12 Pathetic Habits of Unsuccessful People

While success means different things to different people, it is simply the achievement of set goals or achieving your heart desires.

To some, success could be:

getting a dream job

buying a dream house

becoming a bestselling author

being an employee whose efforts are appreciated

being a happy stay-at-home mom

being recognised in one’s field

having a happy marriage

raising healthy and happy kids etc.

Whatever success means to you, the principles that determine the success are relatively the same.

So, what differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people?
Why are some people able to achieve their set goals and some are stuck?

Habits!

Habits are things we do frequently that become part of us, and can go a long way to determine whether we achieve our life goals or not.

Just as some habits are common to successful people, some habits are also common to unsuccessful people.

Below are the 12 common habits of Unsuccessful people:

12 Habits of Unsuccessful People

1.Spending time endlessly on the phone

Staying on your phone for hours isn’t entirely bad especially if your work requires you to be on the phone.

Also, we live in a digital age and a lot of human interaction and activities take place online.

However, if you’re constantly scrolling through social media and doing nothing particularly related to your work or business, you might be tending towards failure.

Successful people understand the value of time and they don’t waste it on unproductive activities.

If you do not regulate your phone use, you’ll always be distracted, and you need focus to be successful.

You won’t reach your goals if you constantly do what takes your eyes off them.

2.Addiction to excuses

Unsuccessful people are addicted to excuses— always giving reasons why they cannot do what they have to do.

Successful people will rather do it, fail, learn and do it again until they experience success.

What excuses are you giving for not doing what you have to do?

Remember, if you don’t want to do it, you’ll find excuses. If you want to do it, you’ll find a way.

No one ever achieves success by giving excuses.

Excuses are dream killers.
You can’t make excuses and make progress at the same time.

You have to make one.

3. Not paying attention to details

Successful people pay attention to details while unsuccessful people ignore details.

Paying attention to details is crucial to success because gold or diamond are not found on the surface.

You have to dig deep to find them.

So, by paying attention to details, you can discover great information or ideas that will change your life for good.

4. Joking with everything

While it’s good to joke and play around, you should not be a clown always.
If you want to joke about everything, you better be a comedian and be successful doing just that.

But even comedians don’t joke every time.

Unsuccessful people joke with everything, they don’t take life seriously, thus, they either miss out on vital information or people do not take them seriously.

If you don’t take yourself seriously, don’t expect people to take you seriously.

Successful people live intentionally.

5. Not willing to learn, unlearn and relearn

Learning is life and life is learning.

Someone said if you are 20 years old and you stop learning, you are old but if you are 70 years old and you continue to learn, you are still very young.

In fact, learning doesn’t only make your mind younger, it makes you look younger.

I know a seventy year old man who looks way younger than his age.

When asked the secret of his looks, he said he interacts a lot with younger people and reads a lot.

Many people in the older generation cannot operate smartphones and navigate through social media.

Not this man.

He knows how to use to use modern gadgets.

Even though he’s of the older generation, he’s well attuned to the present generation.

Never get to a point when you think you do not need to learn.

You must continue to learn, unlearn, and relearn if you want to be successful.

Knowledge is progressive, especially in this present fast-paced world.

What you learnt/knew ten years ago might not be applicable now.

You cannot be successful if you are not an information consumer.

6. Not organized

Good organisation is crucial to being successful.

By this, I don’t mean just physical organisation, but also mental organisation.

You can’t be successful if everything about you is haphazard and random.

Being organised also applies to having goals, making proper plans to achieve those goals, and staying focused enough to bring your plans alive.

If you’re always distracted, you can’t be focused, and hardly can anyone achieve success without being focused.

How mentally organised are you?
Are your thoughts focused or jumbled up?

Being organised physically is also important.
Do you have a routine?

They say ‘the secret of a man is in his daily routine.’

If you live your life just anyhow, you’ll get anyhow results.

Most successful people have a routine which guides their actions and activities.

This helps them to be intentional about their lives.

7. Not having a mind of your own and expecting people to decide for you

To be successful, you must have a mind of your own—one that is trained and well-informed to make better decisions.

To have a mind of your own starts from knowing what you want.

If you don’t know what you want and you depend on others to tell you what you should want, success will elude you; because people will have different opinions of what you should do with your life.

While it’s advisable to seek counsel before you make decisions, it is still your primary responsibility to train your mind to make choices that count towards success.

8. Procrastination

Unsuccessful people have a habit of putting things off to a later time.

You know the tragic thing about procrastination?

It’s that it’ll make you lose opportunities.

They say success is when preparation meets with opportunity.

Someone who has a habit of procrastination will never be prepared.

So, when opportunities come, he’ll definitely miss out on them, no matter how good he is.

And in this competitive world, opportunities don’t come cheaply.

Talent and even competence is not enough; because there are many talented and competent people.

Doing things you have to do and not waiting until a perfect time is necessary for success.

What’s that thing you ought to have started but you keep procrastinating?

Perhaps it is :

Starting a YouTube channel

Starting a blog

Going for a course

Going back to school

Applying for a relocation visa

Writing a book

Going for an audition

Making a call to someone who can help you etc.

Whatever it is, just start! There’ll never be a perfect moment.

I struggle with procrastination, so I can relate.

9. Rejection of change

Unsuccessful people love the status quo, they don’t want to experience the discomfort that comes with change.

This also includes changing of bad habits (such as these ones you’re reading) to more positive habits.

They never entertain any idea that change is possible in any form to improve their current situation.

In the process of rejecting change they also reject useful opinions and undermine others by rejecting their opinions.

10. Ignoring responsibility

Successful people take responsibility for their lives and even their mistakes while unsuccessful people blame everyone but themselves for their mistakes and failures.

Successful people own their failures/mistakes, learn from them and move on.

You’re more likely to learn and do better when you take responsibility for your mistakes and failures instead of explaining them away or putting the blame on others.

11. Giving up too soon

Unsuccessful people have a habit of giving up on things too soon.
Achieving success at anything usually requires some patience, determination and persistence.

12. Poor money habits