7 Action Errors Holding Back Your Growth
How many of these action errors are blocking your personal growth?
When people name what’s holding them back in their personal growth journey it’s incredibly rare that they’ll say ‘taking action’. It’s far more common to hear ‘overthinking’, ‘doubt’, or ‘lack of accountability’ be blamed for standing in the way of personal growth. In fact, ‘taking action’ is often heralded as the one-stop solution to maximising growth.
But not all action is created equal, and not all actions will be beneficial in your personal growth journey.
Throughout the years of running BU, we’ve noticed 7 clear action errors that hold people back from growing. In this article, we will explore and unpack 5 of these errors and provide suggestions for how you can overcome them. At the end of the article, we will then reveal how you can discover the final 2 action errors.
Before diving in it’s important to point out that not all of these action errors will be relevant to you. As you read through each one take note of whether or not it applies to you. The point of this article is to shine a light on some of the action errors that you may be making in your journey so that you can recognise them, overcome them, and accelerate your personal growth. With that said, let’s dive into it.
1. Repressing/Distracting Yourself From Your Thoughts & Feelings
This is by far the most common behaviour trap or action error that people fall into which holds them back from their well being. This happens simply because it’s easy to do. Repressing our feelings or distracting ourselves from our thoughts and feelings is really enticing, however, it’s a bandaid fix. It feels good at that moment but we then get bit in the butt later on.
Think of it like throwing your unwanted thoughts and feelings into the spare room of your house, the house looks clean and tidy to the guests when they come over as long as they don’t open up the door. The thing is, you can’t keep stuffing things in there because eventually, things are going to start spilling out.
This is where you might find yourself crying at the drop of a hat, becoming emotionally volatile and reactive, or just feeling like there’s something weighing on your mind and weighing on your heart that you haven’t actually dealt with yet. So whether you repress or distract yourself using Netflix, bingeing on social media, using food or drugs… Whatever it may be, we’re simply closing the door on without actually dealing with the thoughts and feelings, meaning they’re still there causing grief.
2. Being a Helper (Without Helping Yourself)
The helper, it’s such a common trap to fall into because it’s noble, and we’re told from a young age that we should put everyone else’s needs ahead of our own. If you keep doing this and you keep putting yourself low on your priority list, what ends up happening is you feel burnt out, stretched too thin, and overwhelmed because you’ve said yes to far too many things than you can actually keep up with. This leads to you feeling resentful of the people that you’re helping in the first place.
Being the helper without helping yourself is a quick way to undermine, not only your own wellbeing but also undermine your relationships. Think of this like when you’re on a plane, they never say in the emergency briefing, “In the case of emergency, please run around helping everyone else secure their oxygen mask first before you put yours on or you’re selfish.” Of course, we all know that they say, “Please put your own mask on first, before helping those around you.” Helping yourself first means you then have the capacity to help those around you, and it’s easy to remember this in terms of an emergency situation.
Let’s be real with each other, how often are you going through life, putting everyone else’s needs ahead of your own proudly citing that you’re a helper and you’re a supporter and a caring giving person, but then burning yourself out in the process? This is such a common trap to fall into, and one to be particularly aware of.
3. Constantly ‘Hustling’ and ‘Grinding’ for Success
Mark my words, the hustle and grind approach to success is costing you your well being. Everywhere we look these days on social media, we see people saying that you need to work harder and work faster and put in more effort than everyone around you if you’re going to achieve your goals and be happy. The thing is, there’s a huge difference between happiness and fulfillment. If you’re constantly hustling and grinding your way towards success, chances are you’re burning the candle at both ends, you’re not tuning in to your emotions and you’re not living a balanced, happy, or healthy life.
Rather than focusing on hustling and grinding your way to success, it is far more beneficial to focus on aligning yourself with your goals and on setting up systems, support networks, and structures to help you achieve them in a way that’s balanced and fulfilling, not just success-driven.
4. Yo-Yo Committing to Your Development
Another action error that people make is yo-yo committing to their development and are pain driven with their well being. It’s easy to take action on making a change when shit hits the fan because you feel you have to make a change, the pain of staying the same is now outweighing the pain of making the change in the first place.
This is where a lot of people fall short, they only take action to the point where there’s no longer any pain… Then they stop. Now the equivalent of this would be waiting till you have a heart attack to start exercising, then you start to feel fitter, so you stop exercising. You wait for the next health crisis, you exercise again, you wait for the next health crisis, you exercise again. Do you see the pattern? You’re just yo-yoing back and forth. You’re never breaking through the threshold of actually thriving or establishing long term healthy, sustainable habits because instead, you’ve just got this knee jerk reactive approach to your well being and to your development that is entirely pain driven.
So what’s the solution to this? The solution is yes, use your pain drive at the start for that first kick-start of motivation, however, at some point in the journey, it’s gonna have to switch from pain driven motivation to pleasure-driven inspiration. We’ve got to learn how to keep that discipline and consistency up, even when we don’t have the pain motivating us to take action each day. This is where self-care, personal development, and well being isn’t always sexy, it’s not always ‘instagrammable’ and it’s not always fun. Sometimes it’s just about being disciplined, staying on track, and staying consistent with the things that you know help you feel good in life.
A great way to do this is by having someone in your corner to keep you accountable to yourself, someone there who can call you out when you’re falling short someone there who can help you get back on track when you’ve dropped the ball. That’s exactly what we do in our signature coaching program. If you want to find out more about getting a coach in your corner, make sure you head to our website and grab a free copy of our coaching in focus.
5. Gambling Your Wellbeing on the Next Goal
How often do you find yourself on the hedonic treadmill? This is also known as the, “I’ll be happy when…” trap. It’s an action error that people make in their personal development and wellbeing, where they fall into the trap of thinking that they’re automatically going to be happy and fulfilled as soon as they achieve their external goal. Now that might mean, “I’ll be happy when I get a pay rise”, “I’ll be happy when I get in a relationship”, “I’ll be happy when I lose weight”, “I’ll be happy when I change jobs”, “I’ll be happy when I leave this relationship”.
There are so many ways we can gamble our happiness and our wellbeing on external goals, the trap here is when we achieve these goals and realise it didn’t automatically make us happy. We then say. “Ah, silly me, happiness must actually be around this next corner around this next goal”, and we just keep pushing our happiness back. This isn’t to say that having goals is an action trap. Having goals is a very healthy thing to do on your personal development and wellbeing journey, you’ve just got to learn how to be set goals that are meaningful to you while still being content, happy, and fulfilled where you currently are.
This fine balancing act between building your self-esteem, your happiness, your sense of fulfillment exactly as you are in life, whilst also having meaningful things to progress towards that excite you, challenge you, and that give you opportunities to grow, develop, and upskill as an individual. This can be a very fine line to walk. If you want help with getting that balance point right between building your self-esteem, your contentment, and your happiness where you are, but also in identifying and working towards meaningful goals that align with you as an individual, that is exactly what we can help you with as part of our signature coaching program.
Again, paired with a one on one coach in your corner and learning from our entire team through a range of different platforms, you get access to tools strategies, and techniques that are going to help you accelerate your personal development, and wellbeing journey. To find out more about how to do that, make sure you download a free copy of our coaching info kit and one of our team members will be in touch with you.
Take a moment now to reflect on how many of these action errors are currently getting in the way of your personal development and wellbeing. Remember that awareness is half of the battle and now that you can see these errors you can begin learning how to overcome them.
NOTE: If you’re wanting to discover the remaining 2 action errors you’ll have to check out Episode 3, Season 3 of the 15 Minute Mindset miniseries on our podcast; ‘BU with Declan’ Edwards. Click below to listen to it on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
