Bert Oliva

What’s Holding You Back?

By Bert Oliva

0

Are you doing everything you can to accomplish your goals? Do you still find that you fall just a few feet short most of the time? What’s happening here? What’s holding you back?

Perhaps it’s your work habits. Perhaps you just aren’t trying hard enough. Perhaps you’re procrastinating. Or perhaps you’re simply diverting your energy.

When you are working toward anything, how much of yourself—your mind, your feelings, your energy—goes to that goal? At first, you may say 100%, but be honest with yourself. When you sit down at your desk to accomplish something, do you go straight to it? Or do you read your email first? Or check your phone? Or find your mind wandering? It’s human nature to struggle to find focus at times. And it’s human nature to procrastinate at times. The important thing is that you realize these tendencies in yourself and work to correct them.

However, what about the energy drains that you are not even aware of? What about the deeply seeded grudges within yourself?

As humans, we can be really insensitive and cruel to one another at times. It’s sadly a fact of life that at some point or another you will be hurt by someone and moreover that you will hurt someone. The question is, what do you do with that hurt? Do you deal with? Or do you hold onto it?

Numerous studies have shown that holding onto grudges and bitterness can affect every aspect of your life. Psychologically speaking, holding onto grudges can cause you to bring bitterness into new experiences and relationships, can keep you in the past, can cause depression or anxiety, and an even ultimately cause you to question your life’s purposes. Physiologically speaking, holding onto grudges can cause elevated heart rate, high blood pressure, increased risk of heart disease, digestive problems, weaken your immune system, and even shorten your life.

So, what are your grudges doing for you? Review each aspect of your life, personal, professional, spiritual, etc. and pinpoint the people, events, and circumstances that you are holding grudges against. Don’t be surprised if a lot of your grudges are against yourself and past choices. Once you’ve listed your grudges, figure out what you can do, if anything to forgive them. Some may require a phone call; some may simply require letting them go (and the simple act of reviewing them like this may just do the trick for you).

Don’t misunderstand me. “Forgiving” your grudges does not mean that you have to be a doormat and allow people to take advantage of you. If someone has sincerely wronged you, you do not need to allow that person back into your life, but you also do not need to waste your time and energy focusing on that person either. Forgive them for what they did, and let them go. Remember, people are in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Not everyone will be with you forever, but life is just too short to split your energy resenting people and circumstances from your past. Learn from the situations, forgive those that have hurt you, and move forward.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

Leave A Comment →
Bert Oliva

Inspire Me!

By Bert Oliva

0

Inspiration … what comes to mind when you think of the word? For many, it seems like “inspiration” is a faraway achievement. That it comes rarely. That it’s something we can’t easily grasp.

I know so many people who say, “I want to do X but I don’t have any inspiration …” “I’ll do it as soon as inspiration hits …” “I need to be inspired …”

Want to know the secret of inspiration? For the most part, it doesn’t just “come.” You have to train yourself to be inspired. You have to create a habit.

For instance, if you’re a writer and you only write when inspiration strikes you, you will soon find that you do not write all that often. However, if you create a habit—say you sit at your computer every day from 10am to 11am and write whatever comes to mind for an hour—you’ll soon find that inspiration comes to you sooner and sooner during that time. This is because you are conditioning yourself for inspiration. You are making inspiration a habit.

This is true with just about any task. In fact, I use this personally with my Motivational Moments. There are days where I record them when inspiration strikes, but regardless, I have an alarm set on my phone that goes off at 9pm that reminds me to record. So every day just about 9pm, I will record if I haven’t already. I must admit, there are days when inspiration takes awhile to come, but because I’ve created a habit, I usually find a topic fairly quickly.

So, stop putting off your tasks till inspiration strikes. It’s not going to. Especially because you are procrastinating it. Just set aside some time for yourself today and do it. And do the same tomorrow and the next day. At first it will feel like you’re pulling teeth, but before you know it, you will find the inspiration you need as soon as you set your mind to it.

When you are first creating a habit like this, try to keep it same time and in the same place. Though this sounds a little “un-inspirational” it will help with the habit creation subconsciously. And because it takes 21 days to change or create a habit, make sure to do it EVERY day for 21 days—that includes weekends and holidays.

You have greatness inside of you. Condition yourself to find it!

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

Leave A Comment →