- Geekmaster
- 2021-04-23 08:11:29
- 21 minute(s)
How To Think Big And Break Down Barriers In Your Life
How do you free yourself from limitation set by you? How do you ensure you realize your full potential? How to think big and break barriers in your life? These are the questions that most of us face when trying to implementing a new idea or grow your existing business.
Thinking big is not daydreaming, it’s a mental practice that allows you to take active control over your own life.
The ability to think big is the first step to break out of your bubble of self imposed limits, channel your energies to explore a bigger and better future and map out the path ahead to make it possible.
No successful person gets there without first learning how to think big.
Small thinking is all the things that go through your head that limit your potential. If you are living a life below your potential, and you want to change that, it’s going to take work. If you don’t believe you can change, that in itself is a limiting thought. You have to rid yourself of this mindset to move forward and go where you want to.
Thinking small is natural. Over time, leaders lose the ability to dream.
We become risk-averse and sacrifice goals. That’s why I love sharing motivational material. It reveals where I might be standing in my own way. When you recognize the limits of thinking small, you can re-train ourselves to think big. To start thinking big today, you’ll need to follow effective steps.
Life is all about experience. The more you explore life, the more you experience life. So it’s necessary to think big in life, to experience life from a broader perspective.
We must all think bigger in order to grow. But what does think big or bigger really mean? And how do we actually do it? When you begin to operate under a new framework, your life changes, this article is about how to start downloading a new structure. This new framework will allow you to think big about what is possible in every way and break barriers in your life.
Cross Your Comfort Zone
Most people are chained by roadblocks such as they think that they don’t have the time, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the skills or knowledge, etc. The problem is that what you want to achieve is in the future, but you are gauging your ability based on your current situation. And you must not think it this way.
You cannot move forward if you are weighed down with baggage, most of which are unnecessary and no longer as relevant currently.
This requires looking at the current state of things and deciding which ones matter and which ones don’t. By doing so, you can separate those that no longer need your attention, as they are “water under the bridge” from those that are able to affect or influence you positively. Do you have an argument or misunderstanding with someone that is keeping you from thinking clearly? Find a way to resolve it, or get over it.
Change is inevitable, and many of us (myself included) aren’t all that comfortable with it.
But by regularly pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, you can learn to deal with change so that when other big changes pop up in life, you’re more prepared to deal with them. By stepping outside your comfort zone and trying something new, you might find an activity that you love and becomes a passion of yours, but that you would never have experienced had you not pushed yourself.
The key to thinking big is to not let your limitation stops your thinking.
If you think that you are poor and you don’t have the money, it doesn’t mean that you will stay poor forever. The situation is just temporary and you can change the situation. If you think that you don’t have the skill or you are not good enough, you can always commit to learning and improving.
Yes, your life may suck initially as results may be disappointing.
But if you do not try and experiment with fear of failure, you may never identify the one bet that will drive your idea to success. Results improve either because your practice makes them better or you find the key project that pushes your idea forward. It’s not possible without embracing discomfort, practicing without fear of failure and experimenting with little bets to find the one that will make a difference. Thinking big without experimenting will keep your ideas at a dream level. Jolt them to life by seeing them in action.
We all have a set of fears and worries when it comes to our goals.
We like the idea of having bigger goals and dreams, but a revolving set of anxieties keeps us from fully exploring them: Am I talented enough? Am I deserving of success? An easy way to combat this is to write out the fears you have about your goals. Often enough, simply putting these down to paper can help expose the shaky foundations that these beliefs rest on and help you gain a clearer perspective.
Build Your Winner's Circle
For many of us, it is common to hear and read about the importance of surrounding yourself with positive and productive people. When it comes to leadership or business, this is extremely important because others can expose you to different levels and types of success. Good people can push you to perform at your best and confirm your sanity when you are at your worst.
There’s so much to learn from people within our network.
Thinking bigger means cognitive diversity and digging into big problems to debate root causes and solutions. People in the network not only inspire, but they can also influence your thinking, guide you along the way and may be, just maybe if your idea connects with them personally, they can be your biggest brand ambassadors helping you spread the word.
When you begin to hang around people on a new life, you automatically upgrade your way of thinking and living.
