You need to know who you are, flaws and all. Knowing this guides you and makes sure that you stop getting in your own freaking way — something that most of us do way too often. The road to success can be incredibly self-reliant, which means that to thrive, you need to be emotionally attuned to the way you conduct yourself and your work.
I’ve worked with — and for — people who lack this emotional intelligence and awareness in their own self. It dramatically holds them back from doing any productive work. And, honestly, a lot of the time it makes them impossible to work with. Throughout my career, I’ve caught myself slipping into these errors. It takes one to know one, right?
Knowing about these bad habits makes it so much easier to identify and avoid them. Many of us face these three glaring issues. I’ve found that completely cutting these toxic habits out of my life has massively improved my lifestyle and career. I hope it will also propel your ability to be successful in your own right.
Avoid Time-Wasting Activities Completely
When it comes to advancing in your career and work pursuits, time is money. Successful people are cautious of their time, and they do everything they can to avoid time-wasting activities.
Basically, avoid nurturing relationships and habits that won’t nurture you back.
This doesn’t mean you should avoid anything and everything that won’t get you and your career ahead. We all deserve to have fun and engage in purposeless and unproductive activities every once and a while. Just be conscious of what activities and habits are eating up all the time in your day.
For example, one thing I used to do was check Instagram first thing in the morning. I would waste up to 30 minutes lying in bed each morning scrolling through the Gram. That is three hours and 30 minutes on Instagram a week — and that’s just my morning scroll.
Eventually, I realized how much time I was wasting doing this and had to put my screen addiction aside so I could be higher-performing and more productive in the morning.
I now use this time doing a quick 30-minute fasted cardio workout, which is a waaaaay better start to the day!
Smart and successful individuals evaluate their processes and how they spend their time. You must treat this as a crucial part of productivity as it helps you to keep track of your major time-wasting activities. Always remember,
When you optimize your efficiency, you optimize your life.
Don’t Accept Mediocrity as an Option
My friends who are founders joke that they have “founders disease” because their tolerance for inefficiency is so low. Since all our lives are about efficiency, productivity and ensuring that the company is executing best practices. They soon become baffled and extremely frustrated by subpar customer experiences. And further, try to act over to find a suitable solution.
In other words, successful entrepreneurs don’t accept mediocrity. And neither should you.
This doesn’t only apply to business. If you want to be successful in your field, you need to learn to stop accepting mediocre relationships (i.e., time-wasters), experiences, and especially don’t accept yourself being mediocre.
Stop accepting mediocrity, and it won’t be a part of your life. As per the mindset of a great entrepreneur, Henry Ford,
“Mediocrity is the worst enemy of prosperity. So, always avoid getting into it.”
Stop Playing the Victim All the Time
Many successful people thrive in the face of rejection and don’t go down without a fight. To break the mould, you’re going to deal with a lot of rejection and struggle. This is why it’s so important that you don’t ever view yourself as the victim.
If you tell yourself that bad things just keep happening to you, you end up avoiding accountability.
This undoubtedly prevents you from being able to ladder up to your failures. And into the meaningful lessons, you need to find your path to success.
Another victim-like thing a lot of us do is blame our team for our own shortcomings or failures. Being an accomplished leader means taking ownership of the things that slip through the cracks in both your career and your personal life.
You should never play the victim, which also means you should never act like you’re above getting your hands dirty to get the job done.
Don’t let your ego or pride make you believe you’re too good to do a task. If you want to have taste of success in your life, you need to leave self-pride and the blame game at the door. And work on getting things right.
Conclusion: The Bottom Line
Do try watching an episode of “Shark Tank,” you would probably understand this on a broader perspective. Every person has a story in their life, a time in their life when they should have allowed defeat to win. Instead, they pulled themselves out of a bad situation to follow their passion and bet on themselves over everything else.
Try to be that person.
You should always strive for more. The part of the path to success is living life on your own terms & over your own will. If your terms are mediocre, what’s the point in even having them then?
When you hold yourself, your employees, your peers, and the important people in your life to a high standard, one of two things happens.
- They will show up and meet you where you are.
or
- They get the F*** out as they don’t want to put in the work or time that you deserve. (Pro tip: Whenever this happens, it’s a major “Good Bye” moment.)
You need to be able to carry the weight of others. Don’t put your problems, mess-ups, troubles or struggles onto your team or anyone else. It won’t help you at all. The most successful people are resilient leaders, not victims of their and anybody else’s circumstance.
