6 Things That Are Keeping You From Becoming Successful

Have you ever thought about why you are stuck in the place you are in today? Did you ever look deeply into what is happening in your life that is stopping you from becoming the best version of yourself?

If you did think about those questions, what were your answers to them? Were they related to your lack of capabilities, or did you blame life or someone for not reaching the level you want to?

I want you to keep in mind that no one is born with the capability to thrive with success. Yes, some may be more talented than others in certain areas but it doesn’t make them better than the untalented. Being talented has nothing to do with success. If you work hard enough to become successful, no one can stop in your way.

Success is not something that is achieved by other’s influence or by looking for the perfect time to start your journey. Yes, having a friend to support you or a mentor to guide you is great to motivate you in your journey but what you truly need is self-discipline.

Undoubtedly, you can achieve success through hard work and determination. But these are not the only factors that can help you reach the success you truly want. You need to have the right mindset that can drive you to become successful through whatever obstacles you face in your path.

Your mental strength is the pillar of your success. Unless your mental strength and your hard work align, there is no way you can thrive to succeed. With negative thoughts flooding your judgment on how to pursue your journey to become successful will only draw you backwards.

So the most important factor that you need to work on is getting your mind set in a positive and challenging setting. The minute this is achieved, everything else becomes possible for a change.

Now that we know the most important part is our positive mindset, we need to figure out what other things are stopping you from becoming happy and successful. Here are 6 things that can affect your success.

The Vague Mindset

This means that you don’t have a clear vision of what precisely you want. You may have an idea of the kind of success you are looking for, but you are not precise about your goal. This will make it difficult for you to motivate yourself through the path of success.

Having a clear vision is necessary to know where exactly are you planning to reach. You may be doing great with everything and you may be in a good position that is close to your goal. With this, your mind may tell you that you have achieved success. But all that happened is that you grew, not reach where you want.

So in order to specify and have a clear vision of what your goal is exactly, you need to ask yourself, “What exactly is success to me? What do I want to achieve/become? What is my “Yes! I finally did it!” moment like?”

When you are setting your goals on what you want to achieve, the best way to set it is by using the S.M.A.R.T. Goals model. This will help you in having a clearer vision of what you want your success to be like.

The Myth of Perfection

In my blog post about how perfectionism affects your productivity, I explained how depending on perfectionism will only affect your productivity and harm you in many different ways.

I am not sure if you believe in this, but seriously, nobody is perfect. You can never be perfect because you are human and you are prone to make mistakes. So trying your best to be perfect is just self-abuse.

You are stopping yourself to grow from your mistakes. Not only that, but you are also causing yourself to be stressed no matter what you do or how good you do it because it will never be good enough for you.

Also, perfectionism is a great motivation for procrastination. You can never be successful if you keep procrastinating. When you want everything to be perfect, you may lose interest in completing your goal because nothing is working out for you at the moment. When you get extremely bored and exhausted working on it, you will soon choose to postpone it to some other time.

So just stop trying to be perfect and make mistakes that you can learn from while rising your journey to success. You will reach there faster.

The Fear of Failing

This is a pretty common one. Most of the people who lose their track of reaching success is because of their fear of failing. People are afraid of being called a failure. They lose their motivation from the first obstacle (or failure) at achieving something.

I am sure most of you are familiar with Edison’s quote about his encounters with the invention of the “prototype” of the light bulb. Here it goes:

“I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention of 1,000 steps.”

-Thomas Edison

Let me ask you, can you truly comprehend or believe what this quote implies? Try to repeat it in your head until you truly feel inspired by his words. I want you to take a moment and think about what failing a 1000 times feels like, that too (from our perspective) for something as simple as a light bulb.

Try to put yourself in his shoes. What do you think this man went through? What was the end result of all these failures? And most importantly, why didn’t he give up? You are unable to handle a single fail or let’s say multiple fail encounters but think about this man who failed 1000 times without giving up.

The only difference between you and him is that you are afraid to fail. Failing is not the end of the world. It is an experience you gain that will help you re-track your path to a better version of your goal to achieve the success you are looking for.