Birds of the same feather flock together. It takes a sharp mind to be able to override this and still hand around people that are different, so you don’t live in an echo chamber. In addition, we are hardwired as humans to want to fit in the group. If the group all drive beautiful cars and you drive an old Honda, you will do everything you can to upgrade to fit in with the group.
New people means a new perspective on things.
By interacting with different types of individuals you develop a broader sense of perspective. Now something that you had seen one way, you can see in several different ways just by stepping into the shoes or perspective of someone else. For example, steel beams had mostly been viewed as something to be used for structures, now they are shaped and morphed into large pieces of art across the country.
When you network with other successful people who are doing much better than yourself, you are expanding your thinking.
Having a strong, positive peer network is crucial. But that doesn’t mean having a team of yes men. Often, when we’re asking people to support us, we’re just asking for approval. But if we’re looking for results, we have to be comfortable with the feedback of people asking us to think bigger. If you’re really looking for people to push you, you want them to say, That’s great and I think you could improve this.
Conversely, instead of blaming average people for what they think, take responsibility to ignore them if that’s what you need to do to move forward.
It’s easy to get caught up in the negativity from people around you — your idea is not that great, it won’t work, why are you wasting your time, go do something else instead. I am not suggesting that you hide from the reality of your situation or completely ignore the advice even when there’s some truth to it. Chew over it, put things into perspective, but then decide for yourself.
Pledge For Knowledge
In this competitive age, you must be willing to grow through a consistent effort of learning new talents and developing skills. Reading books, learning new skills and techniques are essential habits of a leader. They can enable you to develop the ability to think beyond your current personal or business position.
Reading is one of the easiest methods that can transform your thinking.
Yet, reading is not a quick process. Matter fact, none of this is. The text will begin to expose you to new ideas, ways of thinking, accomplishments, and lifestyles that you may have never considered. After reading enough, you begin to download these new ideas and ways of thinking into your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is who you are when you are not thinking. When your brain is operating in automatic mode, your subconscious brain takes over.
Self-education lets you take control of your life by allowing you to improve any skills you need in order to reach your goals.
You may even acquire a whole new set of skills. Self-education can help you take that extra step on the road to success. Let’s say you are a salesman. By taking the time to educate yourself on new sales techniques, you are likely to later increase your sales and improve your closing rates.
Your ability and commitment to lifelong learning is critical to your success.
By dedicating yourself to learning and growing everyday, you can get ahead in every aspect of life and achieve the goals you set out for yourself. The dream life you always want to have might just be one book away, one seminar away or one skill away. Keep on learning and applying what you’ve learned and you will eventually get there.
Knowledge is the key to success, to power, to respect in high societies, moreover, the key to one’s personality.
By reading books, you get a glimpse of other cultures and places. Books expand your horizons, letting you see other countries, other people and so many other things you have never seen. Your imagination improves as well as your critical thinking. It’s a perfect way to improve your perspective exponentially. Based on knowledge, one earns a living and gains respect among fellow people. Knowledge is that holy thing, with too much of it you can make enemies, with too little of it you will be degraded, but with the correct amount of it, you can do wonders.
Your desire to learn has much more effect on your success than any other factor, including natural intelligence.
If you sincerely want to improve your knowledge, you will succeed. But you’ll have to discipline yourself. Keep in mind that mastering new information is something important that you are doing for your personal growth and don’t let yourself get sidetracked.
Dare The Impossible
When we think and dream big we need to put into place mechanisms and actions to make them happen. Otherwise we are just engaging in mindless fantasizing, something that can actually end up hurting the likelihood of us accomplishing great stuff.
Allow yourself to use your imagination to dream about the life you really want to live.
There are absolutely no limits to what you can dream about in your imagination. Visualize yourself achieving great things in the future, going to places that seem improbable to reach, and see yourself as the person you want to be. Some of the greatest human accomplishments started with a dream. John F. Kennedy dreamt of sending people to the moon, and they did, even though most thought it was not possible.
Even though you may think some of your aspirations are out of reach, put them on the table.
Nothing is impossible and that is getting truer as technology enhances. Nothing should be out of reach! Successful people did not put a limit on themselves. Reaching for the stars and trying to do the impossible should be your goal! Dreaming big should not be unrealistic, your dreams should be your goals, your aspirations. By not putting a limit on what you can do will allow you to think, do and act freely without doubting yourself.
Assuming a seemingly impossible objective is possible is used by many contemporary personal development authors.
