I know some of you are fighting your own battles, so I thought it would be valuable to you, if I was to go through some of the most common reason why people fail. No matter what you're doing right now, if you're starting a business, if you're struggling to find love or looking to start a family, trying to get in shape or want to improve yourself in any aspect of your life, there is a pretty good chance of failure. If you've been watching motivational videos for a while, you know that everyone glorifies failure these days, it's like some sought of desired outcome. To be frank that's incredibly stupid and those people should be ashamed of spreading that kind of information. The last thing you want to do in life is fail, but because there's such a high rate of failure all around us, it's smart to know how to use it and how to deal with it to not make the same mistakes again but failure should never be your goal, people should stop glorifying failure. Your failure is a clear indication that you were not ready enough, you were not smart enough to prevent it and you don't deserve the success you're after. The world doesn't reward failure, it rewards those that manage to escape it. Failure means you just lost a battle, maybe not the war. But losing of battles might make your dreams die an early death.
Next time you hear someone glorifying their failures, show them this post. Now that you understand why failure is such a bad thing, let's have a look at why people fail in business and in life. Here are the most common reason.
They Never Try In The First Place
Photo credit
This one is pretty straight forward and if you need me to explain it for you, you're probably on your way to failure. But I'm going to do it anyway for the sake of making sure you understand what we're talking about.
How do you expect to win a race if you're not in it?
How do you expect a girl to say yes, if you've never asked her the question?
How do you expect to get anything without putting in the work? The world doesn't owe you anything, if you want it, you've got to go get it. You might be bad at it at first, but at least now you're in the race while the rest are just spectators.
They Underestimate What It Will Take
Everything looks easy from the outside, right? It's easy to look at someone successful and assume you two are just alike and you can easily do what he or she does until you actually go to do it. One of the most common reason why people fail in life is that they often underestimate what it would take to make a certain goal become a reality. Throughout this post I'd mention various angle which people under budget when it comes to achieving success. This happens because people usually look at the end result and not the structure behind it. It seems easy to look at Kim Kardashian and say; "I could have done that", but when you really start breaking things apart, how many Kardashians are there? You think you just need to have a spicy video online and you're instantly going to get hundreds of million of dollars. Go ahead try it. Do you have any idea how many women tried to replicate that model and failed miserably. Probably not because they failed so hard, you didn't even hear about them. I specifically used the Kardashian example here but here are plenty of options that could have illustrated my point but none of them would have hit the nerve the same way the Kardashians do. If you feel is unfair they got all that money, then you're obviously not aware of the structure behind, you're just looking at the surface. Never underestimate what it would take to make it.
They're Lazy
Photo credit
If you wanted something that was achievable and all you had to do was put in x amount of work to get and you didn't, what do you call that? I call that being lazy. You want to learn a new language, guess what, unless a future tech comes out with some way of downloading the new language patch directly into your brain, you're going to have to put some serious hours into this. You want to have a six pack or flat stomach and you don't already, it's because you're lazy. You may say, "well, I don't have the time to go to the gym", don't bullshit yourself, you could wake up an hour earlier and fit in a decent run, it's just that you're too lazy to do anything about it. If that solution doesn't work for you, then you're too lazy to figure out a solution that does work for your situation. Being lazy doesn't necessarily mean putting in hard physical work, it also has to do with your ability to understand what skills and knowledge you need to acquire in order to give you a shot at success. Don't be lazy when it comes to your goals, don't procrastinate, while you're wasting time watching reruns of God knows what awful telenovelas people are watching these days, there's someone out there that is putting in the work shooting for the same goals as you do and they're going to get it because you were lazy.
They Don't Have A Competitive Advantage
Photo credit
One of the basic rules in life is, "do not compete unless you have a competitive advantage". Competition is for losers, if you're in a race with the goal to compete then you're already behind, those are the worse races to be in,while you compete with other people who are here to compete as well, there's one guy way out there in the lead, he's not here to compete with you losers, he's here to dominate. Do you think google is competing with bing? I don't think so. The big reward comes to those who are instrumentally better than everyone else, to those who have an edge. That doesn't mean a new player can't show up and turn the entire thing upside down. Uber did not show to to compete with taxis, it came to dominate the industry. Success comes by having a competitive advantage over those who are coming for the same thing you want, if you're unable to have a competitive advantage, you're bound to always be at most mediocre.
