Josh: This is a guest post by Patric Chan from SuccessTrace.com. The number of authors who have written for TowerOfPower.com.au are less than the number of fingers on your hand. Patric is here because he is unusual being from Malaysia teaching success and other lessons you typically hear from big-shot Americans. He has simple yet effective lessons that helped him become wealthy and sociable in his twenties.

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 how to achieve success and weird enough, it seems like nobody takes the advice seriously. Then I realized one thing – most people are ALREADY failing before they even got started!

The article I wrote below is slightly controversy compare to the normal goodie-type 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 open 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 changes. So when you see someone with any 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 “Secrets” 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 “Secrets” and doing attraction work by sitting down on your floor manifesting 3 hours a day. In my point of view, scientifically, the Law of Attraction runs on the concept of believing. When you believe your goal is achievable, you will take action to achieve it. 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 of failure.

5. You Don’t Truly Know Why You Want Success

Wanting everything is bad enough – but it gets 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 fail to achieve their goals because they never complete the journey – they give up halfway (or at the beginning) because they cannot see the worth of accomplishments.

6. You Don’t Remember Your Roots

…if you go chasing everything, you get nothing.

The thing I get most irritated about is people who achieved success and never felt gratitude towards those who helped them. Is it very 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. 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 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 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 poo. 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 often hear this happening in many “successful” people’s stories: they make a lot of money to lose it all. This is 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 delay gratification to enjoy today’s labor.

10. You’re Blinded With 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 success. For instance, if you have money, you don’t need to work so 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. You’re a smart fella.

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 dude, 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 dirt kicked 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.

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