Your Dreams. Your Goals. Your Way.

10 Bad Habits That Stop You From Succeeding

There are a lot of bad habits that are keeping the majority of you from succeeding. The Key to stopping a bad habit is to admit that we do it and it’s a problem. Now, let’s talk about the Top 10 bad habits that stop us from succeeding. These are ten bad habits that should be we should stop not tomorrow, not next week but right now.

1. Over committing

I know many of you guys are guilty of this habit. Committing to too many things will sometimes make you miss important details and make you seem flakey and unreliable to the people you’ve committed to.  Stretching yourself to thin will start to become exhausting, frustrating and my lead to depression and anxiety. If you look up and all of a sudden you're not getting things done and the things that are getting done are subpar or below standard you may have a problem over committing.  If over committing is an issue for you before you say yes and agree to something stop and think. How much time is it going to take me to do this? Can I do this at home or will I have to leave home to complete this task? When does the task need to be completed? What projects do I currently have going on? If someone asks you to do something and it interferes with a prior obligation, it’s okay to say no. Also keep in mind that your work reflects you and your business. Therefore, you don’t want to “half ass” a project. A wise person once said “Sometimes when we say yes too often, we're saying no to opportunity.”

2. Being Afraid

How many of you are afraid of stupid stuff? Yeah I called it stupid stuff, you may think that these are reasonable things to be afraid of but honestly most things that we're afraid of don't really exist. They don't exist anywhere except in our mind and that scared of everything. You spend all your time thinking about what is going to go wrong and you never ever flip the switch into what could possibly go right. Sometimes things are gonna go wrong, sometimes you know you're gonna fall on your butt but there's a lot of times you're going to land on your feet. There's a lot of times things are going to go right there's, a lot of times things are not gonna happen the way that you wanted them to happen but they're actually going to happen better or it's going to cause something amazing to happen inside of your life. So you've got to learn how to let go and get that anxiety outside of your brain. Think about how much time this is taking in your mind. Think about the amount of space it is literally occupying in your brain. Now, you've missed out on opportunities to meet great people, to travel to a new place, to even take a new job, possibly a promotion, maybe another opportunity to improve your education because you were afraid. There are all these amazing things that are happening around you and they can happen in your life if you will let go of these fears.

3. Being a micromanager

Micro-managers don't ever really accomplish too much and if you do accomplish something it takes you three to four times longer to accomplish it. You know why? Because micro-managers aren't actually leading. Micro-managers are the people who stare at you while you type, go backspace over there move this over there. They are the person who watches you move. You're not teaching anyone how to do anything. You're not experiencing anything, you're creating stagnate energy.  Basically micromanaging is a waste of your time, resources, and energy. In fact you may even be creating negative energy within your team. Once you get a solid system up and running, the whole purpose is to be able to delegate tasks so that you can spend the rest of our time doing other things, not hovering over people's shoulders, not breathing down their necks, not wasting countless hours watching people do things. If you’re a micro manager here are somethings that may help you relax and loosen the reigns.  Give people deadlines. Lots of micro managers fail to give their team a solid deadline. Make sure your instructions are clear. Set a clear goal and make sure the team is aware of what that goal is. Give yourself a specific time to check in with team members.

4. No Follow-up

How many of you don't follow up with stuff because you're to ashamed, embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask? Do you know that not following up is causing you to lose all kinds of money and all kinds of opportunities. It’s like my grandmother once said “Closed mouths don’t get fed.” I will tell you, there's a difference between following up and being worrisome or bothersome. Calling and texting everyday is not a follow-up that's worsisome. Always remember that after you send the initial text or email - you're going to wait 48 hours and if it's a weekend you're waiting until the following Monday unless you're doing business with people on the weekend. Wait 48 hours then send your first reminder. Do not call them again that day. Then wait for another 72 hours.  So that's three days if you don't hear anything from them in the 48 hours. After the 72 hours we will wait for a full week. A whole seven days before we reach out again and this time we're gonna be nice and courteous and polite. Did you know that almost 40% of those people who were ignoring you will message you back instantaneously and then they will tell you well oh no I wanted to keep going with it, I wanted to keep moving forward, but my kids got sick or I wanted to do this and I got caught up at work or I wanted to do this. That's what gonna happen because you followed up and you weren't annoying, and you weren't calling them every day. Some people want to do business with you they just need a little gentle reminder because things happen in life. Sometimes there are fires that need to be put out, sometimes you know family emergencies happen.

