We’ve heard a great deal about the positive attitude, the success mindset and the winning traits of a high achievement lifestyle. In fact, we’ve heard these things so often that we could probably reel off the whole long list of things we should be doing.

But mostly we aren’t doing those things.

So let’s try a different tack. Let’s examine what we should NOT be doing (since we can sometimes be blind to those things in our own behavior).

Today’s guest author, Tristan Loo, brings us a contrarian view of success as he details for us the…

Nine Behaviors that Will Prevent Success
By Tristan Loo

Much has been written about how to obtain success in life, but little has been written about the behaviors that pose a threat to obtaining success. While success principles are very important, we should not ignore those behaviors which will prevent success from happening in our lives. By recognizing these behaviors, we can effectively eliminate them from our lives and focus on those behaviors which will ensure success.

1. The Desire for Instant Gratification

Those who fail to get what they want out of life are most often short-term thinkers, meaning that they base all of their decisions on what they want now, versus what they want in the future. Why do you think that lottery and gambling industries flourish? It’s because they prey on our desire for instant gratification – that of becoming rich overnight. When making a decision, focus on how that decision will impact your life in the long run, rather than focusing on the short-term benefits of that decision.

2. Greed

Greed is a dangerous behavior because it fulfills your desires, but at a cost to the lives of those people around you. The behavior of greed can be described as wanting something from others without the intention of exchanging something of like value in return. And while greed might get you what you want in the short run, it causes an imbalance of social karma within your relationships with other people and eventually that imbalance will have to be corrected and this is usually in the form of a crushing life crisis.

The root cause behind greed is a grossly underdeveloped level of self-esteem, which always urns to possess and to control because it is uncomfortable accepting its own self. Combat the behavior of greed by instead trying to help others with their lives. You will find that positive things will come your way when you provide value for others instead of trying to deprive others of their value.

3. Lack of Confidence

People who lack confidence in their abilities simply get by life without ever engaging life with all their capacities. They neither take a stand, nor do they show any courage in the face of adversity. They conform to what everyone else is doing in order to be accepted by their peers. Those who do not possess the confidence to take a stand are like cows in a herd being led off to the slaughterhouse.

Realize that whatever stand you take throughout your life, there will always be people who support your views and there will be people who oppose your views. You can’t please everyone in life, so please the one person who is the most important in your life – yourself.

4. Not Willing to Pay the Price

Success in life not only requires that you know what you want, but perhaps even more so, it requires that you know the sacrifices you have to make in order to reach that success. Success in any aspect of our lives comes at a price and we must pay this price in order to achieve that success. Unwillingness to pay the full price of the success that you want will assuredly prevent you from obtaining that success.

In the grand scope of things, you can’t cheat your way to the top. You can’t take shortcuts and expect to create any long-term success. If you want to be an Olympic athlete, you have to do the time – you have to have the dedication and the perseverance and the drive to win. No amount of intention-manifestation will enable you to get what you want unless you are willing to give up the things that are necessary for you to obtain it.

5. Lack of Persistence

Lack of persistence is a big distinguishing behavior between those who consistently achieve success in areas of their life versus people who often fail to realize their goals. When pressure builds and problems seem to stack on top of each other, quitting is the easy way out.

There is a big distinction we must make however between quitting and failing. Failing in life is a perfectly acceptable thing. We all fail at some point in our lives and chances are that we will fail yet again. But if we try our best and fail, then that is courageous and there are no regrets because we have the peace of mind of knowing that we did everything in our power to try to reach that goal. Failing is part of the journey towards success.

Quitting, on the other hand, is much worse than failing. Quitting is not using your fullest potential to reach those goals. This is very disempowering because not only will you not reach your success, but always in the back of your mind, you will wonder if that success could have been possible had you given it one-hundred percent. As my former gymnastics mentor and 1984 Olympic gold medalist, Peter Vidmar, once said, “Getting to the Olympics was simple. I just trained when I felt like it and I trained when I didn’t.”

6. Unwillingness to Take Risks

Getting ahead in life and reaching success involves taking calculated risks. That does not mean you have to be irresponsible however. Risk taking, as it applies to success, means that you have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone so that you can effectively expand your box and grow.

When I was competing as a gymnast, I used to perform acrobatic stunts that had the potential of seriously injuring myself or even killing me. But I never considered those stunts to be irresponsible risks because my knowledge, training, and competency gave me the confidence to push myself further and try things that I knew I had the ability to do.

