Every successful person follows a unique path with varying experiences, circumstances, and accomplishments. But when studying how people reach the top of their respective fields, hobbies, or art forms, it’s equally helpful to study what successful people are not doing.
Stop Wasting Energy On These 4 Things
Every person on the face of the planet is constrained by time. We each get 168 hours per week – not a moment more or less. Roughly 25 to 35 percent of this time is spent sleeping, which means you really only have somewhere between 16 and 18 hours in each day. Wasting even just a couple of these hours can mean the difference between exuding success and embodying a mentality of scarcity.
Successful people – whether in business, sports, or media – all have face the exact same time constraints as you, yet seem to consistently accomplish more. Much of this has to do with the habits and practices they instill, but it’s also highly correlated to the things they don’t do. If you spend time analyzing their individual approaches to life, you’ll discover that they refuse to waste precious time and energy on the following:
1. Holding Grudges
Grudges do nothing but siphon energy and paralyze thinking. So while successful people aren’t invincible to the wrongs of others, they typically refuse to hold grudges.
When you hold a grudge, it consumes your every waking thought. You think about how you can avoid that person, hurt them, or cause grief in their life. You go from thinking about how you can gain or produce one thing to how you can negate something else. It’s a total mindset shift – and one that prevents you from being productive and successful. The sooner you stop holding grudges, the more freedom you’ll have to accomplish great things.
2. Complaining
Research shows that the average person complains between 15 to 30 minutes per day – enough to cause physical damage to the brain! Complaining is like a virus that starts in isolation but eventually spreads to consume the entire body. If you don’t eliminate complaining from your life, it’ll eventually erode your thinking and decision-making.
The best way to avoid complaining is to speak up. Tell your friends, coworkers, neighbors, and loved ones that you want to stop complaining. Give them an open invitation to call you out when you start speaking negatively. Asking for this accountability will make it less likely that you let negativity control your mental processing.
3. Dealing With Inefficiencies
There are certain tasks in life that are highly inefficient, yet you continue to do them over and over again while expecting different results. (This is quite literally the definition of insanity.) You think to yourself, “If I can just get it right this time, it won’t be a problem.”
Selling a vehicle is a great example. We’ve all had that experience where we wasted time driving around from dealer to dealer, haggling over price, dealing with DMV title transfers, filling out paperwork, etc. It’s frustrating and time-consuming – often eating up an entire weekend. Yet we do the same thing every single time we sell a vehicle. Successful people don’t continue to repeat inefficient processes like this. Instead, they find a convenient service to come out to their house and pay cash for their vehicle. It’s simple decisions like this that shave hours of time off inefficient tasks.
What is it for you? What inefficient tasks do you continue to repeat over and over? Start by identifying these tasks and then implement some alternative processes that save you time and mental energy.
4. Constantly Refreshing Social Media
Successful people may use social networking as a tool for marketing, branding, and exposure, but they very rarely rely on it as a crutch. Unlike the majority of people who constantly refresh their social media feeds in search of little tokens of pleasure, successful people utilize this time for learning. They read books, listen to podcasts, or write in their journals. You should make it a point to do the same.
Reclaim Your Time and Energy
By pushing away time- and energy-wasters like these, you can free up your schedule and maximize energy. These resources can then be reallocated to tasks, activities, and responsibilities that are worthy of your focus. This may include family, relationships, a business, a hobby, or a spiritual discipline.
Success isn’t as elusive as you may think, but you have to be intentional and proactive about seizing it. Now’s the time to analyze your schedule and habits so that you can better optimize your approach to daily living and maximize the time you have.
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This content is sponsored by Larry Alton.
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