The 5 Behaviors that Prevent Happiness and Success
People write and speak a lot about the behaviors that will set you up for happiness and success, but have you ever considered the behaviors that are holding you back from achieving your goals in life?
I’ve identified five specific behaviors that are guaranteed to cause you difficulties in life and interfere with your ability to achieve the happiness and success you’ve been hoping for.
If you aren’t where you want to be in your career or finances; if your relationships aren’t as positive as they could be; if your life, in general, lacks fulfillment, you might want to take a look at this list and see if you’re engaging in any of these behaviors, so that you can begin to change them today.
Here are the five behaviors guaranteed to interfere with your happiness and success in life:
1: Avoidance: So many problems arise when we engage in avoidance. When we avoid thinking about a problematic issue, we can’t deal with it, so our problem won’t go away and might even get bigger. When we procrastinate about doing something we find challenging, either we’ll fail to accomplish our goal or if we do eventually get to it, it will never be as good because we gave ourselves less time to do it in.
2: Rigidity: Being rigid means not being able to let go of attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that are getting in the way of our happiness and success. If we keep holding on to these counter-productive ways of being, we’ll never achieve our ultimate goals.
3: Magical thinking: This is when you believe the hopeful fantasies in your head. Whether you convince yourself that your romantic partner is not the jerk they really are; your boss really is going to give you that raise or promotion; your bills are somehow going to get paid or your addiction will take care of itself, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and failure. You need to face reality and step up to the plate. Otherwise, disaster.
4: Blaming others for your problems: If you have a tendency of externalizing the blame for the difficulties you’re facing, you’ll never be able to resolve these difficulties in your life. When you take responsibility for the problems you’ve created, you actually empower yourself to create positive change, whereas when you externalize the blame, you’re powerless to effect any meaningful change in your life.
5: Self-criticism: When your inner monologue is always putting you down, it can be so detrimental to your self-esteem that you become paralyzed. The negative self-talk in your head can be so destructive to your motivation that it prevents you from moving forward with your plans and achieving your dreams. You need to silence this inner critic and replace the negativity with positive, encouraging affirmations.
If you are repeatedly encountering difficulties, frustrations or disappointment, and you’d like things to improve significantly, there are concrete actions you can take right now.
Read the above list carefully, and if you identify any of the above behaviors as ones that you’ve been engaging in, you can choose to let them go, and bring yourself one step closer to achieving the happiness and success that you desire.
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You will also enjoy 13 Approval-Seeking Behaviors You Need to Stop and How to Deal with the Voice of the Inner Critic
About the Author
Marcia Sirota MD FRCP(C) is a board-certified psychiatrist, that does not ascribe to any one theoretical school. Rather, she has integrated her education and life experiences into a unique approach to the practice of psychotherapy. She considers herself a realist with a healthy measure of optimism. Sign up here for her free monthly wellness newsletter. Listen here to her latest podcast. mariasirotamd.com
