10 Ways to Fail in Life, Almost Guaranteed!

A note from peter@thewealthyattitude.com for Monday May 4 2009

Hello there all good folks and welcome to the first Monday of May.

Let me start off by thanking everyone who courageously shared thoughts and reflections on last weeks topics. I had a hoot over the weekend re-living your own experiences with you through your sharing, and now I have only one thing to say" "ROCK ON"!

Folks, many of the reflections we received did seriously highlight a whole bunch of single issues that detracted people from their intentions. Our contributor today kind of wraps them all up in.....

10 Ways to Fail in Life, Almost Guaranteed!

by Patrick Chan

So you want to be successful in life? Is that what you want? Then you better stop failing and become aware of these 10 ways to fail in life.

You see, I've been asked many times for how to achieve success and weird enough, seems like nobody's taking that advice seriously. Then I realized one thing - most people are ALREADY failing before they even get started!

This article is slightly controversial compared to the normal goodie-goodie personal development advice because this is the TRUTH. If I want to keep everyone happy and write about the colorful rainbow, birds chirping, flowers blooming, etc then I should just opens up a nursery home and take care of children. I want to tell you the truth straight to your face because I've been there and heard the garbage lies thrown everywhere.

Avoid these and you'll automatically be on the right track (provided you want to be successful)…

1. Mixing With Losers

It's a guaranteed way to fail in life with this. Whatever you like to do, losers will just tell you it won't work and after some time, you will also become a loser. High five, welcome to the losers' club. Something about losers you should know: they like to recruit new people and are very comfortable in their shoes. They don't welcome change. So when you see someone with either of these two characteristics, you know what you should do.

2. Don't Know What You Want
The most common goal I hear all of the time is, "I want to be rich". I mean it's fine with that generic goal but the problem is, how rich do you want to be? Or how rich is rich? Put it this way - the methods used to make a million and $3,000 are different. No wonder some people couldn't experience breakthroughs in life because they are playing small for big goals. If you want to make a million, you better put in that level of commitment, bucko.

3. You Want Everything
It's nice to have a lot of things but if you go chasing everything, you get nothing. Let me tell you why - you only have 24 hours a day and you've got to focus on your priorities. I know, I know, you can hire others and so on but the fact is, you've got to want 'something' first to lead to another 'something', then to everything. Make sense?

4. Watching "The Secret" Way Too Much
I'm not here to criticize Law Of Attractions (LOA) and don't want to receive hate emails. As a matter of fact, I do believe in it and have friends who appeared in the Secrets. But it's a surefire way to fail if you keep on watching "The Secret" and doing ‘attraction' by sitting down on your floor manifesting 3 hours a day. In my point of view, scientifically, Law of Attraction runs on the concept of 'believing'. When you believe you can achieve your goal, you will take actions to actually achieve it but if you don't understand this basic element and think LOA is some sort of miracle remedy, oh boy, you're in for a big surprise for failure.

5. You Don't Truly Know Why You Want Success
Wanting everything is bad enough - but it gets even worse if you don't even know the reason why you're trying to achieve your goal. What's the deal? Without a solid reason, a compelling reason, where are you going to find the motivation and encouragement for you to overcome obstacles? You think it's going to be fun ride to success? Then you haven't been traveling - it's a rocky road, my friend. Most people failed to achieve their goals because they never complete the journey– they give up half way (or at the beginning) because they cannot see the worth of accomplishments.

6. You Don't Remember Your Roots
The thing I get most irritated about is people who achieved success and never felt gratitude towards those who have helped them. Is it so hard to say thank you? The law of reciprocity is simple – you return favors to those who helped you in the past. And maybe, they'll help you again in the future. Remember this - it takes more than just you to achieve success, so don't be a jerk.

7. You Think You're Smart
The day you stop learning is the day you stop improving yourself. If you don't want to fail in life, make you sure you stop acting as though you already know everything. The fact is, all successful people are people who continuously learn to be even more successful. They don't stop. Let me put it in this perspective - you don't know what you don't know, you know?

8. You Listen To The Wrong People
I watched this funny movie called, "He Is Just Not That Into You" and it just reaffirmed what I'm about to tell you. At the beginning of the movie, it shows a clip of a boy pushing a girl in the playground because he somehow doesn't like her. He thinks she smells like dog pooh. She cried and asked her mum why did the boy do that to her. And her mum replied, "It's because boys do that to girls when they like you." Do yourself a favor, don't get wrong advice. It'll stick in your brain and lead you to make stupid interpretations in life.

9. You Think Short Term
You'll hear this happening often in many 'successful' people's stories – make a lot of money to lose it all. This probably because they became too comfortable and the other thing is, once you achieve success, you should ride on the wave when the momentum is there. When you think short term, you're only going after the instant pleasure. You must learn to master ‘delay gratification' so that you can enjoy your today's labor.

10. You're Blind To What Is Important In Life
I believe there are only two things that are important in your life – control of time and experiencing happiness. Money, love, big cars, diamonds, etc are the things that contribute to these two benchmarks of successes. For instance, if you have money, you don't need to work so that you can have more time to do the things you like. It's not the money that you're trying to get but what the money CAN DO FOR YOU. I know this topic is bigger than one sentence explanation but I guess you get the point.

So now you know the 10 ways to fail in life. Question is, are you doing any of these? I'll be BS'ng you if I said I don't. I'm human, flesh and blood - I do mistakes too.

But I was fortunate to experience my fair share of success today because I learn powerful lessons from other successful people…

"It's okay to fail and you should fail as many times as you can. That is how you learn but more importantly, you should never give up – each time you get kick dirt in your face, wash your face and ‘fight' back. Don't go crying like a sissy because Mum's not going to come cleaning your face."

Are you ready? Go get your goals.

Patric Chan is the creator of Success Trace Private Membership