Don’t do these things if you want to be successful

Sometimes, to become successful and get closer to the person you can become, you don’t need to add more things, you need to give up on some of them.

There are certain things that are universal, which will make you successful if you give up on them, even though each one of us could have a different definition of success.

Knowing when to quit is a skill that can be learned. If you tend to get stuck on things long after it’s obvious that what you’re doing isn’t working, you can train yourself to do better. You just need to practice quitting. Thankfully, life provides plenty of opportunities to do this.

Here are some things you should quit doing in order to live a successful life.

1. Give up the unhealthy life

If you want to achieve anything in life, everything starts here. First you have to take care of your health, and there are only two things you need to keep in mind:
1. Healthy Diet
2. Physical Activity

Small steps, but you will thank yourself one day.

2. Pursuing “Happiness”

Most people believe they must:

• First have something (e.g., money, time, or love)
• Before they can do what they want to do (e.g., travel the world, write a book, start a business, or have a romantic relationship)
• Which will ultimately allow them to be something (e.g., happy, peaceful, content, motivated, or in love).

Paradoxically, this have-to-be paradigm must actually be reversed to experience happiness, success, or anything else you desire.

• First you be whatever it is you want to be (e.g., happy, compassionate, peaceful, wise, or loving)
• Then you start doing things from this space of being.
• Almost immediately, what you are doing will bring about the things you want to have.

You attract what you are. If you want the things happy people have, you must be happy to get those things. If you want things wealthy people have, you must be and live wealthy to have those things.

Results translate from attitudes and behaviours. Not the other ways around.

3. Quit doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Despite his popularity and cutting insight, there are a lot of people who seem determined that two plus two will eventually equal five. The fact is simple: if you keep the same approach, you’ll keep getting the same results, no matter how much you hope for the opposite. If you want different results, you need to change your approach, even when it’s painful to do so.

4. Competing with other people

Competition is extremely costly to maximum product reach and wealth creation. It becomes a battle of who can slightly out-do the other for cheaper and cheaper. It’s a race to the bottom for all parties involved.

Instead of trying to compete with other people or businesses, it’s better to do something completely novel or to focus on a tightly defined niche. Once you’ve established yourself as an authority over something, you can set your own terms rather than reactively responding to the competition. Thus, you want to monopolize the space in which you create value.

Competing with others leads people to spend every day of their lives pursuing goals that aren’t really their own, but what society has deemed important. You could spend your whole life trying to keep up, but will probably have a shallow life. Or, you can define success for yourself based on your own values and detach yourself from the noise.

5. Quit putting things off

Change is hard. Self-improvement is hard. Scrounging up the guts to go for what you want is hard, and so is the work to make it happen. When things are hard, it’s always easier to decide to tackle them tomorrow. The problem is that tomorrow never comes. Saying you’ll do it tomorrow is just an excuse, and it means that either you don’t really want to do it or that you want the results without the hard work that comes along with it.