A few months ago, I was really starting to gain momentum in my life and business.

At least that’s what I thought.

I had just finished re-branding my website. I changed my domain name to my name and set a new focus for the direction I was going to take.

I was excited, motivated, and working my tail off day and night to put everything together. I was coming up with fresh ideas on how I was going to use my new platform to finally turn it into a business and quit letting it be just a hobby.

But, there was a huge problem.

I was about to make the same mistakes that led me to feeling like I needed to re-brand in the first place.

I had a vision, a plan to implement it, and all the encouragement in the world coming from friends, family, connections, and subscribers. That was all great and grand, but I was missing a key element that soon stopped me in my tracks and left me in the same place I had been before.

I soon became stuck, lost, unmotivated, confused, lazy, and my progress slowed to snail speed.

My confidence in what I was doing started to wane, I was doubting my abilities, and lost all sense of direction on my path.

I spent weeks going around in circles in my mind, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. I didn’t understand how I went from being so sure about my vision, to suddenly doubting everything I had just created.

I just shut down. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t do anything that required me to take action and move forward.

Ahh, but then it hit me.

It wasn’t that I was stuck. It wasn’t that I had lost direction. It wasn’t even that I had lost focus.

It was the reason WHY these things were happening to me. The reason why they happened to me on a consistent basis for the past 3 years. That reason was ME.

I was the one getting in my own way. I was lying to myself, thinking that I could just keep doing what I had always done, expecting different results.

I would get excited about a new idea, run with it, then get lazy, distracted, lose focus, and then eventually lose confidence in what I was doing. That led me to becoming stalled, stuck, and settling back to inertia.

I knew I had to do something different, even if I knew where I wanted to go, and even if I knew what I had to do to get there. Having a plan meant nothing if I couldn’t follow through.

I had been slap dashing my work for years and then would get upset when things weren’t progressing how I wanted them to. Instead of coming up with a better strategy to take action on my ideas, I would just sit around not doing anything remotely productive that would lead me toward my goals.

Now that the light bulb was on, I just had to come up with a strategy to take action, and keep taking action. To do that, I had to figure out how to not get lazy, stuck, etc.

So that’s what I did.

I sat down and put my thinking cap on. I wrote down all of the problems that contributed to becoming stuck and not following through. I must have come up with at least 20, but when I really started to look deeper, I noticed a trend that helped me get a better understanding of the root of my problems.

My overall well-being was a joke. I realized the reasons for my setbacks were all stemming from different areas of my health and lifestyle. I needed to become fully engaged in changing the areas of my life that I knew would help me become more productive, focused, driven, and take continuous action on my goals.

I came up with a strategy to increase my well being by focusing on my mental, physical, and spiritual health. I started meditating to help with my focus, spiritual presence, and quiet my lizard brain. I began doing a 30 minute workout routine to better my physical health. I also threw in some yoga to try and mix all three areas together.

It’s been about three weeks since I started these exercises and already I’m experiencing lower stress levels, I’m performing at a higher level in my work, I’ve become more productive, am more focused, and have greater clarity on my vision. I’ve also been more motivated and have an increased ambition to move forward, an expanded self awareness, and have become much more confident with myself and abilities.

I’ve progressed more towards my goals and vision in the past three weeks than I had in the previous three months. I’ve also felt a lot happier, healthier, and have a strong feeling this is just the start of a giant leap forward on my journey.

What about you? What have you done when experiencing similar struggles? I’d love to hear your thoughts as well. Please share in the comments :)

Photo by Lara Cores