LaTosha Johnson's Page

When we work hard on a project or finish writing an article that we consider to be a masterpiece, everyone to some degree craves to be praised. Oftentimes, this does not happen and you are left feeling uninspired. Everyone feels more energized when there are people cheering for them on the sidelines.

What happens when you do not have this affirmation? Many become discouraged and silently start to doubt their capabilities. However, there is another option–be your own cheerleader. Come up with a cheer that will uplift you in the event that no one else is there to do so. It took me awhile to create my cheer because I had to get rid of some bad habits I had developed over the years. Find out if the following habits are preventing you from creating the perfect cheer:

Wandering eyes. Creating your own cheer can be difficult because it requires you to concentrate solely on your accomplishments. A task that is extremely difficult if you do not feel like you have anything worth praising or if prior tasks you have accomplished have gone unnoticed. You find yourself starting to wonder, ” Are there other people out there feeling the same way as me and what are they doing?” The answer to this question is ‘yes’, but this should not be viewed as a reason to take solace in the fact that there are others struggling with this issue as well.

The danger in looking at other people is if you are too busy looking at others –who is left to work on you? No one. Life is full of negative people that are intent on keeping you from reaching your full potential in life-mainly because they never fulfilled their own goals. One of the tactics many people use to prevent you from reaching your goal is to intentionally not acknowledge your hard work. This is their feeble attempt to wear you down and further increase their chance of getting you to feel self conscious.

Now some may say, ” Wait a minute, in business you have to keep an eye on your competitors.” There is a difference between being aware of your competitors and being utterly obsessed with outperforming them. There are only so many hours in the day, so much energy we can expend, etc. Why not spend it on recognizing needs that are not currently being met in the industry and strive towards satisfying those needs? This is an inadvertent way of keeping an eye on your competitors while not losing your concentration on what makes you and your business unique.

Unfair comparison. If you choose to continue to allow your eyes to wander, you will begin to compare yourself to people. Many times we compare ourselves with other people to see how we “stack up” against our peers to see if we are on the right track. Many times what ends up happening is that we compare our weaknesses to the other person’s strengths. The only thing comparing yourself to other people does is further deepen your insecurity. How is this helping you?

You do not know the full story behind how that person you are comparing yourself to obtained their “strength”. Was it from hard work? Did they know someone? Did they steal it? There are a million ways in how one gets to where they are in life. If you do not have the answer to this question, you may never be able to have the success to the degree that the person you choose to compare yourself to is experiencing. This is not to say that you will not be able to attain your goal, but the way you go about achieving it will be different–provided you stop comparing yourself to others and spend your time creating a game plan.

Eyes green with envy. Whenever you start to compare yourself with other people, you automatically start wondering, ” Why does he/she have (insert desire) and I do not have it?” Again, you don’t know how this person came about to obtaining their strength. You might not be so eager to have their strength once you find out how they got it.

Sick of waiting. When things are not happening as fast as we would like, I do not know about you, but I get extremely impatient. After all, what what is wrong with wanting (insert desire)? There may be nothing at all wrong with what you want to achieve, but I am a huge believer in that things happen for a reason. Timing is everything. If you move to fast or to slow you risk messing up your chance to achieve your goal.

Peacock Syndrome. You know how peacocks like to strut? Well, sometimes we like to act like them. We want to show the world what we are made of by showing off our feathers and when we do not get the praise we seek we want to hide. There is nothing wrong with showing off your feathers, just do it because you want to make yourself feel good and not because you want to demonstrate your achievements to others.

The aforementioned habits will without a doubt keep you from creating the perfect cheer. It will take a lot of hard work to get rid of these habits. However, it is well worth the effort because I cannot think of a more important person to cheer for–can you?