Our mind is programmed to keep us safe and unhurt. Whenever a new idea lights you up with excitement, a second later, your self-sabotaging mechanism will kick in with doubts and excuses of you really should NOT pursue your dreams.

Well, dear readers of Classy Career Girl, you are in for a treat. I’ve gathered the 3 most common (and most annoying) limiting beliefs or excuses that are holding you back and some advice on what to do with them:

3 Annoying Excuses That Are Holding You Back

Excuse #1: You don’t have time to change my career.

Busy. Busy. Busy. We are all busy. Running around in circles. Books to finish, courses to complete, tasks to delegate and deadlines to meet. I get it, I hear it often from my friends, family, and my clients.

But often, when we start looking deeper into the issue, it turns out that there is plenty of time. If you get your priorities right and look critically into how you spend your time, you can easily get up to two or three hours per day to spend on your career change or development.

Remedy:

The best idea is to track your activities for a week. Take a notebook and write down all the things that you do during the day, including the timing. After having a critical look at how you spend your time, you might find out that you spend up to two hours per day on things like Facebook, email, internet, TV, Netflix, etc.

Of course, we all need our relaxing time, but ask yourself if you really can’t free up one or two hours a day to focus on something you deeply care about: your professional life development! Choose your priorities and choose them right!

Excuse #2: You are scared about what your parents / partner / children / anyone else will say about your change?

Getting the right support and encouragement from others is one of the most crucial elements to your success when changing career or anything else in your life. One of our basic needs, according to a known American psychologist Abraham Maslow, is the need for love, acceptance and belonging. We need others not only to survive but also to live a happy and fulfilled life.

That is why one of our primary fears is the fear of not being accepted. We do crazy things in order to be accepted. We often change our opinion to please others or are paralyzed if we have to give a 10-minute public speech.

It is also important to me what my husband thinks about my new business projects and I do often consult him. So don’t get me wrong, you surely need to talk with your partner about your career plans. However, there are also situations in which we take the opinions of others much more seriously than we do our own. This is the point where it can go wrong.

Remedy:

First, you need to identify whose approval you are actually seeking. Is it the approval of your partner? Is it the approval of your parents, sister, brother or best friend?

Sometimes I even hear from my clients that they feel it is “society” that does not grant them the approval to move forward. Well, here’s the thing: they are not the expert of YOU, and chances are they are too scared to make their move to even bother judging or talking about your “unusual” career choice. So there you go. If this excuse is the one that you keep telling yourself, take a moment now to think about whose opinion you fear the most.

You actually do not know for sure if the disapproval is real unless you have heard it directly from the given person. If your partner’s opinion is the one you are most worried about, then you need to talk to your partner first. If you fear the opinion of your parents or friend, you need to realize that you are an adult person and ask yourself whether you want to live a life fulfilling the expectations of others, or to make your own choices.

Excuse #3: What if you fail?

This is one of the most common reasons why many people get stuck for years, sometimes for a lifetime. What if I fail? And even worse: what if others see that I have failed? This excuse is based on the fear that by changing, we are going to make a huge, irreversible mistake.

So where is this fear coming from? It comes from that fact that we were taught that mistakes are wrong and should be avoided at all times. Mistakes are bad, dangerous and should be punished. But, what if we start perceiving mistakes as a part of the game and see them as learning opportunities rather than mistakes? Yes, things might not go as planned, yep you can even fail at something… but what if you actually win?!

Remedy:

So if you are suffering from the fear of failure, think of what you can learn about yourself when you fail. Look fear straight in the eyes and answer the following questions:

1. What is the best thing that could happen if I change / develop my career?

2. What is the worst thing that could happen if I change / develop my career?

3. What would I learn from it?

Of course, the human brain is complicated enough to come up with a whole set of different and unique excuses. You might not be saying those very words, but without any doubt, you do have some limiting beliefs or excuses that are keeping you away from your dreams, from your hopes and from what you were truly meant to become. Don’t let these excuses get the best of you.

Related Post: 3 Reasons Your Cultural Background Might Be Holding You Back