It’s no surprise that when you lack confidence, believe that you aren’t worthy of greatness, don’t focus on yourself or your goals and have a built in self-sabotage mechanism, that success eludes a great many Codependents.

Not all Codependents however suffer from these pitfalls, those who were praised for their intelligence, or had some special gift that made the family look good, learned quickly that in order to get the attention and affection, they had to turn up their skills juice.

Fewer still have managed to find financial or business success on their own and save their Codependency specifically for their intimate relationships.

Success and Codependency have a complex relationship.  Codependents get lost in their relationships. They put all of their energy and focus into fixing and rescuing their partners and this makes it difficult to fully engage and focus on projects and business endeavors.

The biggest hurdle is getting past the belief that one is worthy of success and that it is possible. In the spirit of the New Year I’ve compiled a few tips to help Codependents achieve success in 2018.

Tips to Achieving Your Goals in 2018

1.Figure out What You Want: For some this is easy, for others it may take some time. Spend some quality time really thinking about what it is you want most in your life, what your natural gifts are, what you can contribute, what you want to accomplish, your purpose… Shift your focus away from giving and helping others to what matters most to you. How would you feel if you could have or do ____?

2.Figure Out the Steps Needed and the Tools You Require:  Do your research. Read books and articles that will show you how to get from A-B. Find people who are doing what you want to do and then do what they do – find a mentor that will guide you to take the right steps. Be assertive, ask questions, make lists – draw the map with all the little things you will need to do and plot out your course every day. Buy a day timer that gives you space to write out what you must accomplish each day to bring you one step closer.

3.Put in the Time: There’s a saying, “If you do what you love you will never work a day in your life.” I’m here to tell you that’s horse hooey.  Ask any athlete, musician or any successful person – they may love what they do, but they don’t love it all the time. It can be a grind and you have to learn how to respect the grind. If you’re trying to achieve a weight loss goal, the most important time to work out and eat right is when you don’t want to. If you’re trying to get your Masters degree the most important time to study is when you’d rather be going to your buddy’s party, or sitting at the beach.

4.Learn to Tune Out Distraction: “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” -Warren Buffett. There are distractions everywhere and for a Codependent those distractions tend to speak at lot louder. The sabotage meter tends to sound off the closer you get to achieving your goals. Be mindful of your mind traps – when a distracting thought comes in, identify it right away and don’t allow it to continue or to take you somewhere else. Author Steven Pressfield calls this resistance.  You’ve got to get in the habit of taking your attention away from non-goal activities and keep it tuned into what you must do.

5.Meditate, Visualize, Pray and Ask for Divine Guidance:  According to psychic medium Rebecca Rosen, we have a team of guides, angels and departed loved ones, all trying to help and guide us in the right direction. She says in her book, What the dead have taught me about Living Well, to Pray out loud. Ask for what you need or to help make sense of what isn’t clear. She gives an example “God I give this to you. Help me. What am I supposed to do, to know? Help me shift from a place of fear to a place of faith.”

During meditation she reaches out to her guides with the following prayer, “Guides and departed loved ones. Remind me, show me that there is a path forward for my life even though I cannot fully appreciate it or see it.” She recommends that we be open to the signs both subtle and literal along the way.

Author Wayne Dyer believed that we should always be thinking from the end. That we should constantly put ourselves in the feeling place of having already achieved our goals. For example if your dream was to become an Olympic gold medalist, you would want to see yourself and feel the feelings of having won gold. His theory is if you put yourself there mentally and emotionally and you put in the steps along the way, you’ll find yourself there literally.

6. Make Your Daily Requirements Habitual: Author and Public Speaker Anthony Robins always says, “We are the sum of our habits.” Day one of a new task will likely be all kinds of hell. You’ll feel uncomfortable, you’ll feel resistance everywhere and you’ll want to stop and go back to doing nothing. If you can battle through day one, then day two is a little easier. If you can battle through day 3, 4, 5… by day 10 you start to get into a grove and by day 30 you’re not even thinking about fighting it anymore, it’s just part of your daily routine.

7.Believe You Deserve It: This is probably the toughest hurdle and not just for Codependents, but for everyone trying to accomplish a goal. I learned how to eat properly by watching my mentor daily, chow down on a banana, some granola and an apple every day for breakfast. I asked him about his pie consumption and all sorts of other insane dietary questions. What I inferred from his thoughts and his behavior was that this is a person who knows his value. People of value want to take care of themselves. They believe that they deserve happiness and success and that’s really the key.

When you don’t feel good enough, your finish line might as well be in China. There are so many obstacles and mental road blocks that hold you back. When we’ve spent most of our lives being treated poorly, first by our parents, then by the world and then sadly by ourselves, we learn to follow everyone else’s lead and we also don’t value ourselves and we treat ourselves as if we have no value. When you can get past the opinions and behaviors of other people, tune out the negativity and choose to view yourself as a person of value, then you can reach up and grasp victory, because you’ve realized that you’re worthy of it.

Image courtesy of artur84 at freedigitalphotos.net