Have you ever tried to reach success only to hit a dead-end afterwards? Have you failed in your attempts to be successful? This is more common than you think of and you are certainly not the only one who struggles to be successful. Life is filled with ups and downs, with many situations beyond our control. There is no magic formula or guaranteed tips and tricks to achieve success overnight. Recognize your blockages and learn from your mistakes so you have a better chance of being successful next time.
The path to success will be easier once you know what the top obstacles are so you can overcome them. Here are our tips:
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#1: You Lack a Clear and Focused Plan
A common reason people fail in their attempts to be successful is because they don’t have a clear and focused plan. If you don’t set clear goals for yourself and a plan/strategy to achieve them, no amount of hope and praying will help. You can’t just sit there and do nothing, expecting success to somehow magically find you.
How to overcome this: Note down your exact goals and targets and ways to achieve them. For example:
- Boost online business sales by 10% for the next 6 months through active social media campaigns and PPC ads.
- Raise my income by 20-30% by activating X and Y as additional streams of income.
- Lose 10 pounds in a month by following a daily diet and exercise program 2-3 times a week.
Add as much detail as you can and be as precise as possible so you can measure your success afterwards.
#2: You Are Not Motivated Enough
Lack of focus paired with poor motivation is often a recipe for disaster. If you have goals but lack enough motivation to reach them, there are typically two reasons why: you focus too much on the process instead of the outcomes or your goals are not truly aligned with your capabilities. The latter especially is more damaging than you can think of. In other words, you set too easy or too challenging goals that do not match your strengths and you end up feeling unmotivated afterwards.
After devising a focused plan with your goals and actions to achieve them, focus on the outcomes and your feelings once you DO achieve them. For instance, think of how happy you would feel if you’d increase your income and be able to have more money than you can possibly spend. Be realistically optimistic and focused and motivation will come naturally, encouraging you to take more steps to finally achieve success.
Motivation often follows action. Once you start taking steps towards your goals and begin to see progress, your motivation is likely to increase. Celebrate small victories along the way to maintain your enthusiasm and build momentum. Visualize the positive outcomes of your efforts, and keep your focus on the end results. By aligning your goals with your strengths and maintaining a positive outlook, you can boost your motivation and increase your chances of achieving success.
#3: You Have a Fear of Failure
When you set some challenging goals for yourself, it’s perfectly natural to feel a bit anxious and unsure of where things are going. But, excess fear or failure will sabotage your chances of success. Fear of failure makes us hesitant to take risks and actions that will most probably lead us to success. You have to understand that there is always a risk of failure no matter what.
Don’t be afraid to experience failure first. Failure can be the key that opens the door to success. Reggie Jackson, who played for the New York Yankees and was known for hitting many home runs, also struck out many times. So many successful people that you see and admire in the media have gone through several failed attempts until they finally reached success. So why worry?
Take your failures and the prospect of failure as important learning lessons. If something doesn’t seem to work, try something else or shift your strategy until you finally achieve it. Don’t be afraid to take risks as long as they are informed and calculated. By educating yourself first on the risks and possible outcomes, you will feel more at ease and even if you encounter failure, you will be able to recover fast from it.
#4: You Are Surrounded by Negative People
If you are surrounded by nay-sayers and people who give you bad advice, all this negative energy and words will affect you and block you from being successful. If you keep hearing “No, you can’t do this..”, or “This isn’t going to work” or worse, and follow the advice of sneaky people who have ulterior motives to demean and destroy you, you will hit a wall instead.
It doesn’t mean that all people wish us harm. Sometimes our friends or family members are simply clueless or project their fears on us. You just have to exercise good judgement to see who’s out there to destroy you or who wants you to succeed but fears you might fail. When you do make a determination as to what it is that’s the railing you, that it’s time to make the appropriate decisions.
If this toxic circle of people is mostly at your work, try to avoid them and surround yourself with people who are positive and want to help you out. The same goes for friends and acquaintances. Find excuses not to be around them. Now, if these negative people are very close people such as your partner or family, simply ignore them and perhaps try to show them through your actions that you are truly making progress.
#5: You Are Constantly Comparing Yourself to Others
Another common reason why you struggle with success is that you are being too harsh on yourself and at times compare your progress to others. Someone may be richer or more beautiful, or seems to be more successful overall but there will always be people that are better than you in one way or another. It doesn’t mean they are happy and it doesn’t mean that they have it all.