They Don't Learn And Adapt Fast Enough
Photo credit
The single most important factor when it comes to survival is your ability to adapt to the ever changing environment you kr your business lives in. The second you start lagging behind, you're out, done, you failed. People fail because they believe you only need to work hard to get to the top of the mountain but what they don't realize is that the top conditions are pretty harsh; the snow is deep, the winds are stronger than at the bottom, and you have to fight with all you have, if you want to stay there. The mountain is always challenging, the rules are changing, new information is always on the rise, your inability you continually learn about the emerging trends will result in your failure. In the last few years I've seen titans fall to crumbles because of this, the didn't want to learn new tricks, a great example of this is blockbuster, the future came knocking on their door; Netflix offered to sell blockbuster but no, people loved getting dressed and walking into a store to rent DVDs, there is a certain pleasure of running into strangers at the store, this streaming thing is going nowhere, we'll stick to our old business model. Well, how did that work out? Want some more examples; remember when yahoo could have bought google for one million dollars. Read books, watch videos, go to events, experiment with new tools, your success depends on it.
Lack Of Self Discipline
Photo credit
Another reason why people fail is that they don't understand the importance of self discipline. Once you have your commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to make it happen, it's not going to be easy, it's going to be hard. Your inability to have control over your thoughts, your emotions, your habits, your actions is what will lead you to failure. The paradox is, you need self discipline to improve your self discipline skills. This is such a strong concept, that I want to dedicate a post to it, I'm going to cover in detail what step one should take to start disciplining all the relevant aspects of their life, so make sure you don't miss it.
Lack Of Planning
Photo credit
When it comes to the real world, you don't get many shots, you have to make great use of all of them. Most people have an idea of what they want to do but very few have an actual plan on how to get there. Let me explain, let's say you wanted to bake an apple pie, that's your goal, how do you achieve that goal? You go online, search for recipes on apple pie, understand all the ingredients you'd need to make the apple pie and also realize you might not have all of them inside of your house. Maybe you need to take a trip to the store to acquire some of them. Even after you've secured all of the ingredients, there is a certain order of events that needs to happen to get that apple pie done correct. Without understanding what the goal is, what pieces need to be in place and what the process would entail, you have almost zero chance to get it right.
Fear Of Failure
Photo credit
Let us first double down on what I said in the intro, there is nothing worse than failure, but when we say that we mean, total failure, that's when you're left with nothing, you're done, you're out, that was it. You've exhausted all of your resources and that didn't amount to anything, that's what true failure is, and you should be scared of it. Everything else are just bumps in the road that you need to overcome, you need to willing to overcome these hurdles and stay focused on the big goal. This is what separates the wannabes from the real real go-getters. We're all scared of failure, but that's what drives us to be better every single day, to show up every single day, to keep putting in the work every single day, to keep learning every single day. Some may say, "what if it doesn't work out for me?" well there is a really good chance it's not going to work for you. Are you still willing to take the risk, are you willing to bet your future on yourself, if the answer is no, then you're not scared of failure, you're not just ready. If you try and don't get it, that's not failure, it's the world's way to showing you that you need to make a correction. Please remember that, the one true and only failure is when no other option remain, the rest are just there to keep the fake ones from getting it.
True Failure Is When There Is No Option Left
Wanting Too Much Too Quickly
The truth is, there are no shortcuts, real life is not like a movie, you're not the chosen one, you're not going to have a happy ending in one and a half hours, unless you pay for it but that's a different kind of happy ending. Time is one of the most important ingredient when creating success same as fear, it has the role to get rid of those who are not ready. Everyone wany9to get rich quick, everyone is selling you the secret to success, or seven step program to one million dollars in six months, maybe only working four hours a week. Once you educate yourself enough to understand how the market works, what it takes to create a product, how consumers get access to new products, and different business models, it becomes clear that everything worth building will demand extensive periods of time, on average, it takes ten years for a business to reach maturity, with the first three years being the most overwhelming with barely no results whatsoever, by year six or seven, you should see real traction with maturity around year ten. That's how you should plan a business and be ready to apply all the points before this one to even have a shot at surviving.
