14 Things You Should Avoid If You Want To Grow

Most people are on a journey of self-improvement and personal development constantly. Working on improving your social skills, mental health, and self-esteem is important for your growth. Finding ways to grow yourself can make you a better friend, parent, worker, leader, and partner. In this article, we will cover 14 things to avoid if you want to grow taller.

But like any other journey, there are hurdles to avoid, and the journey of personal development is no different.

1. Procrastination

There is an old saying that procrastination is a time thief. That's right, because procrastination is delaying or not wanting to do something you're supposed to do, and this habit can be a real hindrance to your growth because it affects every aspect of your life, especially your career.

Postponing tasks until later can seriously affect your productivity. As a result, your workload will eventually be increased, and this will be a burden on your shoulders later.

Procrastination can also lead to missed opportunities - you're delaying sending that application, you're taking too long to finish that professional course, you're delaying preparing for an interview - after all, procrastination is the grave where buried opportunities are.

To sum it up, procrastination wastes your time, makes you miss opportunities, and doesn't allow you to reach your set goals. All of which can leave you feeling remorse and stunt your growth.

2. Comparison

Comparison is the thief of joy - I'm sure you've all heard this saying, and we're here to tell you, it holds a lot of truth. In all aspects of life, comparison does one of two things: It makes you feel less or better than others.

Feeling like you're less than someone can lead to pessimistic thoughts about yourself, feelings of jealousy, frustration, low self-esteem, and even wanting to give up because you can't meet the standards of those you compare yourself to.

Feeling like you're better than someone else hurts just as well; It makes you put yourself on a high horse and judge others because they can't compare themselves to you. The comparison can also hurt your feelings.

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3. Chasing perfection

As cliche as this may sound, perfection does not exist, so don't strive for it. Of course, things can be continually improved, but stopping yourself from implementing an idea or project because it isn't perfect is not right. You can work on these things and make them better.

Perfectionism makes you delay taking action, and when people take action, it prevents them from following through because nothing is ever good enough. The moment they start wanting everything to be perfect, they get stuck.

Perfectionism is a paralyzing idea. You're constantly berating yourself and your business for not being good enough, and you refuse to put yourself out there for opportunities that could help you grow.

To be a perfectionist means to finally stop being flexible. Everything you do is done with an all-or-nothing mindset, there is no middle ground — it's either perfect or it's not, and there's no way in between. In fact, perfection does not exist, and imperfection should be seen as the norm.

This often results in your inability to properly consider your actions and leaves you with little sense of self. Comparing yourself to others is one of the most prominent forms of self-sabotage, and you may want to avoid this in your pursuit of personal growth.

4. Negative thinking

Your mind is one of the most important aspects of your growth. It guides your actions and how you feel about everything and everyone around you. That is why people should review their thoughts and always direct them towards positivity.

If your thoughts are positive, they have a beneficial effect on your physical and mental health, but if they are negative, then it is likely that these thoughts reflect your life, actions and circumstances. If you think you are going to fail, you may be subconsciously sabotaging all of your chances of success. Negative thought patterns can have a powerful and sometimes destructive effect on you. Destroy your mood, strain your relationships, and drain your energy.

Which in turn will cast a shadow over your health, work and all aspects of your life.

"Remain apprehensive, however do it at any rate. What's significant is the activity. You don't need to hold back to be certain. Take care of business and in the long run the certainty will follow. " — Wolfmale

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5. Lack of self-confidence

Self-doubt is a feeling of uncertainty about one or more aspects of yourself. Each person may experience it at certain times in his life. Self-doubt prevents you from being confident in situations that require you to be.

You doubt if you are good enough or smart enough to do the things you want to do or even achieve anything. You practically shoot yourself in the foot before you even start. It's also closely related to imposter syndrome, which makes you feel like you don't deserve the success you've had even when all the evidence points to the contrary.

Self-doubt can stop you from moving forward and even pull you back if you allow it to! Even though you'll be really sure, that tiny bit of self-doubt will make you hold back. The scary thing about self-doubt is that it can quickly become a habit for many people without even realizing it.

Getting your self-doubt under control does not mean that you will never experience self-doubt again, but it does mean that you will learn to deal with it and move forward with resolving it quickly and appropriately whenever it occurs.

6. Unrealistic expectations

Everyone should ideally have high expectations.

Setting standards for yourself is a great way to live, and having high expectations can be a good thing, but make sure they are realistic. By raising the bar too high, you risk disappointment.

If you can't accept and live with disappointment, you can quickly start to view yourself as a failure, making it hard to get up and try again. Your expectations have the power to change your outlook on life and can shape your reality. So you need to be really careful about your expectations, as unrealistic expectations can make you judge yourself harshly, feel frustrated and depressed, and make life unnecessarily difficult when you can't achieve them.

