2 Ways to Create Success Even When You’re Not “Good Enough”

Shh. Do you hear that?

That voice in the back of your head. Do you hear it saying, “this is too hard”?

“Maybe I’m just not good enough.”

“I’ve been at this a while now, and I’m not any closer to my goal than when I started.”

That is the voice that will kill your dreams if you let it.

Let me let you in on a secret. You don’t have to feel like you’re “good enough” to make a huge change in your life and the life of those around you.

Before Walt founded Disney, he was fired from the Kansas Star. Why? He lacked creativity. After that, he founded Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which promptly went bankrupt. Not exactly what you’d call an entertainment expert, right? Yet he still managed to create one of the most successful companies in the world.

Do you want to know the difference between successful people and those who give up? You don’t have to take massive action. You don’t even have to feel like you’re good enough. All you have to do is take small, consistent steps in the right direction. Eventually, that will turn into momentum, and that momentum will carry you to your goals.

Here are two ways you can begin today.

Throw Away Your To Do List

We’ve all heard how important it is to create to do lists to accomplish our goals. What you may not have heard, however, is how counterproductive this can be.

Think about it.

You fill the list up with everything you need to do. As you complete things, you add more. At the end of the day, you look at the list and there are still 8 things left on it. How does that make you feel, knowing that you’ve worked all day and still have that many things left?

When this is all you have to measure your progress, all you ever get to see is how far away you are from your goal. This can be incredibly demotivating, even if you actually are making progress toward your goals.

What if instead of keeping this type of list, you kept a list of all of the progress you made towards your goals? Every evening, and any time you felt like giving up, you could take out your list of accomplishments.

Here’s how you can do that.

1. Take out a sheet of paper.
2. Write your list of high level goals down.
3. Every time you complete a task, write it down under its goal. For example, if you’re training for a 5k, and you finally manage to run for 3 minutes straight, that goes down under “Run a 5K” on your list of accomplishments.
4. Anything that would usually cross off of your to do list can go on this list of accomplishments.

This does two things for you.

First, it motivates you. Whenever you feel like you aren’t good enough, you can look at this list and see all of the stuff you’ve already accomplished.

Second, as you get more stuff on the list, you want to do bigger and bigger things so that you can put them on the list.

It’s an incredibly satisfying feeling. Try it out.

See Also: 8 Success Habits of Wealthy People That Cost Nothing

Stop Chasing Goals (and Do This Instead)

If you want to reach your goals, you need to stop chasing them. Your goals are not going to carry you to success. Your goals are not going to carry you through those times when you feel like a failure and lose motivation.

What you need is a system that would carry you through the high and low times, whether you’re motivated or not. What you need is a system.

Let’s say you want to be a successful blogger. Instead of making a list of everything you need to do to accomplish your goal of creating a successful blog, do this instead.

1. Every morning, write 200 words before you do anything else. Add 25 or 50 words to this goal every week.
2. Every afternoon, edit your work to improve the flow and make it sound better.

Do this every day, and you could write a 1,000 word post every week. You don’t need your goal to keep you motivated. You don’t need your motivation to keep you going. All you have to do is write 200 words every morning before you let yourself get out of bed.

If you were an active member on blogs that ask for guest posts, you wouldn’t even need to set up your own blog at first. All you would need to do is create your system and take small, consistent steps towards where you want to go.

The best part? A system like this will help you no matter what your goal is.

The One Thing You Need to Do

If you are constantly battling with that voice telling you you’re not good enough, there is one thing you need to do. Keep taking small, steady steps in the right direction.

See Also: 5 Inspiring People Who Started With Nothing and Changed the World

Don’t worry if you aren’t as successful as other people. Don’t worry if you’re not as far along as you’d like to be. Look at all the amazing stuff you’ve already accomplished, and keep taking action. Stop worrying that the beginning of your story isn’t as polished as the middle of someone else’s.

The results will come.