Sometimes The Only Person Holding You Back Is You: Stop Stalling And Start Living

We are all dreamers.

We all have aspirations and goals that we want to achieve so badly that it becomes the core of our being. You know what I’m referring to: when you literally narrow your mind so much that all you can think about is how amazing it would be to do something or experience something you’ve always wanted to do.

The truth is, though, the majority of us will sit there for years, never pursuing and only dreaming. These are the people who will end up working a job they don’t really enjoy, but one that pays the bills -- the same job that will leave you staying up late thinking how things could have been different if you would have taken a leap of faith and followed your gut.

It’s extremely easy to sit down and wait for an opportunity to arise, but amazing opportunities are rarely ever just placed in your hands. Instead, it is up to you -- solely you -- to get to the place you want to be. For me, taking risks has not always been something I have been comfortable with. In fact, for many years, I spent most of my time unhappy with my decisions and even unhappy with myself because I was too scared to take risks and pursue what I had a true passion for.

I would make up excuses in my head, which would encourage me that the risk was not worth the potential benefit. This led to countless thoughts about how my inability to take risks and chances led to me being dissatisfied with who I had become.

What I learned is that excuses get you nowhere; all they do is give you a limited amount of relief before you begin to regret your decision again. Overall, I have learned that the key to success and happiness lies in the ability to stop stalling and start living.

Now, it might be easy to sit there and say, “Yeah! Just go for it you will have no regrets,” when realistically, there will be times when you doubt your decision to pursue whatever you truly want to do in life. Frankly, when was the last time you ever heard a public figure say that his or her journey to success was a cakewalk? Your answer is likely never.

Undoubtedly there will be bumps along the road, challenges that will make you want to give up and situations that will make you second-guess your dreams and doubt your entire being. In reality, the scars we experience from falling down are what make us who we are; they teach us about the world around us and about ourselves.

The most imperative element to a happy life stems from never fearing our mistakes and challenges, but rather, embracing and learning from them. Opportunities will never turn into amazing memories until you learn to overcome the fear of failing.

All in all, everybody has a vision for how they want their life to pan out. Some of us want to be Oscar-winning actors; others want to be New York Times best-selling authors and some even dream of raising the Stanley Cup over their head as the crowd chants their name.

All of the people who have achieved this level of success have done it by taking chances, pursuing their dreams and never letting the failures of their past determine the odds of their future.

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