2 Habits You Must Give Up in Order to Grow and Succeed in Life

There are numerous unproductive habits which weigh so heavily that they prevent those who indulge them from rising in life.

As Vince Lombardi said, “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” Good habits will take you up and bad habits will keep you down. A change in habit will lead to a change in the happenings around you. Of the many bad habits, there are, the following two are very fundamental and impacts negatively on one’s ability to succeed.

Excuses

Excuses are the sugar-quoted reasons advanced to get others to overlook one’s failure to achieve a set goal. Whether the reason you give is true or false or a bit of both, excuses do not better your lots in life. One of the best ways to keep yourself from making progress is to invent good reasons to avoid taking full responsibility for bad decisions and consequent failures in your life. And the reality is that one can always make up more than a thousand good reasons to justify failure and fruitlessness. The downside of this bad habit of making excuses is that, it makes one accept mediocrity and underachievement as a norm.

You are right if you think that you are wired to be a high achiever because that is exactly what you will eventually turn out to be. You are also right if you think that you do not have the luck that spurs people on to great ends, because you will make a great harvest of just what you have invested into your thought life. Your progress in life stops where you start making excuses for shortfalls in your performance.

Life is not a smooth journey for anybody. Anyone you know who seem to be doing exceptionally well in any pursuit perfected their craft amidst obvious challenges and flaws. You are more likely to achieve the best if you prepare for the worse and dedicate your life to a cause with a soldier’s sense of duty. Failure is not an option. Resolve to get results instead of reasons to explain failure.

There is a road that leads to every destination in life. If you arrive at the wrong place, it is because you took the wrong route, not because the destination does not exist. Taking responsibility for bad decisions and wrong turns in your life will inspire you to be better at every new attempt. We learn from our mistakes when we take responsibility for them and resolve to do better later; but we live with our mistakes when we make excuses for them.  The choice is yours!

Procrastination and Inaction

Procrastination is postponing something that must be done with immediacy to a later date.  And inaction simply means failure to act. Deferring action usually leads to eventual inaction. Ignorance is a dreadful cause of a lot of suffering in the world. But it appears many underachievers are guilty of the charge of procrastination and inaction other than ignorance. People know what to do to better their lots in life, they just don’t do it.  They have motive without momentum.

It is said that one action is better than a thousand good intentions. And rightly so because the real value of knowledge is revealed in its application. As a pastor who is committed to right interpretation and teaching of the Bible, Ezekiel 33:31 is a text of consolation to me, as I observe people who have intentionally committed themselves to doing the very opposite of what the Bible says: “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice.”

The King James Version puts it this way: “And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them.”

The parrot makes a show of what it knows by talking plenty. But talk is cheap. The real difference is the actualizing of what we know. Exempt yourself from those who are in the habit of listening to good talks without any intentions to act on them.

What actions have you taken after reading all the articles that we publish at TOPVINCENT.COM? Activity does not guarantee productivity but there cannot be productivity without activity. The outcome of your life depends more on what you do for yourself than what others do for you. No matter how helpful others become to you, everything will waste away if you do not have the right attitude to manage what they give you.

I understand that a lot of people are POOR, because they Pass Over Opportunities Repeatedly. Procrastination and inaction do not make the best of opportunities. If you lack a spirit of execution, follow us at TOPVINCENT.COM and learn how to develop a spirit of enterprise for greater accomplishments.