It’s time to wrap up this blog post series about getting what you want out of life. We’ve covered a lot of ground already and I’m sure you’ll surprise yourself with how much progress you make going forward. Before you know it, you’ll have the life of your dream and start to reach those big lofty goals, without the feelings of guilt holding you back. Today, on this last day, I want to leave you with some tips and advice that hopefully help you get there. The key to success in any area of your life is confidence. I like to think of it as a secret weapon that helps you keep doubt and guilt at bay. It’s your very own super power that you can (and should) develop and nourish over the coming weeks and months.

Last week's blog post was all about taking baby steps and making progress. The secret to reaching any goal is to just keep taking those baby steps and adjusting your course as needed. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, there’s always something that will throw a wrench into your plans, potentially halting your progress. Today I want to share one of those with you. It’s something you should watch out for and be prepared for. If you know it’s coming, it’s much easier to prevent it from stopping your progress. I’m talking about guilt. We’ve looked at the guilt that’s holding you back throughout this 7-day mini challenge. Not only does it prevent you from starting to go after your dreams in the first place, it also keeps trying to sneak back into your life. You’ll notice those little negative thoughts popping back in your head after the first excitement of making progress and going for it dies down. That’s when you have to be prepared so these feelings of guilt or self-doubt don’t derail you.

Big goals can be scary. It doesn’t matter if it’s losing a significant amount of weight, paying off a large chunk of consumer debt, or changing careers. When we look at those big goals, we get intimidated. We put off working towards them because we either don’t know where to start, or because the task simply seems too daunting. Today we’re going to tackle that issue and start making progress. The key to reaching any goal, no matter how big or lofty, is to get stared and take baby steps. You can reach any goal and make any change if you consistently take small steps towards it. My goal for you today is to motivate and inspire you to take a those first few baby steps toward your big goal. The best part is that you don’t’ have to have it all figured out to get stared. You don’t need to know exactly what you’ll have to do at every step along the way. You don’t need to come up with a plan to pay off your entire credit card debt. You don’t have to figure out how exactly you’ll lose all of those 65 extra pounds. You don’t need to know what it will take to buy your dream home. And you don’t need to know everything there is to know about opening and running your own bakery.

It doesn’t matter what’s holding you back from doing what you really want to do. Once you’ve started to figure out what you’re feeling guilty about, the next step is to work towards forgiveness and self-acceptance. Here’s the thing that most people don’t realize. You have to love the real you before you can start to make the small changes that lead to big success. If you’re ready to start crafting and molding the life of your dreams, start by loving yourself first.

This is day three in our seven-day mini-challenge and it is time to dig a little deeper and get to the root causes for your guilt that’s holding you back. After all, you can’t work on something and start making improvements until you know exactly what it is. Digging deep and examining your feelings can get a little uncomfortable. Don’t let that deter you. Keep pushing through. It is well worth it and you’ll feel much better once you’ve faced your fears and dealt with your feelings of guilt.

We are taking a look at guilt and why it can hold us back from doing the things we want to do. In the last post we started out by looking at what guilt is and how it holds you back from living the live you want to live. In order to break through and start making some series progress, you have to let go of the guilt. That’s what we’ll cover today. First Things First …. Find The Guilt The first step in this process that I’ll walk you through over the coming days is to find the guilt. It’s obvious, isn’t it? If you don’t know exactly what you feel guilty about, you can’t come up with a plan to work through it and let go of that guilt. Of course that’s easier said than done. If it was easy, we wouldn’t go through a 7-Day process to stop holding back and letting go of the guilt.

Let’s talk about guilt? It’s not a great feeling, is it? By definition, guilt is feeling of deserving blame for something. Often it’s a good check mechanism and a state of mind that we want to avoid. It moves us to action and gets us to do “the right thing”. Think back on your student days. Not doing your homework and lying about it made you feel guilty. That in turn ensured that you turned in your homework the next day and kept doing it going forward. Not a bad thing for your academic career. But sometimes guilt can be a bad thing and something that holds us back from achieving the things we want out of life. We feel guilty about spending time and money on growing a side business. We take away precious time from our loved ones to attend a live event. We don’t get to tuck the kids in at night because we’re going back to school. It’s easy to fall into the guilt trap even when we know what we’re doing is important and worthwhile.