Success is all about attitude, there’s no denying it. The attitude you have toward opportunities, toward struggles, towards life… It’s involved during the process of making your life filled with happiness and success. So it’s not surprising that there are multiple negative attitudes people have acquired towards success over the years, mostly because they haven’t yet succeeded.
Is your attitude towards success a positive one?
These bad and negative attitudes that I’m talking about, develop within many different aspects of success. Some people develop bad attitudes over time because they haven’t gotten to the position they want to be in yet in life, and it seems out of their grasp.
But on the other side of the fence, there are those that have become very successful in life, but it’s gotten to their head and they attitude has shifted over time from good to bad. And that’s not good, definitely not in the long run.
Here are 7 negative attitudes to avoid if you want to be successful.
Greed
Greed is one of those negative attitudes people have normally after they become relatively successful. The money and power goes to their head, which eventually leads to them chasing more of it and completely disregarding their original goals. It’s happens all the time in business, and more often than not they end up destroying themselves because of it.
Sure, you can naturally be greedy, a lot of people are. That’s why you’ll see thousands of people every year start businesses with nothing but Naira signs in their eyes. They want the money, they want the power, but they have no passion for helping others. So greed is definitely a negative attitude people have potentially both before and after achieving success in their lives. Some greedy partners are even fond of cheating their partners in an unscrupulous manner.
The first two goals people have involve money and power. What’s your third goal? Forget the first two and focus on that one.
Over-Confident
Don’t get me wrong here, confidence is very important in absolutely everything you do. Confidence can be the key to success, but over-confidence? That can be a detriment.
Having an over-confident attitude can leave people open to weak points in themselves and their business, that they haven’t even considered as being weak yet. If you’re overly-confident in that your business or your knowledge is perfect, you’re unable to work on your own weaknesses and areas where you can improve (There will be at least one area always).
It’s important to still consider areas where you can improve, and always be improving, rather than neglect it because you think you’ve already covered it completely. No matter what it may be, every little detail pushes you one step closer to success.
Impatient
I should have mentioned in the intro that some of these attitudes can actually bring positive outcomes in certain circumstances. 90% of the time people just won’t use those mental attitudes for their advantages, unfortunately. When you think about it, impatience can be just as good a mindset as patience can be.
When you’re naturally impatient, you have a tendency to get things done far more quickly than anybody else would. The only downside is that without self-control we can often then turn this into a huge disadvantage for ourselves because we skimp on quality just to tick things off as being complete.
The other downside of impatience is that people who have this ‘quality’, are the people who tend to go flat out at work for the first month or two, and then give up on the third.
Can you relate to this? So can I. That’s why impatience needs to be kept an eye on.
Being Stubborn
I mentioned impatience as being both a positive and negative attitude people have towards success, and in many ways, stubbornness is very similar. Starting with the less focused on, yet positive attitude, stubbornness means people are harder to crack when others try to tell them things can’t be done. They won’t have any of it.
If you’re a stubborn person, as I can definitely be at times, then you’ll know that once you’re set on doing something you’ll do it. It doesn’t matter who tells you it’s impossible, that it can’t be done, you still believe it can be.
The downside, being that stubborn people are far less likely to take others’ advice, or even want other people’s help. It also has the potential to leave people narrow minded and unable to see past what they may be focusing on, which in itself can be both an advantage and disadvantage.
It perhaps gives people greater focus, but less visibility on any opportunities that may present themselves.
Being Lazy
I see laziness featured a lot in success and self-development blogs, why wouldn’t it be? Laziness allows ideas to remain ideas and never turn into actions. Being lazy takes no effort; literally none at all. That’s why it’s easy to be lazy and why so many people naturally are.
Although, if you ever want to get anywhere near what you’d call success in life, then laziness is the first negative attitude to sort out, above all others. Success takes hard work and you’re probably not that hard working if you think you’re lazy.
Why do you think 20% of all the self-development and success articles you read address laziness?
Because it’s something you probably need to address too!
Disbelief
You’ll notice, that up until now none of the attitudes listed really serve as a mental block for people not being able or not wanting to move in the direction of success.
That’s where disbelief comes in. What with only a small percentage of people in the world becoming abnormally successful, and a large percentage that put in a lot of effort and still don’t make it, it can be difficult to actually believe that you can do it.
The important thing to remember is that some of the most successful people in the world came from backgrounds where most people thought it could never be done, until they had the believe to find out for themselves. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a classic example, coming from a small village in Austria, becoming a world champion bodybuilder was almost deemed out of the question.
Even then, he went on to star in world famous movies against all odds and people’s opinions, and then even further to become the governor of California. Schwarzenegger was only the second foreign person in history to become governor.
Have the belief, that anything is possible.
Ignorance
Ignorance, laziness and stubbornness are all negative attitudes people have that link together closely. If you’re lazy, you’ll be ignorant. If you’re stubborn, you’ll be ignorant.
The ignorance people sometimes have towards achieving success, is costly. When it comes to success, you can’t ignore anything. All options have to be considered and every stage of any process has to be carried out. Some people don’t plan much, because they don’t think it’s necessary and so they ignore it, which leaves them open to potential questions and scenarios that they’re unable to answer and navigate their way through.
And just like stubbornness, we might sometimes ignore people and the ideas they have for us, because we think we know better. Which is unfortunate, because like-minded people are your greatest aids in climbing up the ladder of success. They can help you step up your game.
These are all negative attitudes people have towards success, and it can hinder progression toward their goals. Shortly, we’ll be posting an article on all the good attitudes that people can have towards success, as well as the bad ones listed above. Which attitude do you have?
Do you agree with this list? Are there any attitudes you think should be added?