THE TOP 5 TRAITS OF UNSUCCESSFUL PEOPLE!

AVOID THESE AT ALL COSTS!

I've made it a point over the years to talk about success, wealth building, relationship building, the financial health of your business, mindset, the science of success, and a bunch of other topics, almost all of them framed in a positive way. Afterall, one of the best ways to add value for you, the listener, is to frame things in a positive way. My guess is that you wouldn’t want to listen for long if I came to you every week with something negative. However, there is also something called the contrast principle, which essentially says that we will judge things based on the degree of contrast between two or more things. For example, if you’re talking with somebody at a cocktail party and they come across as a raging jerk, the next person you talk to, if they’re even slightly less jerk-like, will seem like a saint as compared to the first person. If you eat something very unpleasant to your taste buds, the next thing you eat is likely to taste considerably better, even if it’s something you might not have eaten prior. 

I was in Colorado skiing all week last week and the place I was staying in is famous for it’s natural hot springs. After a long cold day of powder skiing, we headed to the hot springs to soak our taxed muscles in the hot water. One of the places we did this was located on a river. You could get out of any of the big hot tubs you were soaking in and take the stairs down to the ice cold river to do a polar plunge, and we did. 5 or 6 times during our multi-hour soak, we’d climb out of the hot springs and ease into the icy river where we’d try to sit for 2-5 minutes focusing on our breath and mind state. The contrast was amazing! From ice cold to 105 degrees and vice versa is an extreme version of the contrast principle, but you get it. Come out of an icy river and step into a hot tub and it feels much hotter than it would otherwise. 

So it is with the contrast principle that I come to you this week, my friends. Instead of talking about success, we’re going to talk about the opposite of success. No, the opposite of success is not failure, contrary to popular belief. There is likely not a successful person alive who doesn’t count failure as a necessary precursor to their success. Failure is to success what black is to white on the yin-yang symbol, it’s part of the same whole.This is just my opinion, of course, but having studied this topic for as long as I can remember, I would say that the opposite of success is mediocrity and not failing. Said another way, not trying so as to never fail is the opposite of success. 

Like the title indicates, we’re going to talk about 5 things unsuccessful people do to be unsuccessful. Now, before you get all self righteous with me and say, “Well, Blaine, who are you to call somebody unsuccessful?”, take it easy. I’m not calling any individual out, we’re talking about traits and behaviors that, when identified, can be changed and the course of one’s life can be altered for the better forever. 

Before we go into the 5 things, let’s first define success so that we can use the contrast principle again to know what unsuccessful means. Just using a dictionary definition of success we could say that success is having a favorable outcome, attaining something desired or intended, producing a fortunate event. The great Earl Nightingale, founder of the Nightingale Conant mail order success resources company, was famous for many things and his definition of success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. So, it stands to reason that un-success is the opposite of that; not progressively realizing a worthy goal or ideal, thus remaining mediocre and stuck. 

By the way, it needs to be noted that nobody wakes up and says, ‘today is the day I give up on my dreams. Today is the day that I throw in the towel and abandon everything I thought was possible.’ That’s not typically how it happens, it happens slowly over time as life takes over. We all make choices and then we’re forced to live that life. Wife, husband, kids, job, bills, responsibility, parental expectations, society, friends, and comparing ourselves to others, and it can become close to impossible to make changes. Unsuccessful to me is giving up on your dreams and settling for less than you’re capable of. Notice I didn’t say that you can only be called successful when you achieve something, I said unsuccessful is giving up, not trying, not progressing, not realizing something, and settling for less than you’re capable of. 

So, the first thing I believe unsuccessful people do is they use their off time, their weekends, and their free time to escape their life rather than create the life they want. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying not to take vacations or recovery time. What we’re talking about is habits and what we do consistently over a long period of time. Being successful or unsuccessful doesn’t happen overnight. Both are a series of tiny decisions made every day. It’s been said before that the secret to your future is hidden in your daily routine. What we do daily is what we become permanently. It’s ok to take the weekend off and relax. It’s ok to take vacations and recover, rejuvenate, and relax. However, if you’re progressively trying to realize a worthy ideal, as Earl Nightingale says, then some of the time after your job needs to be devoted to creating the life you desire. If you’re somebody who lives for the weekend, then you likely don’t really love your vocation. That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard and it doesn’t mean you hate what you do. 

I’ve met lots of people in my coaching and teaching career who say things like, “well, I don’t hate what I do, it’s not that bad, I can live with it, it allows me to party on the weekends.” The question then becomes, are you progressively working toward a worthy ideal? Or are you just plodding along waiting for death? If you want more than what you have and are today, then you must be working overtime on the things that matter. I learned from one of my mentors early on that a 24 hour day can be broken into three 8 hour segments. Since most people are either laying in bed or sleeping for 8 of those hours, one of those segments is gone. That leaves 16 hours left to create the life we want. 8 to 10 of those hours are typically spent doing the work we’ve either chosen or has chosen us. Some call this working for the man. This is the work we do to pay the bills, buy our toys, keep the spouse happy, and put food in our children’s bellies. What’s left after that? 6-8 hours are left over to create the life we want. It’s that third quadrant of time that success, the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal is achieved with consistent action over a long period of time. Unsuccessful people escape and use that third quadrant of time to relax from the work they don’t enjoy. Successful people use that time to design and create the life and business they want. If you want to predict your future, create it. 

