Career Share Tweet While there are a wide variety of successful people in the world, they share many characteristics. One of these is the type of mistakes they avoid. There are certain errors that significantly reduce the odds of success. Eliminate these mistakes and you’ll find your level of success increasing. Successful people avoid making these mistakes: Proceeding without a plan. The average person doesn’t have a plan for much of anything. Successful people have a plan for nearly everything. Instead of trying to figure it out as you go, try making a plan and notice the difference in the results. Giving up too soon. Most of us give up far too easily. Your successful friends probably aren’t any smarter or more talented than you are, but they’re more persistent. Successful people simply keep going until they’ve achieved their objective. Repeating mistakes. If you could make a mistake one time, learn from it, and avoid making it again in the future, you’d be an incredibly powerful and successful person. Take a day and look back over your biggest failures and make a list of the mistakes you’ve made. What could you do differently next time? Trying to change others. You’ve noticed how hard it is to change yourself, and you wanted to change! Changing someone else is even harder, because they don’t want to change. Attempting to change others is a poor way to spend your time. Instead, identify the capabilities of others and utilize their strengths. Failing to take advantage of their strengths. You have a unique set of strengths. You may have been born with them or developed them. It can be worthwhile to work on your weaknesses, but when the rubber hits the road, rely on your strengths. Prioritizing poorly. The average person either fails to prioritize or does it poorly. Decide how you can spend your time most effectively. Get the most benefit from your time. How do you currently set your priorities? Using emotions to make decisions. In most situations, your experience and logic are best for making important decisions. It’s easy to make a poor choice when feeling stressed, angry, or euphoric. When your mind is calm and relaxed, all of your intellectual capability is at your disposal. Procrastination. You don’t want tomorrow to be the busiest day of your week. Successful people get things done. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Compare the most and least successful people you know. You’ll find a huge difference in their propensity for procrastination. Successful people avoid wasting time. Changing their mind frequently. Assuming you took your time to make a good decision, there will rarely be a time you should change your mind. Unsuccessful people change their minds frequently. That’s one of the reasons they fail to make progress. Successful people stay the course. How many of these mistakes do you make regularly? Can you see how they limit your success? Sometimes, it’s more about avoiding the wrong things than doing the right things. Avoid the common mistakes that unsuccessful people make. Most of us don’t just make these mistakes, we make them over and over. Avoid the same mistakes successful people avoid and you can expect more success in your life.