Signs You Are Not Going To Be Successful!
By Anubhav Srivastava ( Register for his Workshop – Build Super Confidence For Super Success!)
Recently I wrote an article about the signs that indicate you are going to be extremely successful in life. Just like there are signs that indicate success, there are also signs that indicate a lack of it in the long run. Even if you are the luckiest person in the world, success still requires an inculcation of certain habits and letting go of other habits. So if you are serious about change and achieving what you want in life, see if you are doing any of these behaviours and then resolve to change them and for the sake of achieving the success you strive for.
1) You are blowing away a lot of money on frivolous things and expect your parents or relatives to pay for it.
I don’t think there is anything wrong if a parent wishes to still help out their offspring with any of their serious endeavours, but if you are still acting like a kid at 30, living a lavish lifestyle on your parents money and blowing away thousands of dollars or lakhs of rupees just for fun, without knowing how hard they worked to earn it, then you are lacking the maturity that should have come to you by a certain age. You want to have fun? Have it on your own money.
2) You lack self control. You are obsessed with only doing activities for instant self gratification instead of working hard on building things that will pay off in the future. As I said before, there is nothing wrong with having fun and you should for sure. But fun and the lack of self control are not the same things. Lack of self control means not knowing when to stop and getting addicted to destructive behaviours even when should stop. Have fun but know when to draw the line, especially if you plan to become a parent in the near future. You don’t want your kids learning all the bad habits from you.
3) You start things but almost never finish them.
If you start things out of passion and instinctive behavior but never finish them because you get bored or because things got hard, it means you are still not mature enough to understand that to truly reap the benefits of something you will have to bring it to fruition. Immature people say they want to follow their dreams but then quit when they get bored or things get hard. Only passion fuels them but no discipline. Grown Ups understand that it takes both passion and discipline to make dreams come true.
4) You blame others for how your life is turning out to be.
Yes, the circumstances we are in do play a role in what we eventually become in life but I do believe that the single biggest role is that of your own will to succeed or the lack thereof. If you do not have the support of people around you, surely the process will be much much harder but that doesn’t mean that you lay all the blame on them. People with all the support of the environment have failed and people with very little support have also managed to carve their destiny. Acknowledge that the single biggest factor of how your life will eventually shape up is your own attitude.
5) You compare Yourself with others constantly.
Here is the flip side, as mentioned in the previous point, while you are the biggest determinant of how your life will eventually turn out to be, you need to stop comparing yourself to others when you are doing everything under your control. Understand that everyone’s situation is different. Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth and some find a silver spoon along the way. In other words, if you are running a marathon called life, not everyone is starting the race from the same point of start. Some begin it way ahead of you and many others start it way BEHIND you as well. Accept that somebody else’s success or failure will not affect your level of success or lack thereof in ANY WAY. So focus on your life, not comparing yourself to others.
6) You steadfastly believe you lack any kind of talent.
When I was very young I thought I lacked talent, it seemed like whatever I wanted to do, everyone else seemed to be better at it. The reason was that I had not discovered my own strengths and talents and was constantly comparing myself to others. It was only later when I saw how good I was at certain things that many others were not did I come to the realization that each one of us is extremely talented in something or the other. The root of low self esteem is people judging themselves by all the things they aren’t good at. When you start judging your self-worth based on that one thing you are amazing at, and there always is, you will start realizing how unique and gifted you are. There is no one like you.
Your challenge are two things, finding where your talents lie and then doing your absolute best to figure out how to make a living at it. But stop complaining about not being talented, because that is not true. Everyone is super talented in some field or the other, the tragedy is most of pick the wrong field.
7) You spend more than you earn and are constantly acquiring bad debt.