They're Too Emotionally Invested To Realize They're Wrong
Photo credit
Your idea is your baby and nobody wants to admit that sometimes their own baby sucks. Sometimes it's underdeveloped, not that creative, has problem connecting, or you really did a poor job parenting. Some ideas are stupid and just because for some weird reason it somewhat makes sense to you, it doesn't mean the world needs it, no matter how unique your business is, there is a difference between a unique idea and a useful idea. Do you see where I'm getting at? Fortunately for you, there's a pretty straight forward way to realize that either everyone is wrong or it's just you. Here's how you do it;
If everyone tells you it's a stupid idea and you've failed to prove them wrong despite giving it your all, then your idea is stupid, stop treating your idea or business like a person, it's one of the benefits of running a business, you can make objective choices that will ensure the survival of the company at the expense of subjective things. You don't need a state of the art office in the middle of Lagos for your candle sharing app, it's not the office that keeps your candle sharing app from taking off, it's your idea that is stupid to begin with, it's time to shoot it and start working on something new.
They Make Excuses
Photo credit
Ever notice that whenever someone fails it was never their fault; we were too early, the world wasn't ready, facebook beat us to it, I didn't have enough money, I wasn't born in the right country. Come on, give it a break, it's you that failed, you were not smart enough, you failed to see that you're going to need more money, and failed the game of securing that money, you failed to position yourself right, it's not the market, the country or the resources, it's you. You were the one who was unable to make the best possible use of all the things you currently have access to in order to gain access to bigger and better opportunities afterwards. Stop making excuses because we're not buying it, come back when you have something that is of value to the world.
They're Being Resistant To Advice
Photo credit
Another reason why most people fail is their inability to distinguish good advice from bad advice. Believe it or not, in every failure story, there's one point when the subject in question could have chosen a different route, but they failed to do so, because they thought they knew better. It's people who always think they have all the answers, that keep on failing, that's the beauty of this game. The world is constantly giving you feedback on whatever it is you're doing, a lot of people would want to pitch in with their own inputs and you never know what message could trigger either your jump to the next level or your drop to zero.
They Don't Measure Progress
Photo credit
Goals should be measurable, and so is progress, you need to be able to keep track of how well you're performing. Most people start a huge goal like I'd become a billionaire, but have no idea how to get there and they're not making progress towards it. People fail because they unaware of the aspect of their lives in which they're making good progress and which ones they aren't. You can't improve on things you can't measure and don't keep track of. The most common way of losing weight is by weighing yourself every morning and writing it down on a calender or piece of paper next to the scale, this makes sure you're aware of fluctuations in your body weight and it's a great reminder of the goal you're shooting for, the second you stop keeping track, progress is lost.
They're All Talk, No Show
Photo credit
It's easy to tell who are the all talk, no show wannabe entrepreneurs, they're usually the ones using all the buzz words, going to all the conventions but never committing to anything. You've heard about them starting a social network, then an app, then something with 3D printing, they jump from one trend to the other because it's hot, despite saying they're going to do it, the most work they tend to put in is creating a new facebook page which they'd use to spam you with until they jump into the next thing with a new facebook page and spam you with that one. They fail because they rarely commit to becoming really good at something, acquiring the competitive edge and almost always expect a quick win.
They Give Up
Photo credit
Giving up is throwing in the towel, you lost, you were unable to succeed, the game was too hard for you to beat, now you know where you stand. People fail because they give too easily, because they're too lazy to do what it takes to get themselves to a position where they can overcome. People who give up usually pass the fault to external elements and they're the ones making excuses but deep down they know that they never had what it takes and that's OK, some are leaders and some are followers, some would succeed while others will cave away when things get rough. The greatest rewards are waitkng for those who are willing to take the greatest risks, those who despite all odds against them push through and change the world forever. These are the people that never give up which brings us to the question; why do you think people fail?
What should I add to this list.
Please drop your answers in the comment.
They Don't Know Themselves
Photo credit
This something most people overlook when starting on their journey and it's something that if nor addressed early on would bring everything down to the ground. You need to know where you stand, what your values are, what your definition of success looks like. Unless you have a clear understanding of yourself, you're not going to be able to make the right call when the time comes and you'd be doomed to fail.
I truly hope that some of you reading this post have what it takes to make it happen for you, by "it" I mean success. The truth is most of you will probably fail, you'll try, you'd make excuses, you won't put in the work and you'd blame it on whatever fits your story but among you, there are a few that will achieve success beyond what the rest are even dreaming about. It won't be many just a very few, it's going to be the one who enters the race and puts in the work, the one who is continually learning and working butt off.
