14 Negative Habits That Are Costing You Your Success

Right habits are the building blocks of any success you desire.

Right habits act as inputs that are capable of producing the desired outputs.

More often than not, people fail to achieve their goals simply because they never think about what could be causing them to move away from their goal.

In order to make room for the right things, you first have to remove the wrong things. Same is true for habits.

Positive ones will only stick when the negative ones have been completely eradicated.

1. Wasting your morning energy on a device that's designed to rob you of it

Time & energy are your only true resources in life. And you've got both in limited amounts.

When you let your smartphone suck up your energy before you even get out of bed, you're headed towards a doomsday.

Every successful person knows that they need to invest & direct their energy towards what matters the most. Starting your day right is an important factor in having a successful day.

2. Not preparing

Success is impossible without preparation.

If you want to succeed at a presentation, you've to prepare for it by making amazing slides, doing your research and practising it multiple times.

If you want to succeed at losing weight, you've to prepare for it by buying healthy food when you go grocery shopping.

People who succeed on stage are the people who prepare best off stage.

3. Saying yes to things that aren't on your priority list

Prioritizing is everything.

How & what you prioritize in life will speak for itself by the results you get in life.

Something will always come up, but it's on you to make a decision about what matters most.

Hanging out with friends on the weekend vs going to that self-improvement seminar - your call.

Procrastinating vs studying for that test - your call.

Completing your daily goals vs Netflixing after a long day - your call.

Every decision you make speaks of what you view as a priority and in turn, determines your results.

4. Trying to do too many things at once

We have more than one goal/aspirations at any point in time. We all want to have it all.

Yet, the deadliest moves we can make is trying to pursue all our goals at once. Because the result of it, most often, is not average success in all of them but failure in all of them.

5. Copying other people

There is no such thing as one size fits all, in any case, ever.

When you try to copy other people, you might get success here and there but it won't be sustainable.

What worked for them may not work for you.

Hence, simply copying somebody else is not the shortcut to success.

You're way better off being your authentic self and doing it your way.

6. Indulging in blame game instead of taking extreme ownership of yourself

Never seen/heard a successful person indulging in the blame game when they failed multiple times before having a huge success.

It's a mindset.

The person who refuses to take ownership of themselves or their life isn't the person who succeeds big.

7. Not having patience & perseverance

"I'm convinced that half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance." - Steve Jobs

And to persevere you need patience.

But, this doesn't just apply to entrepreneurs.

To see your body transform, you can't give it just 2 days in the gym. You've to do the same thing for months, day after day until you start seeing results.

To see your business boom, you've to put in hard work & overcome tons of adversities every day before things start working out in your favour.

8. Not knowing yourself/being self-aware

Knowing yourself is key to live a life of fulfilment and happiness.

Knowing and understanding how you operate and why you operate that way is essential in successfully navigating through life.

Being self-aware means playing with loaded dice in your hands.

9. Not relying on your superpowers

You've got superpowers.

These are your strengths. And the best that you can do is to fully exploit your strengths.

People who are successful are those who spend zero time worrying about things they're not good at because they're using 100% of their time doubling down on their strengths.

That's the cheat code to getting easy success.

However, knowing what your strengths are and how you can use them to your benefit requires self-awareness. So "knowing thyself" is the first and one of the most important steps in striving towards your own success.

10. Not having high ass standards for yourself & your life

Your standards determine everything in your life, whether it's your mindset, health, wealth, relationships or growth.

You'll never try to go above the standards you've set for yourself and you'll never allow yourself to have more than the standards you've set for yourself.

People who succeed at anything set high standards for what they call "success" as well as how they themselves operate.

Right inputs are the only things that can yield the right outputs. Hence, having a high standard in the inputs you provide will give you the high standard output you desire.

11. Always chasing something new

Life's all about having the courage to enter into things that are unfamiliar, but also having the wisdom to stop exploring when you've found something worth sticking around for.

You've to have both these qualities.

People who succeed are the ones who find one or two things that really interest them and then go crazy deep into becoming the best at those things.

No one succeeds by getting after a new thing every week.

12. Not being emotionally involved in your goals/vision/mission

Success requires a lot of work.

And motivation will only drive you for so long.

To walk the long road you need more than just motivation. You need an emotional reason that attaches you to your goal; otherwise, it's likely you're going to give up.

Success won't come from being surface level in your passion, efforts or focus toward your goal.

13. Not working on improving yourself every day

The kind of success you enjoy is in direct proportion to how much you work on improving yourself in life.

If you're not on a mission to upgrade yourself frequently and constantly, there's only so far you'll go.

When you get better, everything in your life gets better.

14. Not being a learner

Ever heard of a successful person that's not constantly learning?

Successful people identify themselves as learners & are big believers in self-education.

To stay on top of your game, you need to always be up-levelling yourself through constantly learning new things.

And learning is a habit that's cultivated daily.