Hey, this is Rajiv Kumar Luv Trainer, Coach, Workshop leader, Author, podcaster, Youtuber and founder of The Personality Boss which conducts the Ultimate Personality Development Program, Course, Coaching, Training and Workshops in Mumbai. I help you design the life you want. The articles that I post on my blog also have one purpose in mind “Leadership through Personality Development” Now over to the article…

Santa and Banta were on their way to their workplace. Santa saw a banana skin lying on the road. He slapped his forhead with his palm and said, “Oh no, I will have to fall again, today. Santa had been slipping on the banana skin daily and even today he had decided that he would slip on it an fall. Banta asked him, "Is that banana skin there all the time?” Yes he said furiously, some stupid person eats the banana and leaves the skin on the road for me to slip on it daily, If I catch that person I will chop off his head. Banta stepped forward, picked up the banana skin and threw it in a dustbin and then said to Banta, “Now you don’t have to fall” You may laugh at this stupid story, but you and I also keep doing the same thing on our journey to success, we keep slipping. Even though you know intelligently on what are you slipping you don’t do anything about it, result, you sabotage your own success. Here are 7 things that sabotage your success.

1. comfort zone

Years back I had attened an ‘introductory session’ of a well-known dynamic Dale carnegie trainer. The room was filled with audience and before the trainer started his session, he randomly distributed a few folded chits of paper amongst the audience and then he got into his act. The audience was fully engrossed, engaged and were thoroughly enjoying the session. After about 30 minutes he suddenly stops and tells the auidence, “At the beginning of the session I had distributed chits of paper, who are the ones who have it” People put up their hands. He further says, “on those chits you have a topic written, please read it and then each one of you will have to come on the stage and talk on the topic for full two minutes. The ones who didn’t get the chits were relieved, relaxed and th ones with the chits were absolutely uncomfortable, they were being pulled out of their comfort zones and they didn’t like it a little bit, some wanted to go to the washroom, some said that their throat was bad, some refused, some were cursing why did they come for this session. Your comfort zone is where you constantly slip on your journey to success. Your comfort zone stops you from learning, taking new action, achieving your goals, becoming the person you most want to become. Everytime you step out of your comfort zone you grow and move in the direction of success and if you continue to remain in the comfort zone, you don’t grow and you don’t move forward. Come on, get out of your comfort zone.

2. Doubting

Let’s say you decided to get out of your comfort zone and become a public speaker. What would happen? You would start doubting yourself and ask a question like, “Can I become a public speaker?” Doubting could also happen because people around you who may tell you, “Deop the idea, you can’t be a public speaker, your english is not upto the mark, you stammer, public speaking is not for you. Believe me any person who has achieved anything great in his life has also gone through doubting. But they didn’t let doubting hold them back. Whenever you are in doubt prepare well, there are chances that you may fail, so what, learn from it and do it better next time and soon you would become a public speaker whom the audience admires and models.

3. Neglecting

Let’s continue with the same example of the public speaker. YOur goal is to become an awesome public speaker. Here is a powerful question you need to ask yourself everyday and act upon everyday. The question is, “Am I doing the important necessary activities everyday to become the awesome Public speaker I most want to become?” There can only be two ways either you are doing everything necessary to become the awesome public speaker or you are neglecting to do what is necessary to become the awesome public speaker If you are neglecting you can never learn what you want, earn what you want, build the body you want, go where you want and become who you want. So a simple message for you is do all that is necessary to become the person you most want to become neglecting it will be a big obstacle to your success.

4. Procrastinating

Procrastinating means puttting off important things. We all are guilty of procrastinating. We procrastinate for various reasons. I am not going to get into the details of procrastination, you can listen to my earlier podcast episode on ‘how can I overcome procrastination’ but here I just want to make an important point. There is a limit to what we can do in a given day, if we fill the day with unimportant things then we won’t have the time to do the important things that we truly care about. So if becoming a public speaker that you really care about then don’t procrastinate any activity that takes you in that direction whether it is reading a book, watching a video, attending a practice session, or grabbing that opportunity to speak. At least stop procrastinating things that mean a lot to you and that which can make a difference in your life.

5. Complicating

Confucius very rightly said, “Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicted” We complicate things when we don’t clearly communicate with ourselves and others, when we don’t mean what we say. When we spend time with negative people. When we worry and blame. When we live in the past and in the future not in the present. When we focus our energies on how to avoid mistakes. To Put it in simple words. When, what you think, say and do are congruent your life is simple but when these three don’t match, you are complicating your life. Stop doing that. As a public speaker, you would be complicating things when you are afraid of making mistakes, when you focus on your past failures. But when you focus on how can you add value to your listeners, you simplify

6. Reacting

I was working in a leather company in Chennai. Practically everyday my boss used to tell me Rajiv act, don’t react. When you react you are actually looking at things from your own limited perspective and most of the time it is negative. Being reactive can hold you back and keep you away from success. Let’s assume that you are speaking to an audience and one of the audience member gets up and says, “I don’t agree with what you are saying” You get mad and retaliate making the situation worse and hurt feelings. So how can you stop the cycle of reacting. Listen to the other person, Assume that they’re not trying to hurt you or make you look stupid.Control any thoughts about fighting or rebutting.Ask open-ended questions if you don’t fully understand what they say. So if you are a reactive person, see how you can work towards becoming a proactive and responsive person.

7. Quitting

You are a complete failure only when you quit or completely give up. Whenever you are after something worthwhile there are times when you want to quit. Most people quit because it is not easy and they don’t see immediate results. Let’s take a simple example of exercising. When you decide to start exercising, day one you are highly enthusiastic, you do the exercises with full energy, you may even work out for that entire week. But the next monday when you get up to start you find that all your muscles are aching very badly, they are yelling at you to stop and that is the time you must not quit. Most people quit and then go back to square one. Then after a few months decide to start exercising again only to stop again after a week when it starts paining again. Whenever you set challenging goals for yourself you are going to face many hurdles, problems and if you quit, it badly affects your confidence, your performance and your future action. Whenever you feel like quitting always focus on why you started in the first place, that will bring you back on track and keep you motivated to do all that is necessary to achieve your goals. The best example I can think of is a farmer who ploughs the fields, plants the seeds, waters the fields, nurtures the plants even though he can’t see the fruits of his efforts for a long time, never does he ever think of quitting.

Tell me what would happen if you tried to drive a car with your foot on the brakes? Here are somethings that could happen, first the car won’t move in the forward direction, it will stay where it is, precious fuel gets wasted, the brake liner will wear off, the engine gets heated, finally it may even breakdown. Similarly if you are using the 7 things we just talked about namely comfort zone, doubting, neglecting, procrastinating, complicating, reacting and quitting then you are trying to drive your life’s car with the foot on the brakes. Get your foot off the brake.

I am Rajiv Kumar Luv. My passion in life is to make a difference in the lives of people so that they achieve their personal as well as professional best. I am absolutely committed to specially helping youngsters become leaders in their chosen fields. In the past 28 years, I have trained over 100,000 people from all walks of life. Through my two-day program “Leadership Through Personality Development” I help the youth plan their career, build confidence, make better decisions, manage time and develop their employability skills to meet today’s real-life challenges. You can learn more about me and the work I do by visiting: http://www.thepersonalityboss.com