5. Dis-organization

Having no type of system, no color coordination, no idea what's happening, you don't know when you’re coming and when you’re going.  You don't even know who you're supposed to follow up with because you are disorganize. Now, I'm not saying that you have to have a super neat desk and a filing cabinet for everything and everything color-coordinated. But you've got to create some type of system for yourself.  I need you to get some type of organization, it doesn't take a significant investment. Start simple. Try getting post-it notes that are different colors. You can stick a blue post-it and say these are inquiries I need to call them today. Use a pink post-it note and say I talked to all these people today. Use a Green post-it note and say these are the people I follow up with if I don't hear from them by Wednesday use an orange post-it. These are current contracts we need to make sure we create an schedule for them so that we know what money is coming in or when it's supposed to come in and we need to send payment reminders and so on and so forth. It doesn't have to be a complicated system so literally if you need to go to Walmart or Walgreens and buy some different color post-it notes and put a label and make stacks do it. The point is you need create some type of organizational system for yourself.

            6 and 7. Taking too much time off or don’t taking enough time off

There is nothing wrong with taking time off for your birthday. But there is a problem if you take off for a whole week because it's your birthday. As a business owner you have to remember if you don’t work you don’t eat, and your bills don’t stop just because it’s your birthday.  A day off is fine but a whole week can cause you to lose a lot of money. You may also be a person who takes a lot of breaks throughout the day. For those of you who take a break after you complete one task you need to stop it. If you suffer from the I need a break germ I suggest you set timers throughout the day. Work for four hours then take a break for an hour.  Some people may have the opposite problem. You work nonstop. When we completed a task, we need to allow ourselves to take break.  It’s important to allow yourself to enjoy the fruits of our labor. What is the point in working and building and making all this money if you don’t take the time to enjoy it? You never take a vacation you never go out to dinner. You miss out on all your families and friends life events. Sometimes we need to take a day to just lay in the bed. This is the thing, we all have to take time to unplug. Everyone needs time to decompress and have a little bit of fun. Taking a little time away from work will give you an opportunity to look at your work with a fresh set of eyes. If you’re a workaholic try putting a break on your to-do list. You don’t have to take the whole day off, However 45 minutes can make a major difference when it comes to stress and being over worked.

8. Delaying your creative process

Some of you are having a really hard time getting stuff off the ground because you're thinking too deeply. Sometimes the answer is right in front of you. Listen to people, pay attention to what they complain about, pay attention to what they love, pay attention to what they want to change, pay attention to the commentary they're giving you, pay attention to how they're using different things and what they're using them with. PAY ATTENTION! Some of you guys are killing yourself trying to reinvent the wheel when there's no need to reinvent it. Maybe you just need to put a spoke on the wheel or just need to throw a shiny rim on it. Sometimes there are very small tweaks you can do to elevate a product.

9. Not following your Instincts

God gave us all instincts for a reason and we need to listen to them. Everything is meant to help us become the best version of ourselves. We need to use our instincts to help us get to find out what our purpose is so that we can get to a place of abundance and joy in life. However. I think one of the biggest mistakes ever is just not listening to your instincts. Some of the roughest lessons I've learned in my life have come for me is ignoring my instincts.

10.     Refusing to change your plan

Being unwilling to change your plan when obviously you need to is a big issue for a lot of us. Be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods. You know what your ultimate goal is, write it down and hold on to it. But keep an open mind. Sometimes opportunities or help will come to us in a different way than we anticipated. We need to be open because a lot of times we just think is going to happen one way and we get so focused on the way we want things to happen when there are 5 billion different ways that great things can come to pass.  We just need to be open to them.