5 Habits of Highly Unsuccessful People
Avoid these pitfalls to move your life forward.
Photo by Ahtziri Lagarde on Unsplash
Most people won’t be successful in life.
Most people won’t ever back themselves.
Most people will live unfilled lives in crap relationships.
One of my favorite Medium writers summed it up best:
“We live in a world full of chumps, people who aren’t willing to fight for anything, people who are running the clock out on their life until they fucking die.”
Sounds harsh? Well, it is the truth.
The Day You Decide To Ruin Your Life.
Unsuccessful people never wake up wanting to be unsuccessful.
No one wakes up one day and thinks:
“This is the day I settle and give up on my dreams”.
It happens gradually.
A slow erosion and compromise of what they truly want from life.
The first sign you might not even notice. It might start as taking a few days off. Days turn into weeks. And then months and years. You compromise with yourself and neglect what you truly want.
You suddenly turn 50 and you realize you’ve not only not taken any steps to go in the direction you want but you’ve actually made decisions that took you further away from your goals.
You’ve created a life you never really wanted for yourself. And now you’re forced to live it.
You might have kids, a partner and a community that expects you to show up. Trying to change can be close to impossible once you find yourself at this stage.
*Cue a midlife crisis, divorce, a red sports car and a 25-year-old girlfriend.
Expectations from parents, society and friends force you into a narrow parameter of what they consider ‘success’.
Admittedly, this is one of my biggest fears. I am turning 27 this year and I can already see friends and family who are settling for an unfulfilled life. It’s the most heartbreaking thing to see someone give up on themselves.
Aristotle once said “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
The same is true with being unsuccessful.
Being unsuccessful is not a once-off event. It doesn’t happen overnight. Being unsuccessful is a decision you choose to make every day. You can start being successful tomorrow if you decided to make better decisions.
5 Habits of Unsuccessful People
Most of the success in life is often attributed to knowing what to do. But no one ever speaks about what not to do. Avoid the 5 habits of highly unsuccessful people and you’ve already won half the battle.
#1: They Use Their Weekends To Escape The Life They Have Rather Than Create The Life They Want.
Success isn’t created from what you do from Monday to Friday.
You can’t compartmentalize your life. Despite being shorter, what you do on the weekends has a disproportionate impact on your life.
You could spend 5 days of the week attempting to move your health, finances and career forward and then sabotage all your work over the weekend.
You binge on junk food that cancels out the week of healthy eating.
You spend big on a night out that blows your weekly budget.
You sleep poorly over the weekend and rock up to work tired and less productive on Monday.
Doing the right things for 5 days doesn’t give you a license to be reckless for 2 days.
The yo-yo approach to self-improvement is detrimental to progress. You rather be consistently good than occasionally great.
Your weekends should be used to do things that make your life 1% better.
Take action and engage in activities that move your life forward in a positive direction. This could include:
Reading 10 pages of a self-development book
Exercising
Meditating for 5 minutes
Planning for the week ahead
Investing in meaningful relationships
You don’t have to give up fun. You can still enjoy seeing the people you love, going out into nature, going out for dinner or watching Netflix. But there should also be time to invest in moving your life forward.
Picture yourself 1 year from now and do something that moves you towards your ideal life.
“When the weekend is over, you should feel like your life has moved forward. You should feel that you’re closer to building the life you want instead of escaping the life you have.”
Highly unsuccessful people use their weekends to escape. They would rather numb themselves to the reality of the world than take steps to move their lives forward.
#2: They Seek Constant Pleasure.
“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” — Viktor Frankl
Pleasure numbs you. And robs you of the opportunity to learn from pain.
Pleasure comes in all forms and sizes. You know the usual ones. Drugs that get you out of your head. Cheap sex that provides a momentary relief from yourself.
But modern society has engineered pleasure to be on-demand. Social media, Netflix, pornography. You name it, the internet has it.
High unsuccessful people mask their lack of purpose with pleasure. Rather than confront the harsh reality that they feel lost or without meaning, they numb themselves to the possibility of learning a lesson.
Most of my own growth has been through periods of intense emotional pain.
A break-up of a 5-year relationship made me confront aspects of myself I never knew were there.
Watching my parents get divorced triggered so many of my own insecurities and thoughts about love and family.
While difficult, I sat with these emotions as much as possible. I used them like a map to show me where I needed to go and what I needed to learn. Without them, I would not be the person I am today.
Seeking pleasure to forget pain doesn’t prevent suffering, it prevents life.
#3: They Don’t Take Risks.
Rather than learn from failures, unsuccessful people use setbacks to not try again. When they have negative experiences it becomes an indictment of their own ability.
But a fixed mindset creates a fixed life.
And what grows in a fixed life? Not much at all.
I can’t think of a single successful person who succeeded on their first go or became an overnight success.
Michael Jordan was rejected from his high school basketball team.
Elon Musk had 3 rockets in a row blow up on the launchpad.
JK Rowling was turned down by 12 publishers for her book Harry Potter.
It is not the setback that defined the person, it was the reaction to the setback that created the success.
Successful people take risks. They put everything on the line and work hard to make sure they were able to achieve what they needed to achieve.
Highly unsuccessful people remain the same. They never take risks to move their life forward and therefore never change.
#4: They Compete and Compare With Others.
Unsuccessful people play status games.
But when you play stupid games, you win stupid rewards.
When you compete with others, you become bitter.
When you compete with yourself, you become better.
Become better, not bitter.
#5 They Make Low Integrity Decisions.
Integrity is long-term selfish.
When you act with integrity, you might lose a deal or be pushed around in the short term. Having integrity is inconvenient and slow.
But over the long run, being known as a person with high integrity will be a magnet for opportunities. People will bring deals to you knowing that you won’t f*ck them out of it.
Unsuccessful people don’t take a long-term approach. Their desire to gratify themselves immediately causes them to make low-integrity decisions.
They might steal from a business because they feel cheated.
They might lie to someone to close a deal or get a better portion of the deal for themselves.
Integrity is the most important trait to look out for. You can’t teach it. You either have it or you don’t. You’ll meet all sorts of people in this world, it pays to develop your integrity radar.
Warren Buffett famously said that he looks for people to hire who are high intelligence, high energy and high integrity. High integrity is the most important, otherwise, you’ve just hired a smart, hardworking criminal.
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