I believe that great opportunities come into our lives daily, but it’s our indecision or fear that prevents us from taking hold of those opportunities. Be willing to step outside your comfort zone and seize those opportunities when they appear.

7. Procrastination

Waiting for the perfect moment is a big killer of success in our lives. If we don’t have to do it, then chances are we won’t do it, but it’s this lack of action which erodes our chances of success early on.

Realize that there will never be a perfect time to implement an action and the longer we wait to act, the less likely we are to do it.

We all know how to fill up our time with busywork, but not all of us know how to prioritize those tasks that are important. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of our results will come from only 20% of the actions that we do. People who procrastinate instead focus on the other tasks that are of little importance, while delaying their action on those high-value tasks that will produce the most change in their lives. Remember the adage, “Don’t wait for tomorrow what you can do today.”

8. Unwillingness to Learn from Past Mistakes

Failures and mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and a crucial part in building any real success for yourself, but you must be willing to extract the lessons from each failure and apply it towards your future in order for it to be effective.

Those people who ignore the lessons to be learned in their failures are doomed to fail again, and again, and again throughout their lives.

Successful people, on the other hand, not only learn from their own mistakes, but they seek out other people and learn from their mistakes as well. They use history as a powerful leverage tool for their success so that they don’t have to recreate the wheel.

9. Feeding Yourself Negative Affirmations

The law of attraction states that we attract to ourselves that which mirrors our mental attitude. Negative thinkers attract negative people, things, and events into their lives. That is why negative self-talk is so dangerous and detrimental towards any success in your life. Conversely, positive thinkers attract successful people and events into their lives. Make a conscious decision to eliminate negative self-talk from your daily life and replace it with rich, positive affirmations.

For over 10 years, Tristan Loo has inspired, motivated, and brought success to the lives of the people he’s touched. Successful in his own right, Tristan has competed athletically against Olympians as a world-class gymnast, saved lives as a police officer, authored numerous Personal Development and Interpersonal Communication books and articles, and is a highly sought-after Personal Development Coach. Tristan is the founder of the Synergy Institute, a San Diego based Personal Development Firm. His philosophy of passionate living and helping others fulfill their dreams has continually been the driving force that has placed him well above the industry standard. Visit Tristan’s website at http://www.synergyinstituteonline.com/ or by email at info [AT] synergyinstituteonline [DOT] com

Back to Charles:
Sometimes a fresh perspective, such as this one, can help us see things we’ve been missing. The artist steps back from the canvas. The composer asks someone else to play his music. The novelist seeks out the views of peers – or an editor.

And this unflinching look at the common traits of a failure shows us the contrast. We can all profit from holding ourselves up against this “failure’s standard,” just to see how well we fit the profile. If the fit is uncomfortably close, then it’s time to do something about it.

But one thing we should NOT do about it is beat ourselves up over it. Frankly, that’s the cheap, lazy way out. If you find that you don’t quite measure up in some area, instead of changing what needs to be changed, do you just give up and cry, “Oh what’s the use… I’m failing…”?

I hope this is not your way.

Sadly, some people have found that it’s easier to pretend they’re angry with themselves, or to act out feelings of depression and despair, than it is to stand up and do something useful.

Notice I said they pretend to be harsh with themselves. At the conscious level they actually believe their actions are real. But at the inner level, it’s different.

They have learned that it takes less energy (it’s cheaper) to beat themselves up than it is to put forth the effort for success. Yes, it may take less effort in the short term, but it’s a really bad tradeoff because they continue having to pay and pay and pay with their little self-hatred trick.

Meanwhile, the successful person is putting in her effort, getting her success, and moving on to the next thing in her life, all the while feeling better and better about herself.

Just think about it. The next time you find yourself spiraling down into a round of “I’m a failure… I’m no good… I can’t do anything right… I’ll never make it…” just remember that this is nothing but an old habit you learned from someone else long ago. It’s not even your habit.

Nevertheless, you’re being cheated by it. Terribly cheated.

When we pay the price right now, the price of effort and energy and decisiveness, it is always far cheaper in the long run than all that whining will ever be.

So how often do you stand up and do it the way winners do? I hope it’s pretty often because it makes a vast difference in your whole life.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

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