AUGUST 11, 2021
How much time do you have on this earth? How many hours, minutes, days, or years do you have to live?
You may say, “I’m 20, so I guess I have 60-70 more years to live.” or, “I’m 40, and I have 40 more years left.”
How do you know that you will actually live for the next 40-80 years? How do you even know if you’ll be alive the next moment as well?
The truth is, you don’t.
But why do you not choose happiness and strive towards success at this moment? Why do you lead an unhappy life when you can choose and take action towards a more joyful and fulfilling one?
Something is stopping you. There’s a big wall between you and the successful life you seek. We’ll break the wall today!
This post on bad habits is also available as a video on my YouTube channel which you can watch here:
What is the wall?
What do you think separates successful people from the unsuccessful? Is it the actions they take, the efforts they put in, or their luck?
It is none of these.
Understanding what not to do is as important as knowing what to do for achieving success. And the people who achieve success understand what they shouldn’t do.
Almost 95% of people in this world live mediocre and unsuccessful lives.
It seems unfair, right? Why only do the top 5% of people in the world get success and not others?
While we love to hear success stories and look up to people when they succeed, we don’t look at their transition from 95% to the top 5%.
It isn’t easy and takes a lot of effort and perseverance. Most of us don’t see that and then wonder, “How did that guy become successful? He must have been lucky.”
Those people weren’t lucky; they dared to break the giant wall that stopped them from becoming successful, that’s it.
If you want to become successful, you need to get over this wall. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.
The wall that is keeping you unsuccessful is the result of your actions. No one else built this wall for you. Bad and mediocre habits create this wall and stop your growth. The more time you spend with these habits, the bigger, longer, and stronger the wall becomes.
Do you want to lead an unsuccessful life hiding behind the wall of your habits, or do you want to take control, break this wall down and leap towards the successful side?
The top 5% of people in this world broke this wall down, got over their bad habits, and achieved success in their life.
To achieve success, you need to get over these five bad habits and conquer this wall.
What is a Bad Habit?
Before we dive into the details of what bad habits we need to get over, we need to understand what a bad habit is.
So many people remain unsuccessful and continue these bad habits because they don’t even know that their actions are stopping their growth.
What comes to your mind when you think of bad habits? It will probably be smoking, drinking excessive alcohol, binge eating, watching too much TV, etc.
We mostly think that actions or habits that damage us on a physical level are bad. But bad habits span way beyond that.
Any action that negatively impacts your physical, mental, or emotional health is a bad habit. And any actions that don’t support your growth and progress are also bad.
Procrastination, spending two to three hours each day scrolling aimlessly through social media, having negative people around you are all examples of bad habits.
Successful people recognize these habits and get over them. Here are the top 5 bad habits that you need to overcome and why.
1) Changing Nothing and expecting different results.
It’s 1 AM. You are just getting back from a long solo trip in the mountains, and there’s barely any traffic on the highway. You assume that no one will be there on the road and start driving at over 140 kilometers per hour. You’re loving the speed and cruising on the highway when you lose control on a sharp curve and crash into a parked truck.
Your car is all crumpled and destroyed, but you fortunately survive.
After two years, you go back for a solo trip into the mountains, it is 1 AM, and the highway is empty. You are on the same road, and you again start driving around 140-150 kilometers per hour. You think, “The previous crash happened by chance. I know I am a good driver, and I’ll handle everything.”
You get to the same curve, lose control, and your car goes flying and flips over multiple times in the field next to the road.
Would you call yourself sensible and logical in this situation? No! You won’t get a different result if you take the same actions.
Any person with a brain can understand this, but most unsuccessful people don’t.
If you failed in one startup and take the same actions in your new one, it will also fail.
If you failed an exam because you did not study with concentration, you’d fail the next exam as well.
Successful people also make mistakes from time to time. The only difference is that they learn from them while unsuccessful people just repeat them.
2) Waiting for the right time instead of taking action.
If you think a magical fairy will come to you and say, “You’ve sorted out everything. Now, you can start becoming successful.” it won’t happen.
No matter what, you will never have the perfect moment to start something. I had no idea about the world of blogging, but I jumped right in the day I learned about it.
If you are waiting for the right time to build something new, take a new risk, start a new business or grow in your job, you will never actually achieve those things.
A family function will come up. Your friend will fall sick. You’ll go on a vacation thinking, “I’ll start when I come back.” and when you come back, you’ll get stuck with extra work you missed during your vacation.
Nothing will ever be perfect in your life. If you excel at school or land a great job, you might just get into a fight with your best friend. Something will always come up in your life no matter what, and if you use that as an excuse, you’ll not achieve success. If you instead think, “Okay, I’ll take care of this problem as well, but I am going to start right now.” you will get to the top 5%.
If you wait for the right moment, you’ll keep on procrastinating all your life without doing anything worthwhile.
The choice is yours.
3) Expecting good things to come easy.
In life, there’s no free lunch, and if you want great things in life, you’ll have to pay for them.
Every student wants to get the best grade, but does every student want to put in 6 months of dedicated study to do that? No.
Every person who goes for a job interview wants that job, but does every person actually prepare properly and improve their skills? No.
That’s the problem. We think that by taking 1 step, we can get four steps ahead. Life does not work that way.
If you want to get four steps ahead, you need to constantly put the effort of going four levels ahead, and that is not easy.
Good things in life never come easy. And you will become successful only when you realize this fact and continuously give in the efforts required.
4) Refusing Risks.
If you are breathing right now, you are taking the biggest risk of all.
How? With each breath, your time on earth is elapsing, and you are taking one step closer towards death.
What could be a bigger risk than that?
You need to take risks to discover new things, grab opportunities and achieve success. Trying to break the wall of bad habits is a risk, but the reward you will get will be awesome.
Think about the risk you are afraid to take. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” If you can handle that, jump right in.
The more you think, the more confused you will become. Accept risks, take leaps of faith, and your life will never be the same again.
5) Focusing on past rejections.
JK Rowling was broke and poor when she wrote the first Harry Potter book.
After she finished her book, she went to a publisher, and they rejected her. She went to another one, and they also rejected her.
At this point, she could have easily quit and said, “Two publishers have already rejected me. No one will accept me now.”
But she did not think that way. Instead, she kept trying and trying until the 13th publisher, Bloomsbury, agreed to publish Harry Potter.
Today, it is one of the most famous fiction series globally, and JK Rowling is a billionaire.
What lesson does JK Rowling’s story teach us?
No matter how many rejections you face, there is always another opportunity. If you keep focusing on your past rejections, you will never achieve success and grow in life.
Every rejection is a sign that something better is out there for you.
Conclusion
Getting over these bad habits can seem difficult at first, but if you want to cross over that wall and achieve success, you need to break these habits.
Take a pen and paper now and think about which habit affects you the most and stops your growth. Question yourself and keep writing whatever comes to your mind. You will get answers that will guide you and lead you towards a successful life beyond these bad habits.
In the end, the choice is yours. If you want to be the victim of your circumstances and lead an unhappy, unsuccessful, and mediocre life, you don’t need to change anything about yourself.
But if you want to achieve a lot in your life, create a meaningful existence and live with happiness and fulfillment, getting over these habits is the first step.
Which side do you choose?
Partnering in your success, happiness, and growth,
Prabhsimrat