I can recall a few instances where I’ve put off starting a project because there were too many roadblocks that got in the way. Everyone’s been there, when you talk yourself out of doing something. You’ve quit before you’ve even started.

For example, you may put off starting because what you’re trying to do is too challenging. Or you think you’d never finish it. Or if you did, no one would pay attention to what you’d accomplished.

How do you get to the point where you just go ahead with your gut instinct and start even though you didn’t know where you’d end up? It takes a lot of courage to put aside those fears and just start.

In this blog post, I will examine why people quit before they even start, and how you can defeat those negative voices and get better at achieving your goal.

1. You are too critical of yourself

I put off writing because I wasn’t happy with anything that I wrote. I admit that I was held back by a lot of negative thinking. For instance, my voice was asking me, why would anyone want to read what I write? Or, I would read what I wrote and not finish writing it because I thought it wasn’t good enough.

If anyone’s experienced the same thing, the root of this problem is that you have high standards which you think you won’t meet. You get too discouraged for not meeting these standards which you’ve built up in your mind.

Sometimes, you are your own worst critic. You don’t allow yourself to dream. But what’s wrong with hope or thinking that you can live a better life?

You might think, I can never be as good as he or she is. But, there’s no one to prove you wrong if you don’t start. If you start creating something, you’d be surprised. You’d find out that when you thought you weren’t good enough, you were wrong.

2. Accept that what you create isn’t going to be a genius work of art

It takes time to develop skills in anything you do. It’s called learning, for a reason. It’s when you get to make mistakes and learn from them to be better and faster at what you do.

Keep in mind that nothing that you start is ever really perfect. That’s why it’s called a first, second or third draft. You can’t measure yourself against someone who’s done it for years while you are just starting out.

Perfectionists will have a hard time accepting that imperfectionism is okay. If you waited until all of the stars were aligned and for the best moment to start a project, you might wait forever for all the pieces to fall into place, for the perfect opportunity.

You could be waiting for the lightning of inspiration to strike. But as everyone knows, how often does someone get struck by lightning?

That’s why you have to just make a decision and start today instead of waiting until tomorrow. So don’t quit before you start!

3. Thinking that something is too difficult to do

I used to be discouraged whenever I thought that something was too difficult to do. I asked myself, do I really want to waste my time trying to do something that I can never achieve?

I felt ignorant because I didn’t know what was the first step to becoming knowledgeable, and that many other people who find it easy had an advantage that would put them ahead in the game.

But nowadays, we have the power of the internet and free resources to take advantage of, such as classes, seminars, and podcasts. If you don’t know something, ask someone for help or look up the information in a book or a blog.

Creating is also about learning. Learn your craft from mentors that you trust. Most people are not born knowing how to do something. They were taught. They went to class, to school, or attended a webinar, and they learned. There are plenty of instructors who have a wealth of knowledge that they’re more than happy to share. Make use of these instructors.

4. Thinking that you can’t reach your goal

If you think that you can’t reach your goal, a change in your attitude will help. Think of the benefits that you can derive from the journey towards your goal, and not the end goal itself.

This is especially true when you’re at the beginning and when you’re just starting. The goal might seem far away and impossible to reach, but this is because you just haven’t hit that first step yet.

You may be overwhelmed by all the things you need to do to make your project work. You may think that you will never achieve your goal.

That’s why you need to break it down into smaller, manageable steps. That way, you are hitting your smaller goals each time, which allows you to feel like you’ve succeeded, without feeling overwhelmed at the long list of things you have to do.

5. Quitting before you start makes you feel safe

Sometimes, you can talk yourself out of trying before you even begin. You put up a lot of road blocks, even getting creative with the excuses for not trying. There’s a lot of fear before you start anything, whether it be a project or business or even a hobby.

These roadblocks make you feel safe. If you don’t try, you won’t fail and your ego won’t take a hit. But if you don’t try, you can’t succeed either. Believe that you can do so much more.

If you’re still haunted by self-doubt, you will need to get out from under the shadow of that self-doubt. What else can you do about it?

6. What can you do to combat self-doubt?

Have a support system, or someone who will encourage you in your endeavors. Educate yourself. First understand what it is that you don’t know and try to fill in the knowledge gap. Create something, and be proud of how imperfect it is. Don’t rob yourself of your right to brag about your accomplishments.

Finally, find a mentor who has their own words of wisdom to pass along to you.

Don’t quit before you start, because the journey towards that goal is when you will learn and grow, and become stronger at what you can potentially achieve.

