5 Common Mistakes Preventing a Fulfilling Life

Often Progress Happens More Easily by Avoiding Mistakes

Since you are reading this blog, you want to live a more meaningful and fulfilling life.  I had the very same desire before designing the Unstatus Your Quo® Experience. However, my gift to you today is to help you avoid the many mistakes I made as I was trying to get out of the rut I was in. Progress came slowly for me as I did research, experimented on myself and clients, and finally settled on a process now producing significant and often dramatic results.

What Does a Meaningful and Fulfilling Life Look Like? What’s the Vision?

Before we go to the mistakes, let me describe the life to which we aspire when we strive for a meaningful and fulfilling life. It will give good context for the mistakes I am about to describe below. It also gives you a feel for what an effective, Christian process looks like.

First, we must know what our purpose is – to Glorify God. Other ways of describing this would be Honor Him, Please Him, Love Him, Enjoy Him and some others. Basically, however, our fulfillment and meaning really is about Him, not us. So, our lives exhibit God-glorifying behavior motivated out of love for Him because of His love for us. When I think about living my life in this way, I am smiling already. How about you?

Second, we must understand how to Glorify Him or Please Him. Jesus made it very simple in concept by stating the Greatest Commandment (Love the Lord with all our heart, soul and mind), and the Second One is like unto it (Love your neighbor as yourself). The next step is to dig a little bit more deeply to understand what this means in our lives.

Third, we need to understand and abide in God’s will in the basic areas of life represented by the above two commandments. Since we fall short of a “Jesus Level” of abidance, we must grow in our abidance during life by taking tiny actions that become bigger actions that become habits resulting in abidance growth. The specific actions come from an understanding that you are uniquely designed by God. Therefore, your growth path will be unique to you, and specific tools and coaching can help you in this area - BIG TIME.

Imagine waking up in the morning, grateful for the breath in your lungs, and looking forward to the day the Lord has in store for you. You are constantly asking yourself if your next action will please or glorify God or not. His will is in the forefront of your consciousness helping you throughout the day. Now decisions are easier, distractions are more avoidable, interactions with people are more meaningful, and finally, you are feeling increasingly fulfilled. I have just described my life and the life that you can have much of the time.

Mistake #1: Not Knowing Your Emotional Vision of Success Like “Experiencing a Meaningful and Fulfilling Life”

Be sure to make your vision of a more fulfilling life emotional, aspirational, and yours. You are a uniquely designed person. There is a reason that you are here on this earth, at this exact time, with the specific gifts that God has given you. Add specific elements of your life that could be God glorifying if you were more in tune with His will for you. Go BIG and risky to the point that you will need to depend upon Him and not on your own devices. Have fun with this, and sense the smile overcoming your face as you build a story of what could be. Remember, it’s about Him first, not us.

Mistake #2: Not Appreciating the Dissatisfaction, Frustration, Pain & Fear of the Status Quo of Your Life

This part is key because you created the vision of what could be so that you could leave the disappointing life that has been. You’ve had enough of this unfulfilling life. I had my time of being a victim and saying, “Woe is me” to myself whenever a disappointment showed up in my life. Sure, cancer twice, alcoholic mother moving to town with the chaos I thought I’d left in childhood, struggling business at times, death of my parents, three operations, and more in a relatively short period of time were tough, but I needed to be brought to my knees to be open to the Good News the Lord offered me.

Once I recognized that the self-pity was harmful, I wanted a clear picture of what my negative feelings were and where they were leading me – to nowhere. I really needed to address my emotions to help me move forward. Understand the depth of your emotions and what you are trying to leave. If you don’t move forward, the understanding of your current “Bad” will be a good motivator for you to commit to new life. Because I understood my pain and emptiness, I was ready to pursue a different life.

Mistake #3: Not Having a Proven Coach or Guide to Help You Plan the Specific Process and Actions for the New Journey

There are certain subjects where everybody thinks that their opinion is informed. My wife reminds me sometimes that I may not really be the expert on certain topics. For example, I don’t know why women like to go to the bathroom together. Can somebody tell me where that line is for when to listen and when to give some great advice to solve the problem? (You can email me the answers at [email protected].) Additionally, we are all consumers, so we think we know a lot about marketing – NOT!

If you could do this life change on your own, you would have done so already.  Accept the brutal truth which is one of the success factors for a business according to Jim Collins, author of a great book, Good to Great. Would you go to the medical doctor or ask your brother-in-law, the college football expert, about that chest pain? The life that the Lord has given you is too important not to have some expert guidance. He wants you to follow the path He has for you for His glory. You need to take action.

Mistake #4: Not Engaging an Accountability Partner Who Calls You to Action & Holds You to Commitments

While a coach can guide you, teach you, and call you to action, an Accountability Partner is critical to your success. Pick somebody you trust to tell you the truth, who knows you well, won’t cave in when you vent your frustration with yourself on that person. Also very important, this person should be an encouraging person because your successes need to be celebrated, and you will have many times to celebrate. You are in this together, and your growth may also inspire the Accountability Partner to join you in the journey as his/her Accountability Partner. My wife is great at this, and I know all her challenges and celebrations of and with me are out of love. I am better able to hear her and take her advice. May your Accountability Partner be the same way. BTW, my wife is really funny, and that helps, too.

Mistake #5: Picking Behavior Changes That Are Too Big

Warning: People with Type A, very competitive and prideful personalities beware! This mistake is solidly in your Mistake Zone. Read this section very carefully, make sure your coach and accountability help you here, and you might even succeed. A psychologist may say that I just made a big, fat projection of myself on you. Well, I did, but this mistake dogged me many times and still does. So, I thought I would warn any of you who are like me.

New Year’s Resolutions fail 92% of the time. Why? They are too big (some might need to read the prior paragraph again), usually fail to have a very specific description of the goal and behavior plus omit the four components of a behavior, all of which our coaches teach. Also, there generally is no or a very small emotional element to the behavior change. If it does have one, it takes a long time before you experience it as you may be sweating your brains out on the treadmill.

The best way to start the behavior change is to start very small. Once that small behavior becomes a habit (a reflex, not a choice), you can increase to a less tiny behavior change that also becomes a habit, then another increase and so on until you hit the Target Behavior which is more like the New Year’s Resolution. Your success rate will skyrocket! In fact, doing it this way may be your only chance for success, and that is not an overstatement considering what our clients tell us about their histories of failure. We’ll have a lot more on this in another blog, but tiny steps are key.

Stay tuned for new research results about habit formation that will be released in a book on 12/31/19. Hint: Habit Formation is not about repetition. It’s about something else. At this point, we are only legally allowed to teach our clients the new techniques. Email us after 12/31/19, and we can talk about it. It’s big and encouraging.

Conclusion

You are still reading because you know you need and want a different and fulfilling life. Some of it is the rut and emptiness you may feel about the Status Quo, but we would encourage you to Unstatus Your Quo® and change your life for His glory and with Him right beside you all the time. You really can have a more meaningful and fulfilling life with the proper process, action plan, coach, Accountability Partner, and most importantly His guidance. You can do this!! For more information, visit our website or email me at [email protected].

Charlie