Traps on your way

“You can be whoever you want to be,
but remember to always be yourself”

At the present state of advancement of the domain, which is  , it leaves no room for doubt that we can achieve things that  we never even dreamt of before. What can I achieve is no longer a question, but I still can hear someone asking very rarely, too rarely: what can  I sacrifice to achieve that. Every success comes at a price. The most important thing is for this cost not to be written down with “small print”.

At the present state of advancement of the domain, which is personal development, it leaves no room for doubt that we can achieve things that we never even dremt of before.  What can I achieve is no longer a question,  but I still can hear someone asking very rarely, too rarely: what can I sacrifice to achieve that. Every success comes at a price. The most important thing is for this cost not to be written down with “small print”. Self-consciousness  of what we must sacrifice to achieve an above average position is basic knowledge to maintain that position. In the other case – costs, which at first we were not (or we didn’t want to be) aware of, they can turn out to be a burden so heavy that they’ll crush all our efforts.

Marek (the name has been changed)  – a businessman in his early twenties. In a few years, he’s managed to build an impressive position in his industry. Thousands of clients, a rapidly growing number of employees, investments – all of this required commitment, energy and courage, far beyond the possibilities of an average man. He decided to bet on success and constant self-development, along with the development of his business, and he was simply great at it. Each problem was a challenge, words like: “this can’t be done” didn’t exist in his vocabulary anymore, and on top of that, he left his comfort zone so far behind that he couldn’t even see it anymore. Disturbing information started coming in after some time. Marek started to be less involved in his company, clients started to complain about unsatisfactory solutions, employees scattered around the globe and changed their jobs. Marek was definitely tired and his mind was not present – almost like he was hiding a secret. At some point, it was very hard  to hear anything about him. It’s been known  for a long time that to achieve success,  Marek had to impose a completely new role,  and that required becoming a different person from him. He lost himself in all that. In the rush  of success, he made choices not always consistent with his value system. Such situations happen quite often and they can take many forms. Sometimes, they are clear as the one described above. Sometimes, they appear as professional burnout or life burnout syndrome. Sometimes, they come very gently  – gradually pushing us out of certain roles, so that other, better fitting, people can take them.

However, this crisis comes most frequently at the very beginning. That’s why so many people resign from chasing their dreams right after they hit their first obstacle. They resign because they didn’t sign up for “small print” costs, and when they get billed for them, they simply run away.  It happens, because they were not aware of the things they need to sacrifice to achieve success, and sacrifice is an indispensable element of success. Sometimes, it means sacrificing more time and energy, obviously at a price. Sometimes, the situation requires us to change our priorities and to put some of them on a shelf. Sometimes, we need to participate in things that we have no idea about. It all requires leaving the comfort zone and the value system behind. It’s not about doing something unethical or illegal. Acting outside of your value system might mean something  as prosaic as putting your job above other  duties, even when you feel that other things are more important right now, e.g. spending some time with you kids or spontaneous mountainbiking trips. It may come to your head that in order to have time for everything you want, you should drop everything and be at peace with it.  It doesn’t have to be like that.

Let’s imagine a young musician. He often plays with his friends, they form an amateur rock band together. They can play together all night, only to start over the next day. Music is his entire life. He dreams about world-wide fame. When such  a chance appears, however, it’ll turn out that  it requires much more than just passion for music to be successful. A completely new requirement will appear: negotiating with partners, sponsors and producers, marketing, event management and tour planning, fitting into what’s trendy to gain as much fans as possible. All of that, accompanied by constant rehearsals and recordings, stress and overcoming crises inside the band.  Before they can afford a real manager, it might turn out that there’s not much space left for pleasures, such as playing for a bunch of friends in the dreamed life of a musician.

Why does it happen?

Being able to constantly break the barriers and gain new skills, to leave the comfort zone – it’s obviously the base of progress. However, if we don’t consider the time needed to strengthen our new roles, disruption of our sense of coherence might happen. Sense of coherence – a term coined out by Aaron Antonovsky  – is a global orientation of a man, which makes us feel certain of external stimulus, sufficient with our resources and our actions. Low indicators in that orientation are connected with many psychosomatic abnormalities.  If external stimulus is not predictable anymore, because we involve ourselves in new, unknown challenges and we constantly learn new things, we lose the sense of having enough resources to meet the requirements. Sooner or later, the mental effort might become greater than our capabilities.

How to avoid this?

When planning a self-development path, let’s remember about answering a very important question: what can I sacrifice to achieve it. This is the very moment, when we can openly and consciously start negotiating with our own resistance. Costs don’t have to be as painful as described above. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of the things we need to sacrifice. Self-development it’s not only breaking barriers and climbing the path of success, but also taking care of yourself, following your needs, and fulfilling yourself on many levels.