Searching for that elusive inspiration? You might be stuck in a rut and need to find a way to climb out of it. Maybe there is too much negativity in your life. What kinds of actions can you take to wake up and shake yourself out of hibernation? You can be inspired by implementing empowering action words in your daily life.

Inspiration can be fickle. Some days it’s giving and plentiful, and others it’s hard to find. But inspiration doesn’t have to feel like you’re searching for something that’s out of reach.

The trick is to pick empowering action words that summon positive emotions when you read or hear them. They are not just buzzwords that you add to a resume. To work, they have to be associated with feelings that will motivate you to stand up and take action. Keep a journal so you can jot your ideas down on paper. How will you implement them and use them in your life to bring about great, positive change?

To be inspired, designate one day or one week for each keyword. Get creative and craft some visual representations of these keywords. You can create artwork, frame it and hang it up on the wall to remind yourself to do these actions everyday.

To get you started, below are five empowering action words that you can start implementing right away to be inspired:

1. Discipline

If you are ever going to learn something new, it takes discipline, which means you show up and do the work. It takes self-control not to give up and move onto the next project, but to keep at it and be persistent to achieve results.

Just like in physical exercise, training yourself to do those reps will make you stronger by developing the right muscles. It’s the same with any endeavour, you will only get better with practice. Discipline will inspire you to reach for your goals.

2. Flourish

Flourish is another empowering action word. You want to find ways to grow and develop talents that are useful. To flourish, you need an environment that is conducive to growth, like keeping a plant alive with sunshine, soil and water. Continue to demonstrate discipline and work at getting better at the skill that you want to develop.

You will reach the point where things are happening and you are attaining your goals. This is the time to shine and show everyone what you are capable of. It is empowering to get better at what you, and to develop new skills.

3. Encourage

You have the courage to do something you’ve never done before. Set aside self-doubt and negativity, and recognize your achievements. You will need support, so it helps to have a supportive community who will encourage you to continue to do your best work. Your community will lend you the support you need to grow confident in your work.

Encouragement is essential to keep you motivated in your personal growth. If you ask anyone how they were able to succeed, the answer you’d often get is that they didn’t do it alone, they had someone encouraging them along the way, which kept them on track and inspired them to reach their goals.

4. Nourish

Nourish is another inspiring, empowering action word. Every intention needs to be fed to sustain growth. To keep going, you need to pace yourself and not burn out. It’s not fun to start a project with a lot of enthusiasm only to find out that you’re burning out before you even finish it.

Nourishing your growth includes doing things that will keep the inspiration going. Pause here and take a moment to remind yourself that you are doing this because you have goals and ambitions that are worthy of accomplishing.

5. Socialize

I put this in here because some people are introverted and need encouragement to get out there and network or make new connection.

Social isolation is a problem. Exchanging more than ten words each day with another human being can take some effort, but it’s not impossible. In the past, being an introvert meant that you’d rather not have to put up with the quirks that other people bring, but friendship is valuable. As in the keyword above, all friendships need nourishing. Socialization is an empowering motivator for inspiration.

Final Words

Further steps you can take to get inspired is to create mind maps. By going a step further, you can create phrases from these words, connecting them together to build an action plan.

Creating vision boards, a collage of photos and words that remind you why you have a desire to accomplish something, can be useful to remind you of the ways you can be inspired.

Don’t lose sight of your goal. With a lot of busy-ness going on in your life, you may forget that you have goals you want to accomplish. The vision board can be a daily reminder that you’re reaching for something, and that success is within your grasp.

When you first started on your journey, maybe you were stuck and you haven’t taken any concrete steps towards your goal or didn’t know where to start. Inspiration is out there for you to take, the way to do this is to look for inspiration in unexpected places.

Make these action words part of your vocabulary. Words are powerful, they can change your mindset in positive ways.

Focus on your empowering action words each day, every little step counts and gets you further to attaining your goal.

Repeat the empowering action words everyday to weave them into your life. If you encourage inspiration to show its face with a few empowering action words there’s a lot more that you are capable of than you think.

In the novella The Train Now Departing by Martha Grimes, a woman meets a friend for lunch; he is a travel writer who has been to far-flung locales that the woman only dreams of visiting.

She doesn’t know why she is friends with him when their conversations are fraught with antagonism and he is contemptuous of her meagre existence. She laments the places she will never see, experiences she will never have. The closest that she gets to travelling is visiting the cafe at the train station for breakfast. Her existence is dwarfed by the vastness of the travel writer’s experience but he doesn’t even appreciate the opportunity he has of travelling.

The novella is a study of the opportunities that one misses being a bystander to someone else’s greater purpose.

