Complaining.
The amount of complaining you do is equivalent to the amount of power you don’t have. It’s the sound wave of defeat. Becoming a repeat complainer keeps your failures alive. The anger you feel every time you utter those words serves only to revive that negative memory- a memory that would be much better off dead and forgotten. As one of the pioneers of human development once said:
“We become what we think.” – Earl Nightingale
Complaining shows that you’re weak. You may believe that it serves you well because you’re releasing the “stress” but nothing could be further from the truth. When have you seen a successful person complaining to their friends at the bar about life being so unfair? Chances are.. never. If you have seen a successful person at the bar you can rest assured that they own it. I’m going to now go over 5 things successful people don’t do; these will reinforce why complaining destroys your chances of success. I’m also going to go over what you can do instead, so pay attention.

1. They don’t focus on the problem

Focusing on the problem is the reason why people crash into poles even though they’re one hundred feet away from it. Focusing on problems can cause a tragic situation and yes, it can even be the reason you’ll never succeed. If you keep focusing on the problem you’ll only gravitate towards more problems. Complaining is a form of focusing on the problem. Instead, you should be focusing on finding a solution. In pilot school they teach you to not focus on the ground (the problem) if you happen to have a system failure, but instead, focus on where you want to go (the solution) and your body will naturally follow. Rich and successful people are where they are because of their ability to find solutions. So the next time you catch yourself complaining, make sure it’s at least followed by a solution.

2. They don’t blame others for their failure

Blaming someone or something else for the lack of your success implies that you have no control over your situation. This causes a sense of powerlessness that overwhelms you to the point where you don’t want to take action anymore. Instead, you’ll try to look for other people to solve your problems for you, which causes dependency. Even if your failure was caused by a force outside of you, you should still find a way to take responsibility for it. Once you do this, you will find yourself doing things to move closer to your goal and you will find yourself succeeding more often. That’s much better than complaining and not doing anything at all.

3. They don’t procrastinate

It’s easy to do tasks that don’t move you closer to what you want to achieve. But procrastination almost never results in becoming success. You can look at complaining as a form of procrastination. It’s so much easier to complain about the problem instead of looking for the solution to the problem. Don’t fall into this trap or you’ll never become rich and successful. Instead, eliminate the source that’s causing you to procrastinate. If it’s complaining, just change the subject matter. If it’s social media, then make it harder for you to access your accounts. Doing so will ensure that you focus on the things that truly matter, such as solutions.

4. They don’t believe in limitations

This might be dangerous, but successful people don’t believe there’s a limit to the amount they can achieve. It seems almost delusional, but this is inherit in almost every successful person. They don’t listen to society when they say they can achieve something, because how would society know? Have they tested it? Most likely not. Rich and successful people know this so they tend to not listen to conventional logic. Complaining implies that you’re limiting what you can achieve. You say things like “I can’t do it! It’s too hard!” This is called a limiting belief. They’re artificial boundaries that only exist in your head. Instead, you should be asking yourself “What can I do differently to get to where I want to be?” This allows you to achieve things you never thought you could.

5. They don’t make a big deal out of mistakes

Making a mistake is not a big deal. In fact, the longer you think and complain about that mistake you made, the more likely you are to fail. You end up getting so fearful of making that mistake again that you decide to hold back and do nothing. You’ll never catch a successful person dwelling on their mistakes. Instead, you should look at the mistake you’ve made, get the lesson out of it and move on. You don’t want your fear to grow bigger.
Featured photo credit: Matt Yohe via en.wikipedia.org