DON'T SABOTAGE YOUR OWN SUCCESS

The drive to succeed is innate. We all desire to achieve a goal or to complete a task. Yet, along with that desire are negative behaviors that impede our success. The first step on the road to success is to acknowledge what your world really looks like.

Four behaviors that get in the way of your success:

Blaming others. This practice is particularly entrapping because it appears to be the truth. "How can you expect me to succeed when he (she, my father, my mother, my boss) was standing in my way?" When you do this, you give another person control over your life. You see yourself as a victim. You are the effect, not the cause of what goes on in your life. You will never succeed when you are an effect, only when you are a cause. Accept responsibility for the way things are.

Setting impossible tasks. This is deceptive because it looks like you're trying to get something done. (E.g. A frustrated bank teller decides she is in a rut and needs to break out in order to succeed. She resolves to quit smoking, lose weight, start exercising, update her wardrobe, and get an MBA. None of this is impossible, and each, individually, is a big challenge. But trying to do them all at once not only is unrealistic, it virtually guarantees failure.) Set reasonable accomplishments.

Setting an impossible schedule for getting tasks done. We have become so accustomed to instant gratification that we often forget that things take time. (E.g. A man, needing to lose 100 pounds, tries to lose 20 pounds a week, figuring that in a month or so his weight problem would be solved. He didn't consider that it took him 50 years to get as heavy as he was, that his eating habits took just as many years to form, and that permanent weight loss of such magnitude might take several years to accomplish.) Set realistic timetables.

Not doing the very things you know you must do. (E.g. You know you should start your day making sales calls when you're fresh, but instead you go to a coffee shop for an hour to "plan your day.") Be honest with yourself right now.

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