5 Reasons You Aren't Taking Your Life to the Next Level (Read Time: 3 min.)

It's honesty time.  There are a lot of us out there who say we want to live life at a certain level.  We say that we want to experience ultimate success, ultimate love, ultimate wealth, and so on and so forth.  We talk a good game but the new years come and go and, yet, we're still the same.  There's nothing ultimate about our lives or the way we choose to live them.

What's up with that?

Your life is your choice.  When you find yourself wanting the same changes but not making those changes, you need to stop and ask yourself, "Why am I holding myself back?"  When you get real and raw on this one question, you'll find out that there are 5 reasons why you aren't taking your life to the next level:

1. You're not ready to give up the excuse for why you haven't created the life you want up until now.  There are those of us who've been "wishing" for a better life for decades.  If we now step up to the plate, take the steering wheel of our lives and drive, we also now have to own up to the fact that the only thing that's been stopping us for the last twenty to thirty years... has been us.  That's a hard pill to swallow.
2. Once you take your life to the next level, you can never go back to playing small.  This one truth scares the pants off of people.  When playing small is your comfort zone, the idea of never being able to return to this place is enough to keep someone in that cushy, cramped realm of living.  The moment you decide to play big in the world, you can never go back to playing small.  You might be able to trick yourself into doing so but it will always come with a feeling that says "This isn't right." 
3. You're waiting for other people to get there first.  This is connected to #2 in the sense that we often want to bring people with us when we climb up the spiritual maturity ladder.  But it doesn't work that way.  Each person has their own unique spiritual curriculum and you can't fast forward or control anybody else's.  Your job is you.  Let other people mind their own business.
4. You're afraid that what you find on the other side still won't make you happy.  Far too many people blame their unhappiness on outside circumstances.  They frame happiness as a treasure they can only find by altering circumstances.  It is these same people who get frightened at the idea of having the circumstances change because, deep down, they know that happiness is an inside job.  They understand that the circumstances changing has nothing to do with their attitude changing... unless they choose it.  For these people, they resist life moving to the next level because they know that once it does, the truth as to come out: their unhappiness has always been a choice that they were willing to make.
5. Your idea of a great life is being beaten up by your perfectionist attitude about whether or not you deserve that life.  So many of us think we aren't worthy of a better life.  We put up these pre-requisites of things we have to do and be in order to deserve a great life.  Our resistance to our own good pushes that future away.  When you don't think you deserve good things, you repel great opportunities. 

At any moment, you can change your mind about your life.  At any moment, you can choose differently.  It's up to you.  Don't let these excuses hold you back from creating a life you love to look at.  Own your ability to choose and then choose differently.