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8 Habits Holding You Back From Success
While it is true that hard work and dedication can absolutely contribute to how successful you are in life, they are not the only things that matter. Some of your current daily habits could be helping to boost your success, while some could be actually holding you back.
With this in mind, let us look at a few habits that might be holding you back from achieving more success in life. The more you know about some of these habitual chains, the easier it will be to break them.
1. Making Promises You Don’t Keep
Your word should be your reality, no matter what. If you tell someone that you are going to do something and then you don’t do it, it is more likely that, that person is going to trust you less in the future.
Even if you simply forgot or it was an honest mistake, you have still set an example that shows you cannot be reliable, so people are less likely to go to you with bigger responsibilities in the future.
If you have a problem keeping your promises or you tend to offer a lot and not back it up, this is definitely a habit that needs to be broken quickly from now on.
2. Passing the Blame
It is easy to think that you will not achieve success if you have setbacks, or even if you experience failures. The truth is, some of the most successful people in the world have had colossal failures along their way to success.
The real secret, though, is that they owned their failures, instead of trying to blame others. If you try to “pass the buck” when you do something wrong, you will never learn or be forced to grow. From now on, learn from your mistakes and use them as lessons to grow in the future.
3. Staying In Your Comfort Zone
It is okay to be scared about things from time to time. Trying new things, thinking about new endeavors, or doing something that is out of your comfort zone – they are all good reasons to be feel nervous or anxious.
But, when you choose to stay in your comfort zone, you will never grow. When you push yourself past your own boundaries, you will discover new opportunities. Those that are not willing to push themselves get left behind and do not grow.
Most everything that you want is outside your comfort zone. – Jack Canfield
4. Never Setting Goals
Do you find yourself talking about things that you would like to accomplish but never really set goals to work toward? If you tell someone that you would like to do something and they check in with you a few months later on the progress, you should have something to report!
Goals require planning and action. If all you do is talk about them, you will never achieve them or get ahead.
5. Procrastination
It is not hard to see why people who tend to procrastinate do not achieve much success. Procrastination might feel good at the time. It gives you a chance to relax instead of working on the tasks in front of you.
Procrastination is also your worst enemy. Pushing those tasks off doesn’t mean they go away. When deadlines approach, you will end up more stressed because you have put things off, and you may not be able to give each project the focus and attention it deserves.
6. Comparing Yourself to Others
Comparison is one of the biggest setbacks to success. In this world filled with social media and oversharing, it can be easy to look at someone’s life and wish you had a piece of it. Or, you might look at someone’s accomplishments at work and worry that yours pale in comparison.
Keep in mind that what people put on social media is often the “highlight reel” of their lives. They are usually only going to post what looks good, or what they think will get a positive reaction.
In the workplace and other areas of life, the same principle applies – you never know what is truly going on in a person’s life. While it might look like they have everything together, they might be struggling in other ways.
So, the best thing to do is to focus on your own life, your own goals, and your own achievements. When you stop comparing yourself to others and work harder on yourself, you can reach your goals faster.
7. Self-Doubt
Sometimes the only thing holding you back from success is yourself. If you are not as successful as you want to be, it can be easy to doubt yourself. Unfortunately, that quickly becomes a habit, and the doubt often becomes worse.
As a result, you push success further away. Self doubt is a vicious cycle that won’t end until you start to believe in yourself more and what you can achieve.
8. Giving Up
This habit may be last, but it could also be the biggest problem that will keep you from achieving success. Failures will happen along the way. Things won’t always go as planned. The worst thing you can do is to give up – especially habitually.
Success comes from overcoming those failures and finding different ways to make things work. If you give up, you are robbing yourself of so many opportunities.
So, no matter how hard things can become, it is important to flip this habit around. Start believing in yourself more and never give up.
Are your current habits holding you back from success and what you want to achieve? Keep this list in mind as you move forward, and recognize that you are the only one who can break these trends and find more success in the future.