The No.1 Reason Why People Fail And 9 Ways To Change It

It can be really annoying and frustrating. You get up early, you roll up your sleeves, you are working really hard all day long, day after day… yet, it is not working out for you.

It seems like, no matter what you do, you are not moving forward and you are not enjoying the success you deserve.

But why?  What’s wrong here?

Maybe you are just spinning your wheels

There are thousands of hard-working people who never succeed. Why? Because it is not so much the amount of work you are doing that counts most, but the quality of your work.

You could carry a big stone from A to B and then back to A and again to B… This could go on for hours, days and weeks. But, do you think, this would get you anywhere? Of course not.

But that’s more or less what so many people do in their personal careers. They focus on minor tasks that don’t really matter and no matter how many hours they put in, no significant results will show up.

I know, sometimes it’s tough to focus on those crucial, all important tasks

We do what we are used to do. We prefer to remain in our comfort zone. When we have the choice between 2 different tasks, we tend to pick the easier one.

But, unfortunately , that’s also the recipe for failure.

Make it a habit to focus on your most important tasks first

You know what those all important tasks are. I’m talking about those things that help you to really move forward, to take your business to the next level… and to make success inevitable.

But,  those secondary tasks are usually much easier, oftentimes they are also more fun and at the end of the day they provide you with the illusion that you got a a hell lot of work done and that you should be proud of yourself.

The truth is, you will NEVER get everything done and that’s absolutely normal. However, instead of focusing on secondary and even less important tasks you should make it a habit to focus 100% on your most important tasks and tackle those other tasks only once you are finished with your primary tasks.

It is not at all as difficult as you may think

Yes, breaking old habits and establishing new ones is always a bit of a challenge – but only at the very beginning.

You can get used to pretty much anything in life and it doesn’t take much longer than 3-4 weeks to adopt a new habit. And I promise, the habit of focusing on your primary tasks first will change your entire life and it will almost guarantee your success.

Here are 9 simple steps that will help you to establish the habit of  “completing your most important tasks first before doing anything else” fun and easy:

1: Identify your most important tasks

I’m sure, you already know what those most important tasks are in your case. Oftentimes, those are the tasks you like the least. The tasks that require you to step outside your comfort zone. The tasks you may be a bit afraid to tackle…

2: Make a list of your most important tasks

Make a list of your priority tasks for the next 3 months, for the following month and for the following week.

Also, at the end of each day make a list of your primary tasks and action steps for the following day.

3: Make the decision to tackle your most important task first

Before going to bed, promise to yourself to focus 100% on your most important task first thing in the morning. Make the commitment that no matter how you feel in the morning, whether you are motivated or not, whether there are tons of emails in your inbox… that you will jump on this top priority task as soon as your work day starts.

4: Visualize yourself performing this task easily and successfully.

Imagine, feel and visualize how much fun you have and how good it feels once your task is completed. This is an excellent way to prepare your subconscious mind to already get going while you are asleep. When you wake up in the morning, a part of you has already been working on your #1 task and it will be much easier for you to complete it.

5: Don’t think too much, just do it

The mind can be very tricky when it comes to performing those sorts of tasks that lie outside our comfort zone. If you spend too much time weighing your options, you may find all kinds of excuses why it would be better to do something different. Don’t think too much, just get going. Take action and get started.

6: Don’t worry about doing a perfect job

When you need to do something you are not used to, your performance will probably be mediocre. And that’s perfectly ok.

So, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. It is still better to do a mediocre job than doing nothing at all.

7: Push through those critical first 10-15 minutes

It could very well be that you don’t feel the slightest drive and motivation to get started with your priority task. That’s normal and that’s the reason why people procrastinate.

But, there is a simple trick to get around this lack of motivation. Commit to get started and to push through those first 10-15 minutes. 10-15 minutes is nothing and you can do it even if you have zero motivation.

Don’t think too much, don’t dwell on your lack of motivation. Just jump into your tasks and do at least something.

After those 10-15 minutes, your creativity suddenly starts flowing, ideas are coming, you feel the drive and motivation… and you are simply enjoying the process.

8: Enjoy your achievement

Once you are finished with your priority task, realize how good it feels. Enjoy your achievement and be proud of yourself.  This will fuel you with even more energy and motivation for your remaining tasks.

9: Make it a habit

You have done a great job so far, but you didn’t create a new habit yet. So, I’m pretty sure, over the next few days you will encounter once again a situation where the temptation is huge to focus on one of those easier, less important tasks.

That’s normal, establishing a new habit takes some time – typically 3-4 weeks. Just keep on going and know that it is getting easier with every day and that after only 3-4 weeks you will have created a habit that will completely change your life and make success almost inevitable.

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Way to Stay Positive When Dealing With Negative People

We all have to deal with negative people at some point in lives, we just do. Sometimes we can avoid them, other times we can’t. Sometimes these negative people stay for a little while, other times they stay long enough to make us want to jump off a bridge.

But since we know it’s a fact of life that negative people exist, what can we do deal with Negative Nancy and Pessimistic Peter?

Understand They Have Different Values

There are times when the negative people we have to deal with aren’t always negative, they just happen to be really negative in certain situations.

When I started college, I was an engineering major. I did really well in school and got accepted into a summer internship program with one of the biggest oil companies in the world. It was awesome. I performed so well in the internship program that they brought me back the following summer. After the second summer I was told I had a full time job waiting for me once I graduated.

But unfortunately, not only did I turn down that high paying job offer, I left the engineering major entirely! I realized that engineering wasn’t my passion and I began studying small business management instead.

My family wasn’t so thrilled about the idea. I was going to be the first one in my family to get a college degree, and the fact that it was going to be an engineering degree made my family ecstatic because they knew that a degree in engineering meant financial security. That’s what was important to them, a nice steady paycheck with great benefits.

So when news broke that I was changing my major, my family voiced a lot of concerns and brought a pretty negative attitude to the situation. They kept reminding me of the time that would be wasted and the big payday that would never come. It was tough to hear, and it even made me second-guess my decision.

But I had to go back and remind myself of what my values were. What was important to me? Delivering something of significance to world the world, and I felt that a degree in engineering wouldn’t allow me to really reach my potential.

I valued significance, my family valued security. We couldn’t have been further apart from each other.

Once I realized that we had such a big difference in values on the topic, it made it a lot easier for me to tune out the negative comments and energy they were sending my way.

Take Responsibility for Your Own Happiness

Negativity is contagious. It’s easy for someone else’s negative thoughts to slowly creep over and start affecting you in a negative way.

But positivity is also contagious, so when someone is giving you a lot of negative energy, you have to fight back with positive energy. You can’t allow someone else’s negativity to become yours. Just because Negative Nick doesn’t think it’s a good idea for you to go after your dreams, that doesn’t mean you have to think it’s a bad idea too.

You have to be responsible for you own happiness and positivity. If we break down the word responsibility we get “response – ability”. Responsibility is simply your ability to respond.

You don’t have the power to choose what life throws at you, or what these negative people do and say to you, but, you do have the ability to choose how you respond and that’s what’s most important.

You can choose to respond in way that lets the negativity drains your positivity and makes you feel hopeless and frustrated, or you can choose to respond in way that makes you work even harder and focus even more on the positive aspects of the situation.

The dictionary defines responsibility as “the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization”. That means you don’t need an ok from anyone else to act on something that you’re responsible for. So even when the negative people disagree with you, who cares?

It helps if you ask yourself,

• “What can I do to reinforce my positive attitude?”
• “What can I do to discredit their negative attitude and opinion?”
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Your happiness depends more on your own attitude than any external factors. So don’t let the negative people of the world get you down.

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