Addictions strong and independent: 7 habits that prevent success

No one is perfect: everyone has their own weaknesses or habits that get in the way from time to time. But real leaders know how to see them, recognize them, and most importantly, get rid of them. The ability to change is the destiny of the strong and successful. Here are a few mistakes you can fix to get better.

You rely only on yourself and do not know how to ask

We used to think that strong independent people should achieve everything themselves and never ask someone else’s help. However, many strong, talented and successful women at difficult or key moments in their lives were helped by simple requests. Of course, it’s not just women who seek help.

Steve Jobs in an interview told how he called Bill Hewlett at the age of 12, whose number he found in the phone book, and said: “Hello! I’m Steve Jobs, I’m 12 years old and I’m building a frequency meter. I wanted to know if you have any extra details that you could share with me.” Hewlett talked to the young man for twenty minutes, and then gave not only the details, but also a job at Hewlett-Packard for the summer.

And, as Jobs later admitted, he repeatedly asked someone for help – and no one ever refused. And when people turned to him, he tried to help them all his life. Asking is one of the most effective and universal rules of success that we often forget about.

By not daring to ask for help, we limit our own possibilities. Everyone sometimes needs support, money, help in work. You can cope on your own, exhausting yourself and burning out, or you can ask – and they will almost certainly help you.

Can’t let go of the reins

Today, it is common to see top managers who are not ready to let go of control and hand over tasks to their team. And as a result, instead of “orchestrating” by independent and self-sufficient professionals, they create a system in which they themselves are financiers, salespeople, HRs, strategists, and marketers.

And their top team are highly paid performers. This model is called “The Genius with a Thousand Helpers” by XNUMXst century business thinker Jim Collins. However, this model does not work well and prevents your business from growing.

Jim Collins says: “If you have the right people on board, then the problem of motivation and management basically disappears by itself. The right people don’t need direct guidance or incentives. They have enough self-motivation, driven by an inner desire to achieve exceptional results and participate in the creation of something great. Just trust them to do the job they were hired to do.

Not working on your contacts

Successful people simply need to communicate with their own kind, and even better with more successful ones. After all, the principle is simple: you become who you spend time with. Build relationships with outstanding leaders. Most top managers know their peers well in the industry they grew up in (finance, marketing, sales), but there are no others in their network of contacts who are more experienced from whom they could learn a lot.

If you really want to improve your performance, do what great leaders do. They know that almost anything can be realized through their network of contacts. Surround yourself with people who have already achieved what you would like to achieve in the future. Being close to them is a powerful competitive advantage and an accelerator to your progress.

Can’t slow down

So many successful people fall into the trap of their super-efficiency: they are so used to having their whole day planned out, and the calendar has appointments and important events for six months in advance, that they absolutely do not know how to do nothing. Any time not spent on work or important tasks is perceived as wasted.

This leads to the fact that a person gradually accelerates more and more and eventually lives in a frantic rhythm. And so many live: Elon Musk, for example, works 120 hours a week, never takes days off and sometimes tweets at half past three in the morning that he has just returned from the factory. And he spent his 47th birthday at work.

Psychologists are unanimous: you can’t live like this forever. The inability to slow down the frantic work rhythm sooner or later leads to burnout, reduced creativity and apathy. Living constantly at high speeds is harmful. It is important to be able to stop in order to have time to receive feedback from the world and listen to yourself.

Learn to just do nothing and, most importantly, not feel guilty for the time that seems to be wasted. Those who are unable to do this often fail to create anything truly profound.

Can’t recharge batteries

Many businessmen work for wear and tear, and if you do not know how to properly recharge, you can burn out very quickly. Leadership is exhausting. You need to not only constantly think about the future of the company, but also be a model for the team, encourage employees to think outside the box, communicate with dozens of people every day, and be prepared for “black swans”, that is, for unexpected, difficult to predict events.

There are five large clusters that help recharge and have a good rest. You can spend time with family and loved ones, play sports, go for a massage, find time for reflection, as well as engage in spiritual and aesthetic development.

These clusters can be used individually or in combination. All outstanding people have a system in place that helps them take regular breaks from work in order to fully restore their physical and emotional energy. Find your ways and don’t forget to use them.

Used to go the beaten path

So many people live by this principle: why give up what works? Why change something that looks good anyway? But time moves forward and requires new solutions. And the habit of acting the way they have always acted can even lead to the collapse of the business.

The world is changing at a tremendous pace right now, and you should be able to change with it. Business giants can lose leadership in a couple of years due to new small companies with a different vision and new technologies. That is why the task of a successful leader is to constantly keep abreast, change, and improve.

Depend on success

This habit is characteristic of perfectionists: they are used to doing everything 200%, giving their all. Often this leads to excessive self-confidence: I do everything perfectly, which means that everything will work out for me. But the problem is that it doesn’t work that way: of course, diligence pays off, but it is very important to give yourself the opportunity to make mistakes.

The problem for perfectionists is that it is very difficult for such a person to recover from any blow: failure unsettles him so much that he can go into depression. You should not identify yourself as a person with your successes. Give yourself the opportunity to be less than 100% effective and sometimes make mistakes – after all, mistakes often help shake things up, change your perspective and become even better.

Take a cue from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, who, by the way, is called one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. In 2014, in an interview, he admitted that his mistakes were worth billions of dollars. “If you want to make bold bets, you have to experiment. At the same time, no one knows in advance whether the experiment will succeed or fail. But a few big successes can make up for dozens of mistakes.”