when you get off the path a little too early. And that was just a mind bender. I thought that was such a great message to remind us that success is ahead. But we need to stay on the path and, of course, take this lesson and apply it appropriately. Sometimes things need to be abandoned. I'm all for that. I definitely don't want you to be spreading your energy too thin or chasing down something that really is a dead end.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:25]:
But if you've got a goal in mind, keep that strong, keep that alive, keep that throbbing as a live stimulus for you even when you faced a lot of failures. If you believe in your goal, just keep going, because you are going to get there. The last idea I want to share with you about this list of things that we do that can make us hold ourselves back is not developing the skills that you need to get to your goal. So this is where finding expert help comes in. Sometimes we need help to verbalize what's on our mind. Sometimes we need help designing what's on our mind. Sometimes we need help feeling what's in our hearts. And I can go on and on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:24]:
Because there are coaches for every single thing these days, as you all know. Whether or not you are on social media, if you are living, you know that the benefit of coaching and the expert help of other people. It might be a neighbor or friend, parent or child can be so the ticket. It can be the answer to all of your problems. It can be the oomph that you need to add to your own oomph, your own desire and passion to move forward. So consider getting expert help if it's time. If you've really been doing things on your own for a really long time and you're just fed up with the effort, fed up with all the striving, and you want to add some fire to your efforts so that you get to your goals and get to that celebration party a little bit sooner. I hope you enjoyed this list and this discussion of our psychology and the fact that we're all in this together.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:35]:
We really are. This is an undeniable fact. So do not hide out when you've got goals to pursue. Do not think it's over for me when you've just barely begun. Do not stress over your life because your life gets held back when you stress. Decide I'm going to practice joy and curiosity and openness instead of stress. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you would like a free worksheet that goes along with this episode's content, I would love for you to go to maketimeforsuccess podcast.com/leap which is L E A P.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:24]:
Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/leap

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:30]:
and I'll be back next week with a lot more content for you to listen to and to learn from. Have a great one. Bye.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:38]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success Podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:43]:
If you enjoyed what you've heard, you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:45]:
Can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also Visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to and let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.