10 Things You Should Give Up If You Want To Be Successful

Looking to be a success? There are things you need to eliminate from your life first. In this article, we take a look at ten of them.

When we are successful, we tend to acquire things on the journey: Knowledge, experience, expertise, and, in some circumstances, money. But before we even begin on the road to success, there are things we must remove first.

As any successful person will tell you, it’s impossible to achieve your biggest goals if you’re carrying a load of baggage. You need to kick the stuff that’s weighing you down and adding no value, and focus instead on the stuff that’s going to propel you forward.

But how do you know what to get rid of? Let’s take a look at 10 things you should remove from your life if you want to become more successful.

Friends Who Try To Hold You Back

This is a bit of a tricky one because, naturally, no one wants to kick their friends to the curb. But if a friend has become a critic and a hater, rather than an encourager, it’s time for you to have a conversation with them.

If they still can’t understand that you want to move forward and try to hold you back, it’s time to remove them from your life.

That might sound super cold. But no one said success would be easy. There will be tough decisions ahead of you. And cutting friends out of your life is one of them.

However, their often makes this a lot easier. If they constantly put you and your dreams down and remind you of where you come from, they’re hardly displaying the values that we love in our friends. If all they can do is snipe at you, demand more and more of your time, and try to keep you at their level, it makes it much easier to cut the chord.

Excuses

Can’t remove negative friends from your life? Why not?

“Well, because I still wanna see them on Friday nights when we go out for cocktails.”

If there is always an excuse for why you can’t make the big calls, or why things haven’t worked out the way you planned, you’ll find it very hard to ever accept responsibility and make the decisions that need to be made if you’re going to be a success.

When we make excuses, we hand over power to someone else. It’s no longer in our own hands. And when power isn’t in our hands, neither is our destiny. At this point, personal success is a lot harder to come by.

Stop playing the blame game or putting things off. Be prepared to make the big calls and accept the consequences.

Junk Food

Giving up friends is hard, but giving up junk food should be easier.

While it’s true that you’ll find some successful people who literally survive on a greasy diet of cheeseburgers and soda, the general rule is that junk food slows you down. It puts the brakes on your brain and your body, causing you to only work at around 50% your optimum capability.

For more energy so that you can seize the day each and every day, swap a poor diet for a healthier one loaded with fruit, vegetables and grains.

Your Cravings For Instant Success

Successful people know that reaching the top is a bit of a grind.

A long grind.

Success doesn’t happen overnight. If this idea doesn’t appeal to you, it’s time to quit right now because you’re probably not going to like the journey.

The road to success is long and requires determination, grit and a long-term mindset. Don’t live for today, tomorrow, or next month. Do the things today that you’ll benefit from in five or ten years’ time.

Alcohol

You don’t need to remove alcohol from your life full-time. Celebrating with cocktails after a fantastic week is well-deserved.

But if you find that your evenings after work and your weekends largely centre around alcohol, it’s time to cut back on your intake.

Alcohol is fun, but it slows us down and can stop us from achieving our goals.

Fear

Removing fear is another hard one, especially if you’re a natural born worrier. But fear is what holds many people back from living the life they want.

Some people never take the plunge into the freelancing world because they were too scared about losing their job security.

Others never launched a business because they were scared of losing money.

When you associate more pain with what might go wrong than you do with the pleasure of what can go right, fear wins.

Successful people are the opposite. They know that things could go wrong. But the pleasure of what can go right excites them too much for them to give fear too much time.

Inconsistency

If you’re naturally scatterbrained and tend to find a new hobby each week, it’s time to reel in your erratic nature and be more consistent.

Focus is key to success. Find your one true purpose, cut out the noise, and focus.

Selfishness

It’s impossible to achieve success by being selfish. If you look out only for yourself, it will come back to bite you in the bum big time.

On your road to success, you need to learn how to harness the skills of others. Work with them, don’t exploit them. Make friends who can help you, not enemies who will ultimately help to bring about your end.

Your Comfort Zone

Everyone likes their comfort zone. It’s comfortable. What’s there not to love about that?!
But your comfort zone is designed to stop you from being the best.

If you’re willing to leave your comfort zone for a while and live dangerously, you could live in a luxury zone for years to come. How does that sound?

Anyone who is successful said goodbye to their comfort zone at some point and took the plunge. That’s what you need to do now.

A Negative Attitude

Lastly, kick the negativity. If you’ve got nothing nice to say about someone, don’t say anything.

But always, ALWAYS look for the positives. Praise people, smile at them. In a world of critics, be an encourager. Negativity is a massive hindrance to success. Remove it.

Do you have other tips on how to be more successful?