Have you ever encountered someone who is always on their game, has all the advantages that life has to offer, and even greater success and bountiful opportunities? Sometimes an appreciable percentage of their success is due to luck, but a portion of it is due to opportunities that just flow their way, or more likely, are of their own making.

There’s a high likelihood that these people are opportunists, and this is not meant to be insulting. They are good at recognizing an opportunity when they see it and they don’t hesitate to take advantage of it. This might sound unappealing. It’s understandable. The word “opportunist” has many negative connotations to it. It conjures up the ideas related to “self” that are not pleasing: selfish, self-serving, self-aggrandizing.

But no matter how unappealing, an opportunist who takes advantage does have a point. Most of the time, they are more successful because of it.

I was inspired to write this because I’ve had my fair share of missed opportunities. Being an introvert, there are times when I would not reach out to people even when they offered to give me a call. By not talking to these people, I missed the opportunity to make connections in my professional network.

When I was in graduate school, there were many opportunities to travel, learn, and publish papers, but I didn’t jump on the chance because it didn’t occur to me that I could be successful at it. Also, I didn’t take initiative. Instead I relied on other people to present these opportunities to me, and when they didn’t, I was left out in the cold.

But all that is about to change because I’ve learned from my past mistakes. Now I’m going to have the mindset of an opportunist who doesn’t hesitate to do what it takes to get ahead.

Let me stop right there. It doesn’t mean using people or being manipulative. Being an opportunist is different from being self-serving. It just means that I’m not going to leave success up to chance. It means that I’m going to take charge of my future and make things happen.

You’ve heard of the saying for it: Carpe diem. It means “seize the day.”

How will I do that? After thinking about it, I’ve come up with four conclusions.

1. Being an opportunist requires you to think far ahead into the future

You have to be forward looking and try to predict the future. Every time an event occurs, ask yourself, how can I use this to my advantage? Try to think of actions that you can take that will further your career or your personal achievements.

For example, in retrospect, you wonder how you could’ve missed this opportunity that would’ve helped you now. You didn’t realize what you’ve passed up on until it was too late. Maybe someone offered you a chance to try something, and instead of replying with an enthusiastic “yes!”, you were blase about it and didn’t think it through, leaving the opportunity aside for someone else to step in and capitalize on.

So when the next opportunity comes along, don’t think too hard about it! Just jump on the opportunity.

Here’s another example, relating to businesses.

2. Businesses are successful because they are forward-looking

They jumped on that chance when it presented itself, capitalizing on the moment when all the stars were aligned, where there was no better time than NOW to take advantage.

But sometimes we don’t jump just because we don’t recognize these opportunities.

This is because putting yourself forward is uncomfortable. You’re not used to thinking this way. You’re not used to bragging about yourself, or promoting yourself to other people. But this can translate to a major loss to your own personal growth. By looking for opportunities, it’s not only a chance to get ahead, but to learn and get out of your comfort zone.

3. How to recognize opportunities

You can ask yourself, is this going to help me, either now or in the future? Would I meet more people and make more connections?

With the unbelievably high level of personal and professional competition out there in the world today, it’s even more crucial to be an opportunist. It’s even more urgent to cash in on that wave now.

There’s no greater feeling of disappointment than when you’ve realized too late that you’ve missed the boat, or the train, or whatever method of transportation that would’ve moved you forward a lot faster than walking.

But not to worry. There’s a way to re-create that missed opportunity. First, go back to the moment where the opportunity had presented itself. Is there a way to get reconnected to that person who spoke to you about this fantastic opportunity?

4. Make your own opportunities

Initiative is a major jumping point for success. Maybe you’re a very lucky person whose success was handed to you and you were just a passive participant. But for the rest of us, we have to go looking for opportunities, or create them. We can’t just stand by and let luck find us. It will never work fast enough, or ever happen at all.

No one will tell you how to be successful, or give you a road map to success. They will help you, but you have to point your own way to success and follow through on it.

Show up for success.

To create your own opportunity, do some research. What are the first steps that you can take to set up a situation where you can win more opportunities? Talk to more people. Expand your network to include as many people as possible. Sign up for hobby groups, clubs and events, anything! Just do something.

So far, the reasons I listed sound pretty self-serving. But you have to think of opportunities as a two-way street. By helping others, your acts of kindness can open doors for yourself, too. For example, the person you just helped would’ve remembered this act of kindness, and recommended you to someone else in their network. The karma of paying it forward is returned to you many times over the more you help other people.

This is a call to seize the day, to make things happen instead of passively waiting for all the good things to happen to you.

Instead of watching that train that is now departing, it’s time to run and catch that train. It will get easier to be an opportunist. Pretty soon, you’ll be riding that train to success.