It’s extremely rare to have everything sorted and being perfect every single time. Also, you are ignoring a single fact: every person is unique and has different strengths and weaknesses. There is no one way to success and each of us has a different path to navigate first at a different pace.
Rather than focusing on the progress and success of others (and how poor you are doing), focus on your strengths and note down your personal hits no matter how minor they seem to be. Chances are, you have made some progress yourself but you may think it’s zero if you compare yourself to others when it’s not. Every little success counts and will get you closer to your bigger goals. You are the only one who can do this and nobody else will do it for you.
#6: You Are Constantly Procrastinating
Procrastination is a habit we’ve all experienced to some degree or another. Talk to anyone and they’ll likely tell you about something they need to do and haven’t started yet.
There are three steps you need to take to resolve this condition once and for all:
1. MASTER YOUR TIME
Gaining control of your time is paramount. A deadline that seems far away will come up faster than you think, especially if you decide to fill your free time before then with things other than work. Time flies when you’re having fun, and then it’s gone when you need it for the task you told yourself you’d finish–or at least begin. To prevent this, you need to treat every second like it counts.
Write out a schedule for your tasks. Even if you are self-managing your work, you need to adhere to deadlines. Give a solid, unshakable outline of working hours for everything you need to accomplish, and see how much time you can space out between tasks to keep your day flowing normally.
Taking out the trash won’t take an hour, but working on a paper or performing exercise takes more than 15 minutes. Give first priority to the more important tasks. Once you get used to a schedule, make sure you keep it. Over time, tasks that took too long will take less time as you find the most efficient ways to do them. Your schedule will reduce, and you’ll find more time in the day than you otherwise would have wasted.
2. BREAK UP YOUR WORK
Look at the big picture for your task. It can be daunting. Even straightforward projects can balloon and scope and scale to the point where something as easy as an hour-long job can feel like an all-day trial. One of the reasons for procrastination in the first place is to combat the stress of facing up to major challenges. We see a mountain and instead of starting the climb, we limber up, relax, and retreat–anything to avoid the pain.
Break down your work into pieces and organize it from simplest to hardest. You can also prioritize from the least rewarding to most favorite tasks. Then, check to make sure the order you’ve planned is compatible with the order of the job requires. You obviously can’t live in a house before you build it, but some tasks are more fun than others.
Dividing your work into smaller tasks will allow you to spread them out to a longer schedule and work at them one by one. You’ll be less likely to get discouraged and give up too early. Completing each and every task will in turn fill you with a sense of accomplishment, which is great for self-esteem. It’s better to do 100 things 100% of the way than to face the drudgery of being stuck at 45% done and wondering how much longer the other 55% will take.
3. REWARD YOURSELF
And finally, whether you’re self-managed or not, it’s always nice to be acknowledged for your hard work. A paycheck, a good grade, or just a pride of seeing your tasks to completion are all the regular motivators that people look forward to at the end of a project. But many of us may look at the project and wonder when, if ever, it will be our turn.
Discipline is critical: If there’s no one to hold an incentive out on a stick for you, like a manager, you have to do it yourself. And you can’t just take the carrot off the stick, or it defeats the whole point of a reward.
This is especially true for self-managing workers–mostly remote learners and the self-employed. There’s always the temptation to reward oneself before the work is done. But, save the fun stuff for after you complete the task. Your deadline should conclude with a celebration, not a panic rush to actually finish everything you no longer have the time to do because you’re celebration happened when the schedule started.
8: YOU NEGLECT SELF-CARE
One often underestimated obstacle to success is neglecting self-care. Cultivate physical and mental well-being to perform at your best and stay motivated. Failing to take care of yourself can lead to burnout, health issues, and decreased productivity, ultimately hindering your journey toward success.
Prioritize self-care. Make time for exercise, get enough sleep, eat a balanced diet, and manage stress effectively. Also, set aside time for relaxation, hobbies, and spending quality moments with loved ones. A healthy and balanced lifestyle can boost your energy, creativity, and resilience, enabling you to tackle challenges on your path to success.
Success isn’t just about achieving goals; it’s also about maintaining them over the long term. Taking care of yourself will ensure that you have the physical and mental strength to endure the journey, making success more sustainable and fulfilling in the end.
Featured Photo/Clark Tibbs@unsplash