I never met a successful person until I was 24. I grew up in a working-class family—I was more around people who were the opposite.
The first successful person I met was an entrepreneur in his forties. When I started my first real business, he was one of my first clients. When I met him, he was slightly overweight, had more money than he could count, and was merry all the time.
But he also lost his wife, the love of his life, a half-decade before. We became friends. He told me that he never got over it. Even tough he experienced tragedy — he still had a positive outlook on life and did good things.
He truly cared about others. I have to be honest, my first business wasn’t great, but he still gave me a chance to do business with him.
He always said: “I just try to avoid being unsuccessful.” That is the number one thing I learned from him. He said that you should study what makes you unsuccessful, unhappy, broke, fat, stupid. Then, eliminate those things out of your life.
To this day, I still live by that advice. I like his concept of trying not to be unsuccessful. Because what is success? The second best definition that I’ve found comes from Bob Dylan, my favorite musician of all time.
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
– Bob Dylan
You’ve probably read articles that discuss the habits of successful people. The problem with those type of articles is that they give you conditional promises.
“Eat three eggs with bacon, wash your hair with soybeans, do ten push-ups, and do your daily affirmations, AT THE SAME TIME.”
We have to let go of the “if I do x, I’ll be successful or happy” way of thinking. It does exactly the opposite: You do what other people do. Live the way other people live. I might not know a lot about success, but I’m sure as hell that’s not success.
What follows is a list of things that we shouldn’t do. If you have one of these bad habits, don’t worry, no one’s perfect. If you have two bad habits, you should worry.
Do you have three or more? You might want to change — because one thing is sure: No one wants to be unsuccessful.
They Are Always Distracted
They Only Talk The Talk
In your brain, those things are actually not that far apart. Derek Sivers says:
“When you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it, psychologists have found that it’s called a “social reality.” The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it’s already done. And then because you’ve felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary.”
Be someone that does things, not someone who talks about things.
They Spend Time With Losers
They Hate Everything
They Procrastinate
They Don’t Listen To Others
They Are Lazy
They Don’t Learn
They Are Not Nice
They Are Quitters
I saved the worst for last. If there’s one thing you take away from this article, I hope it’s this:
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas A. Edison
There’s nothing I can add to that. Actually, there is: Never Give Up.
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