'The Enemy Within'-Five Traits That Destroy Success & Discovering If You Have Them!

-By Christine Beckwith- National Vice President Realtor & Sales- Annie Mac Home Mortgage

Ever find yourself scratching your head at the guy or gal in the office that clearly doesn't realize they are sabotaging their own success? No? Well then, you may want to take a hard look in the mirror because every office has one, makes sure it's not YOU!

Here's the 5 Most Self Sabotaging Traits that could be derailing your success and if it's not you, then please share this article with those in need.

5 Internal Traits that Derail Your Success:

1.   Self-Doubt: We all need to bounce ideas off each other and collaborate. Many perspectives often lend to considering thoroughly all the potential obstacles of a plan or project. However, the person who ask opinions and shares their own ideas, but then never executes, is probably plagued with self-doubt. It happens to everybody at some point, especially those under pressure to deliver results, fear can be very limiting. However, there is a solution to this. Pragmatic Risk Assessments or PRA is something that even the leeriest of people can regularly exercise to get past those fears. You simply need to assess all your pros and cons and then eliminate the cons one by one by applying a solution. Finally, focusing on the Pros and how to achieve success. People riddled with fear need to reason risk to act but many don't realize it. If this is how you operate I strongly suggest you get a journal and start writing your projects, goals, plans and such down on paper and going through a PRA exercise to get mentally un-blocked. If you get in a habit of this, you will find yourself acting far more often. Bonus tip, timeline your own results. In other words, give yourself an expected date to take first steps on your plan, that will allow you to get past step 1, the rest should flow.

2.   Over-Complicating Things: I've written a whole article on Analysis Paralysis and this falls in that wheel house. However, to be specific, this is not the act of being stuck in the analysis stage, this is about having so many plans and so many intricate details of a plan that it's difficult to know where to start. It is also the plague of people who are afraid to get started, that are unsure of themselves and they keep searching for answers, applying systems and plans, layer after layer and never really doing anything with great conviction. These people confuse and complicate even the simplest of things. If you are like this, strip everything back to the bone, the base of your plan and rebuild. Master one step before taking the next. Plans are completed and contests won, one day and one step at a time. It's really that simple. If you are managing someone that over-complicates things, do them a favor and tell them the same. Also, impatient people tend to revise their plans too soon, before allowing enough time for the first plan to play out. So, don't be the guy/gal that doesn't shift gears when it's needed but also don't shift before you should.

3.   You Allow Distractions: I call this the Butterfly Affect. You spend so much time trying to discover the world around you that you are unable to look at your own problems, plans and needed steps and tactics. You are easily distracted, social to a point of fault and you value interaction and conversation more than self-work and results. If you work with someone like this, you may dread seeing them in the office as they may be distracting you from getting your work done. If you don't know anyone like that and as you are reading this, you are standing in the center of your office on your mobile, leaning on the cubicle of the guy/gal next to you, YOU may be the person distracting others. Sit down, shut up and focus on money making tasks. Period. Be aware if you go to do something work wise on the internet and end up 10 sites sideways. Or you make a couple work calls then text your friends, surf social media and generally can't stay in the work zone. This one is literally one of the #1 detractors of an entire office success. Hire too many people like this and you will be dishing out a lot of money for social hour(s).

4. Act Like Switzerland! Diplomacy is a trait that great leaders all possess. The ability to say something difficult or settle an office dispute between two people without causing more grief in the process, keeping confidential information as such and really being willing to take a leadership role. It's hard not to say things that are fun to repeat, private matters and/or share in the office gossip. In the same process, if you aren't a leader, it's easy to get sucked into a customer service dispute of an ignorant customer and go on the defense when a person is blatantly wrong or inept. Staying classy is hard to do, we all can throw down or sink to immature levels of arbitration or debate. To truly avoid depleting adversity, you must be the person who always shows diplomacy. If you can be this person you are already winning. If you know you fail at this, at times, then practice this as adversity rises in your area, for any reason, whether with a co-worker or a customer. Be the example of great service, educate the ignorant and tolerate the inept, but do not hurt yourself, your relationships and your success by being the guy who thinks he won the debate, there are NO winners when you do this. Customer service debates have no winners. Just perspective and coaching. Keep this in mind.

5. Be Present: One of the worse things I see professionals do is not give 100% of their focus to a class, meeting, one on one or even with customer appointments. Whoever you are meeting with, give them 100% of your attention. Set down your phone, put your out of office on, set an auto reply on your texts and emails simply stating that you are in a meeting and will return calls, emails and texts at X time. We are living in a time of electronic distraction. It is no longer meme worthy to see 6 people sitting at a restaurant table all looking at their iPhone. It is quite typical, but remember, just because we are constantly receiving information on our person, doesn't mean we need to answer real time. If we equate work emails to the old days, it would be when we opened our work computers the next day or at home from our table top PC's when we safely arrived home and had time to do it. Friends and family calling or emailing, were the same, when we safely got home we got messages and onto our emails. Since all of this now flows to our person real time, it is quite easy to be constantly watching our electronic devices. Get out of the habit of being a real time texter, emailer and caller. Get back to LIVING in your client’s moment, your friend’s moment, your spouses and children’s moments and more than anything in a fashion that allows you to be productive. Iphones could single handedly have stripped the entire universal work force of 40% of its work focused hours, if not greater. Think about it.

#mysalestruth