The six ways to make sure that you will fail.
I know you want to succeed and yet I can bet that you are following the methods to fail.
Why would someone write down the steps to fail? Everyone wants to succeed, everyone wants to grow, who would read an article in which someone mentioned the steps to fail?
I knew you would ask this, and my answer is, you would read this article because even though you wish to succeed, unknowingly, you are following the steps that will take you towards failure. After reading this blog introspect, how many methods to fail are you following daily, and from tomorrow, start a new journey, start climbing the steps to success.
Alright Madhav, I got your point, now tell me where am I going wrong?
Sure buddy, read about these six things carefully (And don’t forget to tell me how many of these were you unknowingly following)
1. Pretending to be someone you are not!
Yeah Madhav, I am myself, what are you talking about?
You sure about this? Are you sure that you don’t start behaving like the person whom you see as your role model? Are you sure that you don’t try to imitate the actions of the coolest person at your workplace/school? Are you sure you don’t try to act all high and mighty even when shit is going out of your hands?
The worst thing about copying someone else is that you won’t be able to do that forever. What’s more? You will end up copying the behavior of so many people that you will eventually forget who you really are and end up changing your behavior every now and then.
For people to trust you, respect you, and appreciate you, they must understand you. But, with constantly changing behavior, people won’t be able to understand you (let alone the feelings of trust, and respect)
If you don’t know yourself, what is your vision, what do you stand for, what do you value, what are your goals, and most importantly, if you yourself don’t know who are you, you can’t expect others to know you.
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
— Eric Hoffer
Solution?
Start discovering who you really are, take inspiration from others, inculcate their good habits, but don’t try to copy them, don’t try to copy how they behave, you will fail because they are different.
“Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.”
— Bruce Lee
2. Self-deprecation and poor self-talk
Hey man, I suck, I just can’t do anything, this is out of my league, I shouldn’t have started, will I be able to do it?
Do you really need to have so many negative emotions about your own self? If you don’t believe in yourself, who else will?
Most of the people who lack self-confidence or are highly stressed fall in one of these two categories, either they engage in self-deprecating conversations or they are thinking bad about themselves in their minds.
For the people who fall in the former category, keep in mind that the things about yourself which you share with people form their perception about you. If you want to build a strong personal brand, it is in your own hands, stop engaging in self-deprecating talks.
However, it’s much more dangerous to undervalue yourself in your own mind. Your thoughts actually turn into reality, the thoughts that you take regularly slowly take place in your life, and it’s highly essential to keep reminding yourself that you are not less than anyone else.
As I said above, if you don’t trust yourself, how can you expect someone else to trust you?
Solution?
The moments of poor self-talk are like mood swings, they might come suddenly. There are a few temporary instant solutions, whenever you feel low, think about your accomplishments, your blessings, go talk to your close ones, or maybe meditate for some time.
A long term solution could be to make introspection a part of your daily life, be aware of what’s going on in your mind, start working on your self-development and stay in a positive environment, among people who uplift you.
3. Trying to preach people who don’t even deserve your time.
Yeah, even I feel this a lot, I keep spending too much time with people who don’t really care.
Someone doesn’t agree with you, and you start explaining him why you are right and he is wrong. Someone says something wrong about you, you start defending yourself. Doesn’t it happen frequently?
Even after spending so much time, do you see any positive outcome? I don’t think so. I am not saying that you should just nod in each conversation, rather, learn to differentiate between a conversation that is adding value to your or the other person’s life from a conversation that is just wasting your time.
Time is the most valuable asset you have, stop wasting it, at least on the people who don’t deserve it.
Solution?
It’s very common to feel bad when someone criticizes you, and the most general reaction is to get defensive.
- Stop putting efforts to spend time with someone who doesn’t understand your value.
- Don’t be a people pleaser.
- Minimize the time you spend with people who constantly make you feel frustrated and uncomfortable.
- Reduce conversations about your vision with people who intentionally pull you down.
- Stop making everyone understand your vision, not all will understand it before you actually accomplish it.
- Start spending more time with people who actually give a shit
- Spend as much time as you can with people who have already accomplished the things that you dream about
4. Becoming stagnant, doing the same or similar things
Living a life of 9 to 5 job seems comfortable, isn’t it? But what you do after and before those working hours, make a huge difference.
No matter what we do, we always hit a stagnation point if we stop learning, implementing, and innovating. Staying in that “Comfortable” stagnant zone is giving an invitation to failure in long term,
You stop growing when you stop learning and innovating.
The world is evolving at a very fast pace. The things we are experts at right now might get outdated in the near future.
Yes, you might be doing some thing right now which makes you very comfortable, and stops you from innovating, and going one step extra, but we all know that it’s the time of technology, and automation. Machines are now capable of doing some of the jobs which were earlier done by human beings. Is it not necessary to keep learning new things in this fast changing world?
No knowledge is complete, there is always something more to learn, there’s always a scope for improvement. Failing to do so can be disastrous. So how to improve?
Solution
- Go one step extra
- Push yourself to do a little more, daily
- Keep learning. Devote 30 minutes each day to learn something new, maybe a new language, or a new technology, etc…
- Innovate. Implement whatever you have learnt, build a community around it, find like-minded people, and increase your network (instead of binge-watching netflix on weekends)
5. Bombarding your mind with extra thoughts and information then it actually requires.
In short words, overthinking is a guaranteed way towards failure.
Most of us have this bad habit of overthinking, and over occupying our mind with useless thoughts. Ever happened with you that you were trying to do some work, but suddenly you started thinking random and totally unrelated things like “What is life?”, or maybe “Why is earth round”?
OK, bad examples but you got my point, right?
With the access to so much information on Google, and that too, for free, the lack of “FOCUS” has become a major problem.
While doing something some people either think too much about the things that can go wrong, or they start thinking about totally unrelated things.
It’s obvious that while doing this, your focus is not on the task at hand, and without focus, you won’t be able to give your 100%, leading to bad results.
So stop bombarding your mind with unrelated information while you are in the middle of something.
How to fix this?
- Try not to overthink too much
- Stop asking yourself “What if”. We generally think too much about the things that can go wrong, but in reality, no one has seen the future.
- Disconnect. Take breaks from social media platforms, it’s taking up too much of your attention.
- Workout. Don’t forget that a healthy mind resides in a healthy body.
- Sleep properly. Lack of sleep has bad effects on health.
- Meditate (or try some apps/videos for guided meditation). Mediation is very powerful. Whenever you feel stressed, or worried, or confused, or find yourself losing calm, try it out. It’s magical.
6. Ignoring health when it comes to work
Last but not the least, if you are ignoring your health with an excuse of work pressure, you are opening the building the bridge to your own failure.
Health does not mean going to gym, there are a lot of forms of fitness, and when I say spend some time for your health, I am not only referring to your physical well-being, but also your mental well-being. Mental health is often ignored, which can have disastrous effects on your work, productivity and success.
If you want to work with your full efficiency, your mind must be healthy as well.
Things to keep in mind…
For physical well-being, it’s not essential to buy a gym membership. Fitness is not at all limited to the gym, there are many other styles of fitness like Yoga, where you might not even need to go to the gym. Even if you are at home, try doing some physical training daily.
An easy solution for mental well-being, give some time to yourself. Introspect daily. Meditate (at least 10 minutes) daily.
That’s it, I hope you found this article helpful, and you will stay away from these 6 ways to fail.
Feel free to reach out to me anytime if you want to discuss something :D
I would be more than happy if you send your feedback, suggestions.
Moreover, I love to make new friends and we can be friends, just drop me an email.
Thanks a lot for reading till end. You can contact me in case if you need any assistance:
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