6 Strategies to Crush Complacency!

I’m in Guatemala City this week at the Guatemala Festival with Luis Palau for church and business leaders. It’s an incredible opportunity for me to connect with leaders and entrepreneurs I wouldn’t normally have a chance to interact with face to face. A side benefit of this week is that I also have the chance to break way outside of my normal daily routine. This thought lead me to focus this post on something that you and I need to be more intentional about completely eliminating from our lives – complacency.

Complacency is something that we all deal with from time to time. Unfortunately, for some people it becomes a lifestyle. They get stuck in a rut that seems nearly impossible to climb out of.

Multiple reasons could lead to this state of “stuckness”, including fatigue from fighting life’s battles, difficulties dealing with rejection, or just not having found a special motivation.

Regardless of the reason, if you are stuck in a rut of complacency, like most things in life the choice is up to you to get out of it. You can either choose to stay in that same predicament and complain as life passes you by, or you can do something to alter your situation.

I was able to come to Guatemala to change my routine this week. However, you may not be able to radically change your environment like I was able to. So here’s 6 strategies that you can use to climb out of that complacency rut:

1. Find something to fight for that has meaning and purpose. Purposelessness is probably one of biggest contributors to complacency. It hard to fight and be lazy at the same time. Sometimes fighting for someone else’s issues is more of a motivator than fighting for your own.
2. Do something that brings you joy. (Re)Discover your passion. Identify what motivates you and then start doing it. You don’t have to try to save the world. Just start in your circle of influence.
3. Quit eating mental junk food. Continually taking in media and conversations with people that contribute to feelings of apathy, negativity and laziness will just prolong your occupancy in the rut. It you want to think healthy, you must partake only of things that are positive, encouraging, and motivational.
4. Connect with people who have a love for life. Complacency loves company, so connect with some enthusiastic people who are making progress in their lives. Their enthusiasm can be contagious.
5. Break your current routine. Don’t expect changes in your circumstances if you’re not willing to do anything different. Take a risk. Challenge yourself to do things you haven’t done before.
6. Start speaking positive and uplifting words. You increase the difficulty of getting out of your current situation by the negative words that you speak. The most positive words that you can speak are found in the Bible, especially in terms of what God has has promised for your life. However, it would be hard for you to believe what He has said about you if you don’t have a relationship with Him… hmmm (another post for another day )

You must fight passionately and persistently to climb out of the chasm of complacency. Because as long as you’re breathing, there’s somebody out there who can benefit from you and that you can benefit from. Life is too short to be complacent. Go do something worthwhile!

Dream B.I.G.,
Paul Wilson, Jr.

Connect with me on twitter.com/pwilsonjr

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