9 Bad Habits of Unsuccessful People (To Obliterate in 2023)

To make this the best year of your freaking life

Photo by Oleg Ivanov on Unsplash

The way to be successful is to avoid what 99% of society does.

That’s why your inner circle is so powerful because they affect how you think, what you believe, and your hopes and dreams.

It’s also why you hear the stupid “your network equals your net worth quote” even more times than you hear the painful “read Atomic Habits…OMG… must-read.”

So instead of trying to adopt new habits this year, focus on dropping bad habits.

1. Telling everyone your goals

No one gives a crap about your goals or New Year’s Resolutions.

Stop telling everyone about your them to sound smart and have fake accountability. It doesn’t work.

The only question that matters is will you take action in 2023 or not? The answer must be yes. So the next piece of the puzzle is simple.

Screw goals. Build systems.

A goal is a hope. It’s a fantasy you masturbate over. “I’ll do it when I get time.” Boo hoo hoo. No you bloody won’t.

A system is a daily plan you will follow to a tee for a year. If you’re bad at designing systems then buy one off the shelf. They’re called “operating systems” and they come in the form of online courses.

I’m about to sell my writing operating system, as an example, for people who have a goal to be an online writer.

Goals are for losers. Systems are for future successful people.

2. Letting your phone ping your brain to death (like a cyborg)

The ping sound a phone makes when it gets a message is literally the definition of slow-cook brain damage.

How the heck do you work with a phone pinging all day? Multi-tasking makes you stupid. You get nothing done so your value in the capitalist economy decreases.

That leads nice people I meet daily into a bad place where they say, “I can’t afford to learn. I’m behind on my bills.”

A lot of money problems are the result of phones that aren’t on silent. Put your phone in another room when you work. Turn off all notifications on all devices.

3. Being a victim

Victimhood went viral over the last three years.

I had a call this morning with a friend who lives in Central America. He grew up poor and lived on a farm. The level of poverty he experienced is almost incomprehensible. Then he said something odd…

“F*ck my poor Latino friends.”

It took me by surprise. His justification was that anyone with access to an internet connection already has equality. They can use the internet to get out of their situation if they choose. But his Latino friends refuse.

Now, I don’t subscribe to this mindset. It’s a little harsh for my taste. But he is right in a way. Being a victim gets you nowhere.

We’re not the result of our circumstances. It’s what we do with those circumstances that count. It’s why I often say that my struggles are a gift from a higher power.

Here is a short list of adversities I’ve overcome:

• Losing over $1M

• Issues with alcohol

• Several romantic disasters

• A near-miss with cancer in 2015

• Suffering from debilitating mental illness

• Walking away from a 100+ person startup I loved

• Drug addict friends that could have brought me down, too

I say none of this to brag. I tell you because when I get asked about any of them, I express how grateful I am for them. 

People think I’m a weirdo because of it.

But it’s those struggles that gave me the energy and the motivation to take action and transcend what could have been inevitable outcomes.

I’d just be a boring old banker on minimum wage if it weren’t for gorgeous imperfections like mental illness.

Struggles make you weird. And weird makes you successful.

4. Being broke

This is gonna sound harsh but it’s not supposed to be.

A month ago I offered a course for $97. Some of the responses I got back took me by surprise. People earning 6-figures in America would say “I can’t afford it.”

That’s because their priorities are around the wrong way. Self-education isn’t an expense, it’s an investment. If you have money problems then the answer is to make more money. New skills make you more money.

So if you refuse to pay $97 to acquire new skills then you’re going to stay broke.

Now here’s where it gets interesting…

If you’re already struggling financially right now, it gets worse every year. Thanks to inflation and money printing by central banks/governments (I’ve written extensively about it) you’re only going to get further behind every year.

Prices keep going up. Government-issued currencies keep being worth less.

So the design of the current financial system and global economy guarantees you’ll make less money if you don’t fight against the tide and get new skills.

And as artificial intelligence becomes more popular, bullsh*t email jobs that add little value will keep getting taken away.

This is the reality. I know it’s not pleasant … but either accept it or go broke.

Maybe don’t invest more money in the S&P 500. Invest in you.

Self-educate.

5. Too closed-minded

Unsuccessful people are skeptical about everything.

The corporations they work for have brainwashed them to see risks in everything. Don’t worry, I was too. I worked in banking. Banking is all about seeing risk. As a banker, I’d walk away from big deals if there was even a slight risk.

That’s what the system taught me.

Be conservative. Keep your head down. Don’t talk too loudly on social media. And if you follow the rules and climb the corporate ladder to nowhere, then one day you too can get a retirement check with ten years left before you die.

Learn to open your mind. Realize you don’t know 99.9999% of how the world works.

If someone shows you an opportunity, look at it. Take some small bets. Seek out people who prove you wrong and destroy confirmation biases in your brain.

I used to think making money online was a scam. Now look what I’m doing.

Saying stuff is a scam is just another way of saying “I won’t do the hard work and I refuse to change.”

The refusal to change is why people die at 25 but get buried at 75.

6. Addicted to attention-nuking media

Instagram is modern-day porn.

TikTok will screw so hard with the dopamine reward system in your brain, that you’ll feel mentally fatigued and won’t know why. And mainstream news will nuke every optimistic bone in your sexy body.

Stay the f*ck away from this mental junk food.

7. Overeducating yourself for no reason

I already said self-education is good. And it is.

But too much learning can disguise a lack of execution. There’s always more to learn, of course. The trick is to take one thing you learn and implement it. Otherwise learning is nothing more than entertainment.

8. Asking bullsh*t mentors what they think of your strategies

I get asked all the time on LinkedIn to be a mentor.

Most mentorship is a wankfest. You don’t need more opinions about what you want to do in life. You need to do the hard thing and put yourself out there. Again, you need execution. No mentor has all the answers.

What worked for me may not work for you. Just because I bless your strategy, doesn’t mean a thing. What you want instead of mentors are coaches.

The difference, for one, is a coach is paid. So they’ll put some effort into what they tell you as opposed to free advice that’s useless. Secondly, a coach gives you feedback on what you’ve done. The point is to take action and then have a coach make tweaks.

If you really want to blow up 2023 then add a mastermind to paid coaching.

Being around other successful people is highly underrated. Trying to find people who have the same goal as you is hard. Better off joining a paid mastermind.

9. Accepting rejection

What I’m trying to teach you here is not to be so much of a snowflake.

No doesn’t mean no. You’ll get rejected all the time. I get rejected daily by potential customers. “No, I’m not joining.”

My answer: “Screw you. This is exactly what you need. I’m not taking no for an answer. Look at the results I’ve produced for people like you. No is just fear. So will you join me?”

That dialogue I just shared overcomes many rejections.

Rejection is just the first line of defense. If you easily take no for an answer, you destroy so many opportunities to be successful in your field.

Learn to take rejections and understand the objections behind them.

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Let’s add one more bad habit than what I promised. It’s always good to overdeliver.

Letting failure be the end

Unsuccessful people fail so much because they lack patience and have an untrained mindset. Both can be fixed.

When you fail at something it’s good.

When I lost $1M I didn’t cry like a baby. No. I went “great!” This is gonna make a fantastic story. Plus if I can lose $1M then I can use the same skills to do it again.

See the difference?

The only time failure is the end is if you’re dead. Although some would say there’s an afterlife, so even that reality could be false.

Take what failed in 2022 and iterate on it in 2023. Do it different.

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