Five Habits That Steal Your Future

Five Habits That Steal Your Future Our habits form a way of life through how we deal with others. A person's habits today are a miniature portrait of their future tomorrow; what you sow today, you will reap tomorrow. Habits shape a person's character and set us apart from one another, for your habits are your own personal signature and your distinctive way of life, whether positive or negative. Habits are a fixed pattern of thinking, desire or feeling, acquired through the repeated recurrence of a mental experience. 1. Focusing on Other People's Lives Stop sabotaging yourself. Your time is the most precious thing you own; do not waste it on other people's lives. Devote it solely to your own life, your goals and your ambitions. Remaining in the present moment requires focus (Elizabeth Gilbert). Let the thing you pour your full attention into be your own life, your goals, your success, your relationships. Use it to draw closer to God, be gentle with those younger than you and respectful towards those older than you. Be a good listener, help where you can, but do not focus on a life that is not your own. Care for yourself, develop and grow, for it is this that will make you successful and happy in your future. Do not lie in wait for others' mistakes or their successes, and do not be envious, for if you are not the hero of your own life, it stands to reason that you will be an extra in someone else's. Focusing on other people's lives will steal from you the time you should have devoted to developing your own life and reaching your goals. Are you willing to waste your time on nothing at all? 2. Self-Reproach and Blame According to psychologists, blame and self-reproach are among the most dangerous forms of negative thinking. Every difficulty, disappointment or even defeat you have faced was not a fleeting coincidence in your life; every sorrow, setback and pain you feel deep within was a signal for you to rebuild yourself. However far you have fallen, you are not weak, nor are you lesser than anyone else. You were created uniquely creative and distinctive in every state you find yourself in. Regain your balance, rise up, and discover the details of who you are; God does not place you in a situation beyond your capacity. Negative self-reproach puts you on the defensive, producing a negative reaction rooted in a feeling of weakness, and makes you feel like a victim, always striving to prove that you are not at fault. This leads to feelings of isolation and being lost, of being worthless and inferior to others—all negative emotions that leave you feeling frustrated and defeated. Blame, on the other hand, is that internal poison that afflicts a person, coursing through their veins and lodging in the subconscious, preventing you from using your abilities to seek solutions to your problems. It is that empty talk born of feelings of weakness and worthlessness. Failing to take responsibility and confining your thinking to the problem rather than the solution is simply another face of failure; cowardice and the inability to confront problems and accept mistakes is simply another face of feeling undeserving—all emotions that heighten anger through sorrow. It is a path that ends in depression, and you can well imagine what follows after that. 3. Laziness and Procrastination Laziness is an unforgivable sin. Studies have revealed that laziness and physical inactivity have caused the deaths of many people around the world, making it no less dangerous than smoking. Laziness is an individual condition, but it affects the family, the community and the nation as a whole, because it results in the loss of one member's productivity—and the greatest calamity is when laziness becomes a widespread condition among many members of society. Every success, advancement or achievement in your life requires will, determination, effort and resolve. The harm caused by laziness extends beyond the individual to others: a lazy father harms his entire family—young and old alike—since this may result in reduced income as well as reduced attention to his family. This applies to anyone in a position of responsibility, whether in an administration, an institution, a workshop or elsewhere, and this will undoubtedly have an effect on national income. As for procrastination, we have always heard the phrase 'do not put off today's work until tomorrow' ringing in our ears since childhood. Procrastination is a nightmare for many, as it prevents individuals from completing their work and achieving their goals, which generates a feeling of unproductiveness—frustration, depression and more than one might imagine. The first thing you must do is take time alone to restructure your thoughts, then consider what the greatest obstacles are standing between you and achieving your goals, and try to find simple, practical solutions to overcome them. Of course, obstacles differ from person to person in both the public and private sectors, at the level of listed and unlisted companies, and in the lives of individuals and groups. Procrastination is the poison that ruins work, shatters hopes and squanders resources—most importantly here, the time and effort invested in planning, feasibility studies and staff enthusiasm. 4. Evasiveness and Beating About the Bush An evasive person is unwelcome within a team or community. Relying on vagueness in speech and inconsistency in decision-making makes an individual an object of suspicion, for beating about the bush and lacking clarity creates discomfort among listeners, causing them to shy away from the evasive person and avoid them. The evasive person then feels rejected, which drives them further into isolation, generating feelings of rejection and mistrust, along with many negative emotions that may take them beyond mere frustration. The natural, healthy state of dealings is clarity, candour and transparency, yet there are those who make evasiveness and equivocation their trademark, and dealing with them can feel less like a human interaction and more like a battle. Trying to understand them and interpret their behaviour and conduct wastes a great deal of your time, if you intend to maintain a relationship with them. Simply interacting with them may leave you feeling dizzy, or feeling as though you might be, or give you a headache from the intense concentration required to try to understand their vague and unclear behaviour. Over time, such a person loses credibility even if they win the argument, for they do not acknowledge their true intent and resort instead to evasiveness. By nature, such a person is a coward; were they brave, they would have the capacity to face the matter under discussion directly. Habits Future Self-Development Success