The Apprehension of Worthlessness

Another reason stopping you from becoming successful is the thought of being worthless and empty. I am sure you (and most other people) have gone through some kind of psychological trauma that might have built the feeling of insignificance in you. But that is all just in your head. Feeling worthless is NOT a fact, it is a judgment.

You don’t believe me? Ok, let us think together here. When you think of yourself as worthless, have you ever thought about WHY you feel worthless? What is the event that triggered the way you feel about yourself?

If failing a lot or getting disappointed made you feel that way, then you need to understand that it is not a valid reason to feel worthless. You have to let go of your feeling because it is not true.

If you want to get rid of feeling worthless, then you need to (honestly) answer those two questions:

• What is really making me feel worthless and demotivating me to achieve the success I am looking for?
• Is there a possibility to change the way I think of myself so I can kick start my journey to becoming successful?

By asking yourself these questions, you will redefine your worth and have a change in perspective of how you view yourself. You will start to believe that you are worthy regardless of the judgment you placed for yourself.

The Comparison Syndrome

Do you feel like you are a failure when comparing your life with others? Do you face fear when deciding what to do next thinking that it will never be as good as the other person? Then my friend, you have fallen into the pit of the Comparison Syndrome.

Comparing yourself to others gets you nowhere if it didn’t pull you down. Evaluating yourself or your life by valuing other people’s life more than yours will make you lose your own path. It will also wither the unique brilliance that you never thought existed.

Think of all the negative emotions you may be going through when comparing yourself to others: envy, low self-esteem, low self-worth, and many others. Your inner critic will block you from having a clear vision of our path, exploiting our gifts, and disclose your true potential.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t compare yourself with others at all because it is human nature to somehow compare your life with others. Also, it is healthy to do so to a certain limit.

By looking at other people’s lifestyle, you can notice where you are standing and where you want to reach. This will make you feel motivated to work on having a similar or a better lifestyle. The main thing is that you shouldn’t be obsessive about becoming someone else. Just work on becoming a better version of yourself.

Negative Habits

I am sure we all have bad habits. Some of our common bad habits include eating junk food, watching a lot of TV, sleeping for fewer hours, etc. However, what I am trying to point out here are not bad habits but negative habits.

Terminology wise, they almost refer to the same thing. However, to me they are different. Bad habits are the habits that may affect me physically because they are the wrong things to do. But negative habits are habits that affect my mental strength and my personal growth.

By looking at the negative habits below, you will understand what I mean.

Worrying about what others think of you

The minute you give in to the opinion of others about you, you will lose track of what you truly want. Why should you think about other’s opinions about your actions when it is YOUR success that you are trying to accomplish? Will they share your hard work? Will their compliments or criticism make your hard work any better? No, right?

Always keep in mind LeCrae’s quote:

“If you live for people’s acceptance you will die from their rejection.” – LeCrae

Tweet

So focus on what truly matters to you because whether people say something good or bad about you, it is just an opinion, not a fact.

Blaming others

Some of you may think that by blaming others for your failures, you are making yourself feel better. But the truth is, you are just harming yourself. It will just create more negative thoughts that don’t exist. Think about something…why would others be responsible for your actions?

Each one of us is accountable for what we achieve. Blaming others won’t help you achieve anything. You will be too busy looking for silly faults other made that may have a mini effect on why things didn’t work out rather than looking for your solid mistakes and fixing them for progress.

Practicing less self-love

Self-love is the key to improved well-being and mental health. For some of you, it may sound like a luxury than a necessity. But believe me, it is a catalyst that can accelerate you to success. For personal growth, this is the number one practice that should take place in your day.

By loving yourself, you are exploring the motivational points in your life. You get to understand yourself better and see what makes you happy.

Final Thoughts

There can be many things that are stopping you from thriving success. What I shared above are just the common ones. You need to look into what is causing you to feel demotivated or keeping you from becoming successful.

Understand that the number one key to success is a positive and focused mindset. With distractions and self-doubt, you will reach nowhere. So take control of your own success.

Thank you for reading till the end 🙂

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to like it for support and share it on your social media using the buttons below.

What is holding you back from becoming successful? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

YOU MAY ALSO WANNA READ:

• How To Embrace Your Uncertainty
• How To Keep Your Life Organized: My Top 15 Easy Ways
• How To Journal For Therapy: 90 Journal Prompts for Self Discovery