10 Habits Successful People Give Up
to Increase Their Productivity
What are you willing to do in order to reach
success? It is common among people these days to be average and not stand out
too much. But those who are successful do not fall under this category.
In order to stay on top of your game and
reach the level of success you want, you need to follow a certain set of
self-induced rules. Success is not something that happens by accident; if you
want it bad enough, you will get it.
Learn
the habits that successful people have given up in order to reach their own
success.
1. They don’t work in their comfort
zone.
What is your comfort zone? Your comfort zone
is defined as “A psychological state in which a person feels familiar, at ease,
in control, and experiences low anxiety.” When you get outside of your comfort
zone, it doesn’t mean that you should strive for a constant state of anxiety
and stress. It simply means that, in order to grow, you should try new things
and expand your horizons.
The reason we are comfortable in our comfort
zone is because we are not taking risks when we are in this state. When we live
in our comfort zones, we are living life like hamsters on a wheel, going around
and around in a constant cycle, but going nowhere in our lives.
Famous motivational speaker, Les Brown, said
it best with, “If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch
outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness.”
2. They don’t do without first learning.
Learning is what we do best. The greatest
thing about learning is the benefit that we receive in all aspects of our
lives. Successful people strive to continue learning new things and expanding
on things that they already know.
If we stop learning, then the only thing we
can do is settle with what we already know; if we settle for that, then there
is no way to expand our minds. Expansion is essential on the path to success.
Since our minds require learning for expansion, we must never stop seeking new
knowledge.
Imagine what would have happened if Bill
Gates stopped learning and growing. The internet would be much more primitive
than it is today. But because he followed his dreams and continued growing, he
founded one of the biggest companies in the world and it is still flourishing
and growing today.
3. They don’t fear asking for advice.
Richard Branson, a famous entrepreneur,
stated, “When you need to make hard decisions, being able to discuss your ideas
with entrepreneurs and business leaders who have solved similar problems can
make all the difference.”
Asking for advice is not always easy. We
think that we have the same opportunity as everyone else and sometimes feel
insecure and dependent, so we decide not to ask for advice, and try to figure
it out ourselves. But this could be greatly limiting us from reaching our full
potential, because the advice we might be seeking could be something that
somebody knows very well.
4. They don’t get lost in the small
details.
When life gives us seemingly endless
opportunities, it is very easy to get lost in the small details. The small
details are very easy for us to become focused on, thus causing us to miss out
on the overall vision, also known as the “big picture”.
Focusing too much on the smaller details
constricts your ability to see how everything ties together. Much of our lives
hinge upon the connections that we make with others and with ourselves. If we
get lost in the small detail, it is like having missing pieces to a puzzle. How
are we supposed to solve that?
Imagine what would have happened if Henry
Ford only saw the small details. When building the company that Ford is today,
he knew that he must do something different if his company was to succeed.
After many people told him it couldn’t be done, his company continued improving
upon the smaller details until they got it right.
Henry Ford didn’t focus too much on the small
details, which were the hundreds of times he failed; he saw the overall goal
and knew that it could be accomplished. It required seeing the bigger picture
to make it happen.
5. They don’t multitask.
Multitasking is typically viewed as a skill
that only certain people possess. But truth be told, nobody actually has the
ability to multitask. Multitasking is known to actually decrease productivity.
Those who are successful focus on one specific task and do that task to the
best of their ability without interruption.
When you multitask, you limit your ability to
fully focus on one specific task at a time. Successful people utilize the
talents and abilities that they have by focusing it on one task and one task
only.
Emma Watson said, “I just dropped my iPhone
in my soup. I think it might be time to tone down the multitasking..” This
demonstrates how destructive multitasking is highlighting the fact that when we
multitask, we are greatly limiting ourselves.
6. They don’t lie to themselves.
Lying to yourself is one of the easiest
things for you to do. It is much more difficult to accept the problems that we
have without make excuses for them. Successful people understand that we will
encounter problems, both internally and externally.
But it is important to accept the problems
that reside in our lives, rather than not dealing with them and lying to
ourselves about them.
As Steve Maraboli said, “Stop lying to
yourself. When we deny our own truth, we deny our own potential.”
7. They don’t procrastinate in asking
for feedback.
Feedback is important, because it gives you a
different perspective on your current situation. Sometimes you are not able to
see the answer that is right in front of you. But when someone gives you
feedback, it allows you to see something from the perspective of someone else.
If you procrastinate asking someone for
feedback, you are missing out on time that could be put towards accomplishing
your dreams. The longer you wait, the harder it is to utilize advice that
others can give you.
“I think It’s very important to have a
feedback loop, where you´re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how
you could be doing it better,” entrepreneur Elon Musk once said.
8. They don’t follow, they lead.
You have probably heard the phrase “lead,
follow or get out of the way.” There are two types of people in this world: leaders
and followers. The ones who are successful are the ones who are leading the
pack.
Successful people are not successful because
they got there by chance. They did not follow somebody to the finish line. They
paved their own path in life to get where they needed to be.
Just as the great Robert Frost stated, “Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has
made all the difference.”
9. They don’t let the past dictate their
future.
The past is something that we will never
change, nor should we want to change it; because without it, we would not have
learned the lessons we needed to learn. Therefore, we would wind up making the
same mistakes over and over again until we learned the lesson that life is
trying to teach us.
At one time, businessman Shahid Khan washed
dishes for $1.20 an hour. His humble background did not prevent him from
thinking bigger though. With a net worth of $3.8 billion dollars, he now owns
Flex-N-Gate, one of the largest private companies in the U.S., the NFL’s
Jacksonville Jaguars, and Premier League soccer club Fulham.
10. They don’t hang around negative
people.
Negative people are very destructive to be
around when it comes to achieving success, because there are so many situations
that life throws at us and causes us to get down on ourselves or our situation.
But some people like to focus on this aspect of life the majority of the time.
When you are around negative people enough,
you start to see things negatively and you begin to lose sight of your dream.
Success is more about mindset than anything, and if you always have a negative
mindset, life will reward you with negative outcomes to deal with.
Joel Olsteen once said, “You cannot expect to
live a positive life if you hang with negative people.” So if you wish you be
successful, don’t focus on the negativity that others bring.
To be successful requires focus and
determination. It seems that every successful person follows similar patterns.
Therefore, it’s easy to see why they are where they are. They knew what they
had to do in order to achieve their dreams and they didn’t let anyone or
anything stop them from getting there.
You have the power in yourself to become one
of those successful people you admire and look up to.
BY CARL
PRESTON
LIFEHACK
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