The second thing unsuccessful people do is they seek pleasure over progress. Progress is painful! Pleasure is the opposite of pain (for most people). In the world we live today, we are surrounded by 24/7 pleasure and escape on demand. Our modern society has manufactured pleasure and escape at our fingertips with social media, Netflix, sugary food, fast food, and constant distraction from progressively realizing our worthy ideal. One of the many things I’ve learned through years of therapy is that we often seek pleasure to avoid delving into our pain and suffering. However, seeking pleasure to mask and bury the pain doesn’t prevent suffering, it guarantees that we hold onto it indefinitely. What is inside will eventually make it’s way outside in one way or another. That which is pushed inward eventually seeks to find the daylight. In it’s search for light it often becomes dis-ease in the body. Remove the hyphen from the word dis-ease and you have disease. Seeking pleasure to mask or hide the pain guarantees we’ll experience the pain at some point, and likely multiplied. Successful people seek progress over pleasure. Again, not saying not to have fun or experience pleasure, just not at the expense of progress. 

The third trait of unsuccessful people is their aversion to risk. Now, let’s be clear, remember we said that failure is not the opposite of success. People who don’t like risk are not automatically failures, that’s not what we’re saying. Unsuccessful people tend to use past failures as the reason not to try something again, even though they might be one try away from success. They will use their setbacks and failures in life as the reasons to never try those things again. Successful people tend to use setbacks and failures as the reason, the energy, the impetus, and the lessons learned as their gps toward success. A setback or a failure to somebody with a growth mindset is simply a chance to reevaluate a better plan, a pivot, a slight change, or maybe even a completely new route. Instead of quitting, they take the lessons learned from failure and setbacks and keep moving forward. It’s not the setback or the failure that defines somebody, it’s their response to those things that defines them. Get up and get moving!

The fourth thing unsuccessful people tend to do is constantly compare themselves to others. Successful people tend to compete with their last best accomplishment, not necessarily with others. That’s not to say that competitiveness isn’t a trait historically found amongst some of the most successful people on earth, it often is. Take Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Steve Jobs, or any other person generally regarded as uber successful and you’ll likely find a hyper competitive individual. I play hockey with a bunch of guys who will lose sleep over a loss. This is an over 40 beer league where we all have day jobs and families, but these guys will sulk, bitch, complain about the reffing, and just generally engage in childish behavior after a loss. I’m typically happy I survived with all bones and joints intact and that I got some good exercise on the ice where some of these guys will throw sticks and leave before the game is over if we’re losing. 

Competitiveness can be a driving force toward success, but it can also be the thief of joy. The saying is that comparison is the thief of joy, but over-competitiveness is right there too. It’s ok to have people we look up to and admire. It’s ok to have mentors we aspire to be like in some way. What we can’t do is constantly compare ourselves to other people. They’re not you and you’re not them! 

The fifth trait of unsuccessful people is low integrity decisions. Warren Buffett is famous for saying, “I look for people to hire who are of high intelligence, high initiative or energy, and high integrity. High integrity is the most important, otherwise, you’ve just hired a smart, hardworking criminal. If they don’t have [integrity], the first two will kill you, because if you’re going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb.” Low integrity decisions don’t always just refer to criminal activity either. Low integrity decisions can simply refer to marshmallows. 

What do I mean by marshmallows? The marshmallow test, which was created by psychologist Walter Mischel, is one of the most famous psychological experiments ever conducted. The test let young children decide between an immediate reward, or, if they delay gratification, a larger reward of some kind. They found that a child’s ability to delay gratification when they were young was correlated, in some ways, with positive future outcomes. Of course, their home environment, their education, the support systems, and several other things have been recognized as factors leading to success, but delayed gratification has been called a high integrity character trait since it speaks to one’s ability to consider alternatives, outcomes, consequences, and the benefits of not succumbing to personal desires in the moment. 

To be clear, there have been many people throughout history who are considered very successful who have made low integrity decisions. High integrity decisions don’t guarantee success, just as low integrity decisions don’t preclude one from attaining some level of success. Again, what we’re talking about are habits and traits that make it more likely one will be successful, or progressively realize a worthy ideal. When I use the term ‘unsuccessful people’, I’m referring more to behaviors and mindsets that make it less likely to achieve some level of success and achievement. 

Go over these five things and ask yourself, how do I use my ‘free’ or ‘spare’ time? It’s not really free or spare. Time is our most valuable non-renewable resource and currency. Do you find yourself always having to vacate on your time off of your day job? If so, what do you hope to magically accomplish beyond your day job. Every additional source of income, new business, or entity i’ve developed over the years was created in that third quadrant in between sleep and day job. Do you seek pleasure over progress? For some, progress is pleasure because mediocrity equals pain. Which one are you? Are you a calculated risk taker, or do you avoid risk out of some prior bad experience or fear? How much do you find yourself comparing yourself to others and ending up feeling bad about yourself? And, finally, would you classify your decisions as high integrity decisions or low integrity ones? Can you delay gratification in favor of a better future outcome? 

Just a few things to consider on your way to progressively realizing a worthy ideal. Until next week, I’m out…