Defeating Your Dragons

Here's a post from my business blog. Though it's specifically written towards that audience the principles apply here as well. 

There are a lot of things that make being a entrepreneur difficult. The main challenge that I want to discuss today, is our dragons (our personal terrors), and how we can turn them from this:

To this:

What are our dragons? Quite simply, they are anything within our natures that hold us back. For some it's greed, for others it's pride. We all have little things that we need to improve. 

And if you think you can get away with just ignoring this fearsome beast here's a little quote for you. "If you refuse to face this dragon, it will keep turning up in the oddest of places, at the worst of times" (A Field Guide for the Hero's Journey, Jeff Sandefer). You know that old pair of jeans you love? And you just can't get rid of them? Well compare them to this little "problem" you have. Now say these jeans have gotten pretty worn, and you've realized that along the seam it's starting to wear. But you keep wearing the jeans. You know it's there, you know it's a weakness. But you love those jeans! Then one fateful day something happens (you eat one too many eclairs, try to jump a fence, raid a jail. etc,) and they rip, right down the seams, and if that's not bad enough, with your luck you finally got that date with Jimmy Breaker like you wanted. Talk about the worst of times...

So before we get to that date we need to get rid of the jeans. And that means we need to go through the closet. 

There are three steps:

1. Take some quality think time for yourself. If you aren't comfortable sitting without yourself in the silence, it's probably about time for you to have a chat with yourself. Be kind but firm, bring paper and pen. While it may be rough initially, you'll feel relieved once it's done. 

2. Create a plan. Write out goals. Your plans should be specific and meaningful. You want these to work, so create them with that end in mind (so you're going to have to be honest with yourself). 

3. Keep going. We need to keep going and working at it. There's nothing that we can do perfectly from the get go. So you're going to fall down on your face a couple times, and you're going to have to stand back up. But you will win when you stand up one more time than you've fallen down. 

Keep up your hard work, and don't give up! Turn your Smaugs into Puffs, and your ratty jeans into Liz Claibornes. You've got this.  

But enough of me, what are some things that you used to defeat your dragons? 

- Shayla