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Have you ever gotten to a point in life where you feel you can’t do anymore? Maybe it isn’t even life that you can’t continue but you have reached a breaking point during the day where you think you can’t work anymore. You are sure that you have reached your threshold for the day. Maybe this is a daily occurrence for you.
What to Do When You Can’t Do Anymore
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Understand
To truly break through a mental or physical barrier you have to understand what that barrier is. Understanding yourself and your patterns is the best way to make a change in yourself. What is your barrier? “I can’t finish this report today because…..” This is barrier language. Any time you hear this you are placing the responsibility on some outside circumstance. “I can’t get any work done today because I just can’t seem to focus.” What is causing a lack of focus? You, yourself, and you. You are causing a lack of focus. If you want to do something when you can’t do something anymore you have to be tough. To understand is to be aware. Once you are aware you can fight through your barrier.
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Accept Your Part
This is the hardest part in the process. People don’t like to be told they are wrong. It is so much easier to blame something else instead of blaming yourself. You don’t even have to blame yourself. What you have to do is to accept the situation for what it is. To see something as it really is, you need to accept that whatever is happening to you isn’t a catastrophe. My advice for learning more on how to “see things as they are” would be visiting slownotion.com. In the example above: “I can’t finish this report today because…”, the “because” is coming from you. This is you telling the lazy devil inside yourself that you are going to give in. What you create when you accept your part in this process is the ability to change your thought pattern.
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Change your thoughts
Once you have accepted that you are creating thoughts that are causing mental barriers you have to change your thoughts. This is easier said than done. You don’t have control of a spider getting into your house but you don’t have to let him make a web there. This is done by challenging those thoughts. If you think to yourself that you “can’t do it”, say to yourself that you “can do it”. Even if this feels fake at first, you can fake it until you make it.
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Start Somewhere
Many people feel that they can’t do something because they feel overwhelmed. So many people want the treasure without going through the treasure hunt. If you have reached a point where you can’t write any more code, you can’t market anymore for your new website, you can’t analyze anymore, you can’t whatever. What can you do? What you can do is at least start it. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Work on your project for 5 minutes. Maybe you can’t do the whole project that day but anyone can do 5 minutes. After 5 minutes you might just be surprised that you can do 10 or 20 or even the whole project. By doing this, you won’t be able to get everything done every day. What you will be able to do is to create a habit that enables you to get more done every day and you will no longer receive “pile-up” where you are so behind and you have to catch up on all of your work but can’t handle it anymore.
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Reward Yourself
Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the fact that you did 5 minutes of work on that project when you were so sure that you couldn’t do anymore. What did you just do when you did this? You proved the fact that “I can’t do anymore” is an irrational thought. You just proved yourself wrong and you will start to believe in yourself. Once you do this, you have created more energy for yourself to get more done the next time. If you keep the cycle going you will get more and more done.
About the guest author:
Tyler Dahl is a freelance writer who dedicates his time to finding solutions for people who feel they can’t go anymore. He specializes in writing about self-motivation and chronic pain. If you would like to contact him you can do so on his LinkedIn.