A lot of people think that just because we now have jobs, it is there for granted and we can continue to have bad spending habits and spend most of our money on frivolous things and think that lifestyle can be supported forever, through our jobs. The problem is that nothing is for granted in life, especially not a job in a private company. If you spend more than you earn, you can earn a million dollars and still be broke or have a net worth below zero. If your job goes, you are back to square one with no savings to support your family. Semi grown ups waste away the money they earn on toys, grown ups first put in most of that money into savings, investments or acquiring assets and then have fun only with the money that remains.
8) You care too much about what others think of you.
Here is the deal. Other people are too busy thinking about their lives and worrying about what you think of them! Even if they think of you or condemn you or envy you, it reflects what is missing in their own lives which is why they feel the need to compare and judge. Other’s people judgements only reflects their OWN CHARACTER flaws, not yours. Don’t waste time trying to please everyone or not doing things because you are worried about others approval. The truth is if you appease your critics, they will find something else to be critical about. Even if you change for them, your change will attract new critics. Trying to fight or eliminate criticism in most cases is therefore pointless, the only important thing is to be true to your self. If your heart says what you are doing is right, nothing else matters.
9) You are always confrontational.
Confrontation is a sign of immaturity. It is one thing to argue with people close to you about something important, but if you are picking fights with every random person for no good reason other than stroking your ego, that shows your immaturity, no matter how old you are. Most mature people back away from confrontation, because most confrontation is for petty reasons. The only time they stand up is when something legitimately important is at stake and even then, as far as possible they try to deal with as smoothly as possible.
10) You never stand up for yourself at all
This is the opposite of the point above. While being confrontational about every little thing under the sun is a sign of immaturity, never standing up for yourself will ensure you will always be taken advantage of. How often has someone taken advantage of you for being too nice or because you have a hard time saying no just because you feel you will offend someone. Being nice does not mean being a doormat. Stand up for yourself and only then the world will give you what you deserve.
11) You refuse to Grow Up
Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking you to become super serious about life. Growing Up doesn’t mean you have to grow boring or stale or stop enjoying life, you can still be young at heart and do a lot of things typically associated with much younger folks. I truly believe that Age is just a number. What I mean here is letting go of the immature aspects of your personality that harm you, for example not obsessively pursuing people who do not want to be with you, getting drunk and partying to the point of exhaustion every single night, drinking and driving, taking impulsive decisions and so on. For any sort of success in life, you need to incorporate a sense of self regulation at least in certain areas and the sooner you do it, the better.
12) You don’t take care of your health.
Everyone is so caught up in the rat race of making money and getting a big house and a big car is that they don’t mind getting a big belly in the process. The Dalai Lama said that they greatest irony is that people first sacrifice their health for money, then later they try to spend the same money to get their health back, often when it is too late. Life is unpredictable and bad things have happened even to seemingly healthy but the chances of it happening to those who practice unhealthy habits are much more. Unless absolutely urgent, always do something to stay physically active a few times a week. Not only can you concentrate on the work you are doing better when you also workout, without health you won’t be around long enough in the world to enjoy the fruits of your work
13) You sacrifice your family and relationships for the sake of success. This is the second problem after ignoring health. We are often told that career comes first so it is ok to ignore your family, after all whatever you are doing will indirectly benefit them. As far as other relationships go, they are considered not to be as important as your career anyway. Here is the problem, a human being was not made for just being a career animal. Life is meant to be holistic. Without a rock solid family or relationships, you can achieve all the so called career success in the world but at the end of the day your life will be empty and meaningless.
About the Author
The writer of this article, Anubhav Srivastava is an author, motivational speaker and the director of Carve Your Destiny, a first of its kind inspirational documentary featuring some of the most famous personalities from diverse fields, who teach the viewers how they too can make all of their dreams come true. The movie itself has been seen on Youtube by close to 600,000 people. Anubhav has also been featured in numerous International and India Media outlets such as BBC , The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Rediff.com, Leicester Mercury and many others.
Email Anubhav Srivastava for coaching, consulting or motivational speaking queries at anubhav101@gmail.com. Facebook Profile: http://facebook.com/anubhav981
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