In late September, I was talking to my mom about preparing the house for my girlfriend, Cassie, to move in as we awaited the slowly-approaching closing date on the townhouse we were moving into. My dad wanted to give Cassie as much privacy as we can in our house.

The sunroom we were converting to Cassie’s bedroom had a slide lock on both sides of the door that my parents put on years ago to keep my sister and I out of the room. My father said that was good, Cassie could lock it and have some privacy. My mom laughed and said, yeah, but she might be a little nervous with the lock on this side, that we could lock her in there.

As we were discussing the locks on Cassie’s door, Mom asked me if I remembered why there was a slide lock on my closet door. I said I thought it was because, no matter what we tried to do, no matter how we tried to close the closet door, it would just open again, like a lot of the doors in our house. I thought dad put the lock on to keep it closed.

Mom told me that it was because, years ago, I was afraid of things coming out of my closet at night so dad put the lock on so I would sleep better.

It was out of fear that the lock was put on; it was to quell a fear.

So many times in my life, personal and professional, I have found myself scared. I found myself locking my fears away in a closet in my mind so I didn’t have to deal with them.

If you lock something away though, you don’t deal with it; you are running away from it. Most of our fears are not based in reality, but are of our own making, in our imagination. It is these fears that stop us from reaching our goals, that stop us from taking our dreams and making them our reality.

My imagination had monsters and ghouls in my closet that were going to come out and eat me alive, but, of course, there was really nothing in my closet, so nothing could come out of it at night while I was sleeping. 

Now I work hard at keeping my closet open so I face those fears and remove the barriers to reaching my goal. I set several goals for myself in 2020, both personally and professionally and have succeeded in reaching all of them.

What are you locking in your closet? What are you not facing? What is keeping you from making your dream your reality? Let’s look inside to see what that is and make a pact with ourselves to use 2021 as a gateway to change.

It is not easy and sometimes it is uncomfortable to face yourself and honestly assess what you want and what is preventing you from achieving it. I have consistently set goals for myself and reached them as I have learned how to set actionable, reachable goals.  

If you would like assistance in getting past your barriers, and want to turn your dream into your reality by developing a plan and creating smarter goals you can achieve in 2021 and beyond, I offer Goal Setting Consultations and Goal Setting Accountability Packages. I can’t wait to speak with you and help set you up to succeed!