Why becoming more self-aware will help you start succeeding

Before you begin any journey that involves change, such as deciding that you want to become successful, you must first understand where you are at that moment. This includes knowing what fears, blockers and constraints are preventing you from taking the first steps. If you don’t take the time to do so, moving forward may start to seem impossible.

You have to identify not only the need to become a goal achiever but the reasons why you aren’t one by default. Surely there has to be something about you that isn’t allowing you to be that super popular and accomplished being that very moment, right?

In context to game design (though the principle is universal), I had asked myself these types of questions to try to find out why I wasn’t a successful game developer at an earlier time in my life.

• Could it have been that my heart was still unsure if it was worth the risk of investing my time and effort into it?
• Could it have been that I couldn’t afford to go to a good institution that could have taught me how to become a great game programmer?
• Or was it that I knew how to create games, but wasn’t sure how exactly I’d be able to sell them?

There is a whole list of questions you could ask yourself too. This situation is not unique to just succeeding in game development. Whether it’s clothing lines, selling beauty products, there is always at least one thing that is preventing you from getting started with what you want to achieve.

Become self-aware. Understand your current situation. Mostly your constraints, fears, and blockers. Next will be to create an action plan on how you will overcome them.

If your car won’t move because it’s out of gas. The first thing to do is figure out how you are going to refuel the car. Once you have it refueled, focusing on your destination will be a lot less stressful, right?

Taking that first step towards achieving your goals is usually harder than it probably should be. We often focus on the tasks that the “ideal” person is meant to begin working on, before turning ourselves into that ideal person.

Simply put, you can’t dream about being the best breakdancer if you can’t dance in the first place.

Step 1: Learn to dance to music.

Step 2: Learn to breakdance.

Step 3: Work on how you plan to be the best at break dancing.

This is a pretty straightforward example. It is key to note that we often get caught up working on Step 3 as our first course of action. This is why we fail to launch. It’s impossible to achieve goals this way.

List down what you think is preventing you from even beginning the journey. Deal with that. Then focus on how you will get to your destination.

Let that be the introduction to this topic. My next post on this will look at the ways you can train yourself to become more self-aware before embarking on a quest to achieve a goal.

Till then, I’m interested to know your take on the subject of becoming self-aware. Also whether or not you agree that it’s an overlooked show-stopper in taking the next steps towards achieving your goals.