Never Settling for Less

Have you ever caught yourself settling for less? Perhaps you had a big goal in mind but you doubted your ability to achieve it, so you set your sights a little lower.
I’m not referring to starting small and gradually increasing your goals as you go along. That’s actually a great way to build your confidence and stretch the limit of what you believe is possible.

What I’m referring to is the person who dreams of being a best-selling novelist, but instead settles for a job writing newspaper articles because “it pays the bills”. This person is not slowly working toward a larger goal; he or she has given up on the larger goal and settled for what he or she thinks is possible.

Have you written off your big dream because it seems unattainable? Maybe you still harbor a faint hope that “some day” you can have what you want, but you don’t have a plan in mind. Have you simply settled because you don’t see any way to get what you really want?
Settling is really a self-protection mechanism. Not having what we want is discomforting, so we find ways to rationalize it, which lessens the pain and disappointment. Instead of fighting for what we want, we settle into a state of resignation and numb defeat – before we even TRY!

That’s the funny (yet sad) thing about settling – we usually do it before even TRYING to get what we really want. We simply convince ourselves it isn’t possible and stow our dreams away in the shadowy recesses of our subconscious mind.
Yet, no matter how hard you have tried to forget your dreams, they still whisper to you, don’t they? They still haunt your dreams and fill you with envy when you see someone else doing what you want to do.

Pay attention to those little whispers, because they hold an important message: You are capable of achieving anything you want, and with such a pervasive essence of excellence that it would blow your mind if you could see it now.

You just have to believe it and commit to doing it.
When it comes right down to it, bringing out your personal excellence REQUIRES you to stop settling. It requires an open mind, a belief that what you want is entirely possible, and a willingness to demand nothing less than excellence from yourself – no matter what you do.