For example, Tim Ferriss uses it when he describes comfort challenges, where he asks his readers to try to make X amount of money in a certain time frame. When you change from thinking, this might be possible, to how do I accomplish it? your mind immediately goes to work to find a way to accomplish your mission.
To determine how big a person is, just take a look at the size of the problems they are trying to solve.
If your main concerns everyday are about how bad the traffic is, or how annoying the person sitting next to you is, or how bad the weather is, then you are not thinking big. To think big, you need to tackle bigger problems, such as what you can do now to move yourself closer to your goals, or how you can improve your productivity, or how you can help somebody in need.
Give yourself permission to dream. This may involve suspending disbelief.
Most people build a habit of objecting to goals before they even take root. Instead of thinking, “What if I fail?” think “What if I succeed?”. True leaders imagine possibilities and keep reimagining what’s possible beyond each accomplishment.
Know Your Why
Most people have a difficult time answering this question. Yet, without defining what you really want, how else will you achieve your dreams? Take some time and consider this: Think about the perfect day in your life. What is the ONE THING that you’d be doing, which you’d immensely enjoy if you knew you could not fail?
Successful people do not hate what they do, they do it for more than the money.
Their vision usually consists of solving a need, or enhancing lives. Instead of the dreaded feeling of work, just to get paid, you must find a passion that will not only bring you financial freedom but the passion will alone bring success. Start with asking yourself: Is what I’m working on making other’s lives better? Are my efforts congruent with the magnitude of change I strive to influence? I believe that in business and in life, the perfect storm is when an individuals personal ambitions collide with their purpose, their WHY.
Get clear about your why. Many people skip over this step. That’s a mistake.
Knowing what’s at stake will keep you fueled up on the road to accomplishment. Without something within you like a burning desire to make an impact or the feeling that you work is part of a higher calling, the temptation to quit will be too strong. My recommendation is prayer and meditation to identify your purpose and to empower you through the difficult times.
When you are clear with why you want what you want, you will come up with plans to achieve it.
You will crack your head and ask around how you can get there. Your why — the purpose behind what you do is the driving force. It is the force behind what you do. When you choose to continue to sleep instead of getting up and work on your goals, it is because you don’t have a strong purpose for your goals. When something becomes a must-achieve, you will do whatever it takes. But when your purpose is not strong enough, it fails to motivate you to act.
🔈 Someone has said
When you know the purpose of your life, you tend to live a more meaningful existence than those who don’t.
You tend to live each day to the fullest, because you know who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going. When you know your life’s purpose, it becomes easier to focus on what matters the most in your life. By keeping the focus on one particular goal, you are able to find your direction and stay away from the distractions.
Last but not least, purpose helps you develop resilience.
People who have a deeper sense of purpose in life are better at finding meaning in setbacks they experience compared with those who wander through life aimlessly. When you know your purpose, you have a feeling of mastery that helps you let go of anything that goes wrong in your life that is irrelevant to your core values. This means that you can learn from life’s hardships and bounce back quickly from adversity.
Be Consistent
Bigger goals, and the bigger thoughts and dreams that fuel them, require patience. They require patience and consistency of effort. They require you to show up day-in, and day-out in the face of excuses, withering motivation and much more.
Putting in small effort consistently, making tiny progress everyday may seem insignificant in the moment, but its benefits compound over time.
Consistency and deliberate practice not only builds the momentum and helps you push forward, it acts as a medium to experiment, try new ideas and carve out a path with the maximum potential. Consistency and deliberate practice will keep your thoughts aligned with the future it envisions.
To think big is to challenge yourself each day. Each day you push yourself to become better.
This means that you don’t get frustrated at the first sign of resistance. It also means you don’t give up when things aren’t going your way. No one said it was going to be easy. Have the patience to see through the tough moments. Thinking big is a process. You have to start small. It’s your small steps that create the path for greatness. On the path of greatness, you will certainly face the hurdles, but if your focus is clear no problems of your life can keep you engaged for long.
Thinking big and building your confidence are great, but you will not really be thinking bigger or changing your life, until you take action.
That’s where building a purposeful daily routine comes in. Your day may look different than mine, but the point is to get really clear on your goals and then construct daily habits that support them. No excuses. The habit of implementing and sticking to your daily routine means you may need to get creative in other areas of your life, which leads to thinking bigger. Every quarter, reassess where you are at with your goal and reset. If your new routine hasn’t become a habit stick with it.
