We’ve all heard about how important stepping out into the unknown is for success. Of all the people who operate at the top of their fields, each one of them had to first take that step to reach for something more.

What if you don’t have goals and have never known how to set them?

What if you don’t know where to head?

You can start by asking yourself the right questions:

1. What am I good at?
2. What are my strengths?
3. What do I value most in life?
4. What causes me pain?
5. What do I wish was different or done differently?
6. What are the things I enjoy doing?

These and similar other questions will lead you to clarify your ambitions and consequently come up with goals for your own life. Take your time to really think through and delve into uncomfortable places. This will give you the clearest look at who you are and where you want to head.

From here you can reach out and stretch yourself into new areas of growth.

Reaching out involves stretching beyond your comfort zone. It isn’t for the faint-hearted, though it can be something we build up with time. In order to make it stick though, we need to gain a sense of urgency.

Comfort is the death of your dreams. If you don’t see a reason to expand, you won’t.

Look around you. Analyze your character, habits, and thoughts. Notice the patterns you have been following as a result of them and quickly realize this: unless something changes, you will continue in the same lane, facing similar problems, hanging around the same-minded people and as dissatisfied as you have ever been.

Reaching out into new spaces may be awkward at first, but push yourself. Challenge the limiting beliefs that you have inside of you. Take responsibility for where you are in your life.

Newton’s first law of motion states that: “an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.” This phenomenon is used in Physics to solve problems involving moving bodies, but it holds true as to whether a person’s life changes for the better.

Indeed the pattern of your life continues as it always has unless a change comes from within.

This may be it: you wake up, bath, eat breakfast, head out to work, spend eight hours at the workplace, come back home tired, watch some TV, doze off and go to sleep. The end of the month comes and you get a salary that doesn’t please you because it isn’t enough to afford you the quality of life you want.

And yet despite this, you report to work again the following day as per your routine.

Unless something changes in you that causes you to disrupt this pattern, the cycle goes on and on. It is when you decide that you deserve more value out of your time that you begin to see where you can take more valuable action in your daily routine.

Consider something as simple as your morning ritual. If you were able to wake up an hour earlier first to say your prayers, meditate, or simply take time to engage with your true inner self and think of ideas for a better future, how might that affect your output throughout your day?

Next is the habit of reading good books or articles that cultivate better habits and mindsets within you. This could mean cutting down on television time or using your weekends to do this. There are courses designed to expand your knowledge that are effective in getting to the root of your issues and transforming them.

Take the time to learn.

Perhaps something you learn from these books and courses, or even from some deep meditation, could help you to create a source of passive income, for example. Now your life has more meaning. You look forward to the fruits of your side job or hobby that you developed and you have more income. You smile all the way to the bank.

All this would never have happened without disrupting your ‘normal’ routine.

If you’ve ever known a cat, you’ll know they have a habit of getting themselves somewhere high up and crying for help. You might indulge in getting them down (sometimes putting yourself at risk of injury), but after this continues time and time again, most of us take a step back and let the cat find their own way down.

And what happens almost every time? They get themselves down without a hitch.

Just like that dog, if all you do is complain about having an impossible boss at the workplace, then you probably are using that as an excuse to avoid taking action. Maybe others come to listen with a shoulder to lean on, just like cat owners come running to help them off the roof.

The day you realise that it’s on you to change your circumstances, and that you are more than capable, then you will make plans that thrust you into greater things. By complaining constantly, you take the power out of your hands.

If you want to take some power back into your own hands, check out Dream Life Mastery, run by Steve G. Jones, certified hypnotherapist. There you’ll learn how to create a life with a foundation of happiness and success, fulfilling relationships and the best version of you.

We like to think our content here is useful and practical, but if you’re looking to make the most of our content by taking it further, we couldn’t recommend anything better, so be sure to check them out.

6 Essential Things to Implement When Reaching Out to Your Success

In closing, we think these succint tips will help focus what we’ve discussed today into something you can take with you:

1. Refuse to continue with actions that cause you to stay small and stuck in your life. Take the time to write down these actions and begin creating new habits for them.
2. Dare to step out of your comfort zone. In order to change your life, you need to be willing to step out into the unkown. Start small, but be sure to start. 
3. Create a winning strategy for yourself today and work it out until you see results. You don’t have to know all of the steps: just begin, and the rest will follow.
4. Keep taking action-packed steps towards your goal. This will be the hardest step when motivation begins to falter, so plan ahead. Think of ways to continually inspire motivation.
5. Have a daily checklist, but take it a step further and write down a time-management schedule that states exactly what you will be doing at what time. Enjoy the satisfaction of ticking things off the list one by one.
6. Be patient with yourself and with the process. Nothing happens overnight.
7. Limp or crawl through some days but by all means, keep moving. Determination and resilience are vital characteristics of successful people. If there’s one thing to take from this article, this is it.