7 Habits Of Highly Unsuccessful Bitter People

Salary increases and title promotions are ladders to nowhere.

Surveys by Monster.com and the Pew Research Center found that most professionals now define success as flexibility.

A study by Accenture showed that flexibility comes in ahead of money, recognition and autonomy as the most important determining factor of success.

The ability to work when you want and how you want is new status symbol.

Yet, many people continue to make chasing bigger salaries and better job titles a lifelong habit.

As a result...

They end up bitter and unsuccessful.

The Road To Resentment

People who continue to chase job titles and higher salaries eventually realize they’ll never be anything more than average.

That’s when the bitterness sets in.

Bitter people are easy to spot.

The middle manager who yells at everyone whenever she’s having a bad day.

The office admin who makes people feel stupid for asking questions.

Zero success.

100% resentment.

The only way to avoid becoming one of these unsuccessful and bitter people is to change your habits.

Habits Of Unsuccessful Bitter People

1. Never quitting.

Quitting is a strategy.

If you get into a job that you know is not right for you, don’t keep trying to make it work.

All this does is keep you from finding the job that’s really right for you.

Learn to differentiate plateaus from permanent mismatches.

If you’re a round peg, stop trying to force yourself into a square hole.

Stop trying to repair your weaknesses.

Instead...

Start leveraging your natural strengths.

Don’t keep giving your time, energy, and resources to something that’s not right for you. Don’t let pride or guilt keep you in a position that makes you miserable.

If you’re not getting results back on your investment, stop investing.

2. Chasing money blindly.

Getting promoted at a job you can't stand will not solve your problems.

It will magnify your problems.

Too many people work really hard 8 hours a day at jobs they hate. The only thing keeping them going is the possibility of a promotion...

A promotion requiring them to work 12 hours a day doing something else they hate.

Other people work 80 hours a week for themselves doing something they hate just because they don’t want to work 40 hours a week for someone else.

Chasing money is great.

Chasing money blindly is stupid.

Before you start dreaming of a promotion, think carefully about what that promotion will cost you.

Getting paid to do something you hate is easy. Anyone can do that.

Getting paid to do something you enjoy is hard. It takes focus, strategic planning, and massive action. That’s why it’s so rare.

3. Valuing ideas only.

Ideas don’t matter anymore. They’re a dime a dozen.

Here today, gone today.

When it comes to success, action is the limiting factor.

Ideas are commodities now, they’re sold in online stores and traded on the stock market.

In a sense, ideas have always been ubiquitous.

The only thing that has ever differentiated a good idea from a bad idea is someone taking action to turn it into a reality.

There are so many ideas now it’s impossible to tell the good ones from the bad ones.

The only way to tell is to take action. To test the idea in real world scenarios.

Testing, tweaking, and iterating is the most important part of growing your business or advancing your career.

Ideas alone are useless. They need action to survive.

Without action, ideas rot.

4. Being too patient.

People who wait don’t get good things. They get leftovers.

Too many people think that patience and success go hand-in-hand.

They think that being successful means finding balance and having perspective.

Cute.

But very wrong.

Right now there are people pushing themselves harder than you.

When you meet them—when you come against them for a client, sale, or deal of any kind—they will beat you.

And it will hurt.

Unsuccessful people tell themselves stories about balance and perspective because it makes them feel better about putting off important things until tomorrow.

Then these same people get bitter and angry when someone else seizes their opportunity.

Patience has nothing to do with success.

Consistent effort, on the other hand, has everything to with it.

5. Overvaluing security.

Too many people are drunk on security.

They stay at jobs that kill their creativity because they like security of steady paycheck.

They stay in the same field for 30 years because they like the security of not having to learn anything new.

You can't top by playing it safe.

They get there by taking risks and going against the comfort of the crowd.

They get there by chasing flexibility and freedom.

Not safety.

Stop overprotecting yourself from catastrophes that rarely happen.

It’s not worth what you’re giving up in exchange.

6. Never burning bridges.

Successful people sever ties.

You cannot achieve great things in your business or career by maintaining bridges connected to negative people.

This kind of bridge maintenance will drain your energy and resources.

Bridges to negative colleagues are major distractions.

They’re eyesores and you need to burn them down as soon as possible.

If you make a deal with people who turn out to be no good, follow through on your end of the bargain and then cut them loose forever.

Never work with them again.

Burn the bridge.

If your colleagues double cross you or hang you out to dry, delete them from your life and career.

Don’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.

Stop being afraid of losing connections that deep down you know will never help you and only hurt you.

Instead, open your eyes to all the positive and trustworthy professionals in the world who want to be good to you.

Here’s the key…

Positive people will not come into your life until the negative ones are gone.

7. Expecting people to stay the same.

People change. They change every day and often quickly.

Stop asking if people will change and start asking when will they change. How will they change? What will trigger them to change?

Unsuccessful people are blind to change.

They see how people are now and extrapolate their behavior indefinitely. This is a mistake.

Anyone can see the obvious.

Anyone can see someone do something and then say they’re likely to do it again.

Success is seeing the non-obvious in other people.

Success is seeing the storms of change in others before they see it in themselves.

Stop acting as if everything will be the same tomorrow as it is today. It won’t be.

Make it your goal to understand human behavior so well that you can quickly identify when someone is likely to go in a different direction.

Change is all around you. Start looking for it. Start seeing it.

Now it's your turn. What other habits do unsuccessful bitter people have? Or, what habits do successful happy people have? Tell me in a comment.

I also write for Entrepreneur Magazine:

• 10 People Who Will Destroy Your Business
• 5 Benefits Of Being A Misfit Entrepreneur
• Confident Entrepreneurs Deftly Overcome Impostor Syndrome

Check out my book of personal and professional advice, Black Hole Focus: How Intelligent People Create A Powerful Purpose For Their Lives.