You are going to be put down, rejected and turned away before your dreams come true.
You will always be competing with someone else, so it is the small things. The small actions that help build your dreams and then allow you to achieve them. If you don’t succeed, try, try again. You will learn from your mistakes and those mistakes will turn into fire that will fuel your dreams even more.
Thinking big is a mindset, and this you have to develop by working on the self.
You have to consciously work in this direction. It’s just like running a marathon. You don’t think big on day one. On the day one you walk. You prepare ground for yourself. You have to move step by step into it. As you keep on reducing the gap, your vision becomes clear. Keep on moving into the gap, even if you experience the darkness. On the unknown path you will always find yourself alone. Many times, you will find yourself alone walking those miles. You have to keep on walking, before you taste the fruit of success.
Stay Curious
The process of thinking big starts by connecting with your mind. You train your mind to explore more. The more you experiment, the more you explore, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you apply, and this way you create the chain of learning and application into your life.
You will never know what you are capable of until you do it.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger pursued his dream in the bodybuilding industry, people told him it was impossible. But he did it. After his success in the bodybuilding career, he wanted to become a famous Hollywood actor. Again, people told him that his body was too bulky, his accent was awkward, and his name was too difficult to pronounce. But he ignored them all and chose to continue to dream the impossible and pursue what he wanted. Eventually, he proved them all wrong.
You must maintain your desire and keep your drive high.
More importantly, always be curious to learn, to explore, and to discover. Curiosity is the desire to learn, to understand new things, and to know how they work. The mind of curious people is active. They want to know and to understand. This puts them in a better position to learn a job and do it better and more creatively, unlike a person who lacks curiosity. Living without curiosity makes life boring, while its presence makes a person more alive and energetic. It keeps the mind strong and in good shape.
Curiosity pushes people toward uncertainty and allows them to approach it with a positive attitude.
Curiosity is linked so closely with success because it drives you into the unknown, which is where you make discoveries, develop relationships, uncover opportunities, and experience growth. While curiosity alone does not always lead to success, in relationships, in business, and in life, it’s a good place to start.
How do you wake up in the morning? How do you get out of bed? How do you walk? You just do. That is how to think bigger.
You shouldn’t have any problem thinking bigger, because you have the same issues I think most successful people have and that is we think out of our means. We think bigger than our box can hold. You shouldn’t have no problem thinking about and writing down all the fantastic ideas you WANT to do but beware of that implementing ALL of them is the hardest part. Think bigger, but take small bites to get there and you will have the tastiest treat in the end!
Think about those you consider highly successful, read about their personal and professional stories, and you will find out a common thread: curiosity.
A few years back, Elon Musk’s first wife, answered in Quora that becoming a billionaire is not about what you want, but being “intensely curious about what the world wants and needs“. Curiosity pushes you to go in depth rather than staying on the surface. One thing is to fantasize about science fiction, and a totally different one is to make going to Mars or flying cars something practically feasible. The difference between being a wannabe and being a doer is not the ability to execute but the drive that curiosity injects in people.
Wrapping Up
How big you are is determined by how big the problems you focus on are. In order to think big, you need to be able to see through your current situation. You need to be able to focus on things that will make you expand your perspective on your life.
Successful people always choose to think big. They dream big. They imagine themselves playing it big.
When you think big, you will start to make decisions and take action that brings you big results. People who choose to dream small and play it safe will never achieve great success in life. Hence, choose to think big, my friend. Choose to play it big.
Starting to think big is hard. Continuing to think big is even harder.
If you want to aim higher, achieve more, accomplish big things and bring those big dreams into reality, you have to think really, really big, and the best way to do that is to start from within. It’s an approach where you cannot rely entirely on external factors, because you must work on yourself first.
The minute that you settle for less than big, then you are done.
Never give up on those big dreams, and never stop thinking of how you can achieve them. Do not be swayed by half measures or results that aren’t really the ones that you originally wanted. Stay the course, and do not let yourself get distracted along the way.
Thinking big is a road less traveled. You have to have the courage to forego what you have already experienced and stay open to new possibilities of life.
Thinking big: You’re willing to stick with it over the long run. It’s just a matter of time before it becomes yours. What part of this article resonated most with you and why? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below.
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