Top 5 Reasons Why People Fail in Life (and How I Turned It Around)

Why is it so hard to succeed? Usually it comes down to a few things we do, or don’t do, every day. Here are the top five reasons people fail, from my own experience of getting past them.

1. A lack of confidence

Most people chase success on the outside: money, houses, cars, designer clothes. That’s one form of success. But you can’t succeed outside before you succeed inside. Success is a state of feeling first.

You’ll have to sit in rooms with people who can tell whether you belong there. So work on your vocabulary, your communication, your core values. Before, I felt like a complete failure: no communication skills, no confidence, no idea of my own values.

2. The wrong focus

Back then I was fixated on what I didn’t have and what I wasn’t as good at as others. What changed it was asking: what am I actually good at? Web design. Graphic design. Later I discovered writing, and speaking to a camera. Every skill I found added to my confidence.

Focus matters on the outside too. When you’re working on a project, random thoughts and the sudden urge to check Instagram will try to pull you away. Notice it, let it go, and get back to the work.

3. A lack of commitment

I started writing The Ultimate Guide to Success months before I finished it. I wrote the intro, then started another guide, then took on freelancing, then another job: five things, none done properly. The day I committed to finishing that one thing, I wrote it in two days.

So finish what you start, whether it’s a book, a video or a project. When I’m hungry halfway through a video, I eat afterwards.

4 and 5: no action, and the wrong thing

In the video I talk about the years I spent planning instead of doing, and the most common reason of all: doing something you don’t love just because there’s money in it. Every passion can be monetised. For me it’s writing, with a pen on paper, every single day.