The suggestion that you are the factor most responsible for your lack of success can come as a shock. After all, who wants to succeed more than you? The brain is a tricky organ, however, and it has ways of working against us. Take a look at some of the common methods of self-sabotage below, and if any of them sound familiar, take steps to prevent them.
Procrastination and Only Doing Enough
When you want to get the most out of life, procrastination, and its less obvious relation, doing only enough to get by, are twin obstacles that you have to constantly guard against. One problem is that they can both be deceptive. Procrastination can disguise itself as another pressing task that you need to get to–such as suddenly needing to clean your house even though you haven’t bothered for months. Doing only enough to get by, like procrastination, may look like you’re working, but it falls for short of the dynamic effort that you really need to get ahead.
Not Taking Concrete Steps
Does this sound familiar? You’re going to succeed because you know what your goals are and you’re determined to reach them. Maybe your goal is to cut your monthly expenses so that you can pay off debt and start investing. You spend a lot of time thinking about how great it is that you’re finally going to do something about your finances, but what are you actually doing?
The road to your goals needs to be made up of many steps that are concrete, not vague. If you want to cut expenses, make a list of all the ways that you can do this, and start following it. One way to spend less is with a NaviRefi student loan refinance. This may offer you monthly payments that are lower than what you’re currently paying. Anywhere in your budget that you see a way to pay less for something is money you can put toward debt and savings.
Believing or Disbelieving Your Critics
Either of these extremes is bad. If you believe everything your critics say about you, you may become discouraged and give up altogether. However, if you dismiss everything, you may also be dismissing both helpful advice and pearls of wisdom mixed in with otherwise negative assessments. How do you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore? Unless you are a fairly public figure who hears from many people on a regular basis, in which case you really do have to stop listening to other people, it’s best to try to take a dispassionate look at any feedback you get and receive constructive criticism as simply that.
Ask yourself if there is something you can learn from it and be honest with your answer. If the answer is yes, make a note to work on improving that one area. At the same time, even when the answer is yes, you should not take the negative feedback too much to heart. Don’t think of it as an attack on your abilities or you as a person, even if the critic meant it in that way. Get what is useful from it, and let the rest of it go. There will always be people who question and disapprove of what you do.
