27 September 2023

Safeguarding success: Some things to avoid

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Travis Bradberry* lists some of the things highly successful people will not do in order to ensure they maintain the drive that keeps them at the top.


My very first post, How Successful People Stay Calm, really struck a nerve, with millions sharing it and thousands wanting to comment.

The trick is that managing your emotions is as much about what you won’t do as it is about what you will do.

The upper echelons of top performance are filled with people who are high in emotional intelligence.

So, I went back to the data to uncover the kinds of things that emotionally intelligent people are careful to avoid.

While the list that follows isn’t exhaustive, it presents key things you can avoid in order to increase your emotional intelligence and performance.

They won’t let anyone limit their joy

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own happiness.

When emotionally intelligent people feel good about something they’ve done, they won’t let anyone’s opinions or accomplishments take that away from them.

While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt.

They won’t forget

Emotionally intelligent people are quick to forgive, but that doesn’t mean they forget.

Forgiveness requires letting go of what’s happened so that you can move on. It doesn’t mean you’ll give a wrongdoer another chance.

Emotionally intelligent people are unwilling to be bogged down unnecessarily by others’ mistakes.

They won’t die in the fight

Emotionally intelligent people know how important it is to live to fight another day.

In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you severely damaged.

When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right.

They won’t prioritise perfection

Emotionally intelligent people won’t set perfection as their target because they know it doesn’t exist.

Human beings, by our very nature, are fallible.

When perfection is your goal, you’re always left with a nagging sense of failure, and you end up spending your time lamenting what you failed to accomplish.

They won’t live in the past

Failure can erode your self-confidence and make it hard to believe you’ll achieve a better outcome in the future.

Emotionally intelligent people know that success lies in their ability to rise in the face of failure, and they can’t do this when they’re living in the past.

Anything worth achieving is going to require you to take some risks, and you can’t allow failure to stop you from believing in your ability to succeed.

When you live in the past it becomes your present, preventing you from moving forward.

They won’t dwell on problems

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state.

When you fixate on the problems you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions and stress, which hinders performance.

Emotionally intelligent people won’t dwell on problems because they know they’re most effective when they focus on solutions.

They won’t hang around negative people

Complainers are bad news because they wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions.

People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as callous or rude.

However, there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spiral.

You can avoid getting drawn in only by setting limits and distancing yourself when necessary.

A great way to set limits is to ask complainers how they intend to fix a problem.

The complainer will then either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.

They won’t hold grudges

The negative emotions that come with holding onto a grudge are actually a stress response.

Just thinking about the event sends your body into fight-or-flight mode.

When a threat is imminent, this reaction is essential, but when a threat is ancient history, holding onto that stress wreaks havoc on your body and can have devastating health consequences over time.

Holding onto a grudge means you’re holding onto stress, and emotionally intelligent people know to avoid this at all costs.

Learning to let go of a grudge will not only make you feel better now but can also improve your health.

They won’t say yes unless they really want to

Research has shown the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression.

No is a powerful word you should not be afraid to wield.

Saying no to a new commitment honours your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfil them.

*Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the co-founder of TalentSmart. He can be contacted at TalentSmart.com.

This article first appeared at talentsmart.com.

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