It's not always easy, but adjusting to unrealistic expectations can bring tremendous benefits and a renewed sense of peace. It can really change your life emotionally and physically.

7. Fixed mindset

Having a fixed mindset means that you believe your intelligence, talents, and personality are fixed traits that cannot grow. You believe that you are born with a certain level of ability and that you cannot improve those abilities over time. If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that things will not change no matter what you do. On the contrary, having a growth mindset and belief in opportunity and possibility is essential if you want to grow as a person.

When you have an open mind and a growth mindset, you believe things can change. You believe your efforts will be rewarded, and that you can continually improve whatever skills you currently have.

A fixed mindset seriously limits your ability to grow because you don't even care about making an effort or trying to improve.

If you believe that nothing will change no matter what you do or how hard you work, it will be much more difficult to motivate you to do the work in the first place.

As you can imagine, a fixed mindset will never allow you to grow.

8. Unnecessary distractions

The ability to stay focused and keep your eyes on the prize is arguably one of the most important skills on the road to growth. People get so caught up in their daily lives that it is easy to lose focus and succumb to distractions.

This makes time management and the ability to eliminate distractions and focus crucial because in the middle of all this, they still have to make time for learning activities and career growth.

Being able to focus, prioritize, and manage your time is a huge advantage because if you want to develop in your career, you have to avoid distractions in the form of people and things, manage your time, and create healthy habits.

You can be sure that you will definitely have your hands full while working on your growth. Unnecessary distractions are actually something you don't want to deal with. Most people are constantly busy trying to work on different things at once.

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9. Living in the past

It's easy to get caught up in the pain of the injustice and frustration that happened to you, but the truth is when you think about the past, it spills over into other parts of your life and relationships. It holds you back and slows down your progress and development, especially when you cling to grudges, mistakes, and everything that was in the past.

Of course, mistakes will always happen, but keeping your focus and feelings on those mistakes won't get you far. Although it will affect your current and future goals and relationships as well. You cannot change the past, but you can decide to enjoy the present and work to influence the future.

However, do not confuse living in the past with memory. Remembering is recalling memories and allowing them to stay where they should be: the past. You live there when you're holding on to memories so tightly you can't move on.

Living in the past can kill your motivation because when you are constantly thinking about it, you don't have the energy to look to the future. And it will affect a lot of the ideas that are going through your mind.

10. Listening to others a lot

Everyone needs someone to act as a support system to always turn to for advice. It's good to have people to listen to, but their opinions should only serve as a guide, not an absolute dictate of your actions or thoughts.

The most important opinion in your life should be your opinion because these opinions and decisions directly affect you, much more than anyone else. So do not rely solely on other people's opinions. Although having second opinions and thoughts is always a good thing, allowing them to influence you negatively is not good for your growth.

Others may have a different perspective on life than you do, but that doesn't qualify them to tell you how to live it.

The main thing to avoid here is not listening to others but instead feeling pressured to stick to their opinions because that way, you'll keep doing something because someone else said it, not because you want to do it yourself.

11. Not wanting to learn and not learning

Our world is dynamic and constantly evolving, especially in the professional world. New jobs, experiences and skills come up from time to time and to keep up with it we have to be ready to change and evolve too because anyone who stagnates will get left behind.

However, learning doesn't just mean completing a college degree or two, although that's fine if that's what you want. Learning and not learning does not only apply to skills and the professional world. It can also mean learning and breaking habits that can benefit your life in general.

Not learning habits like procrastination, disorganization, and irregular sleep can help improve your life overall. The desire and ability to learn and unlearn is undoubtedly one of the most important elements of growth.

So to ensure that you are constantly growing, you must always be willing to learn and not learn. If you want to be successful and if you want to maintain that success, you need to keep learning. Learning is a good hobby too.

12. You don't value yourself

People often get so caught up in the things they haven't achieved yet and how much they have to do that they forget what they've already achieved and how far they've come.

Self-reflection and self-worth are great for your self-esteem and growth. Taking a step back to be more reflective and acknowledging that you have done well at certain things in your life with an open mind is essential to your growth.

Self-esteem boosts your self-esteem and makes you look forward to this task in the future and how much more can be achieved. So feel free to constantly remind yourself and appreciate how much you have achieved. You deserve all the credit, make yourself worthy of it and be confident of it.

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13. Toxic relationships

Many people often think of romantic relationships when toxic ones are mentioned. Although it is a very common form of a toxic relationship, it is not the only one. You could be in a toxic relationship with different people and things.

It can affect your physical, emotional and mental health. Regardless, it doesn't matter if the toxic relationship is with your partner, your family, your job, or your boss. If it's fixable, work on getting it fixed.

If not - distance yourself as much as possible from this relationship. Unnecessary distractions are actually something you don't want to deal with. Most people are constantly busy trying to confuse different things at once.

The effect this can have on your mental state, and general well-being is something you don't want to deal with while you're trying to grow.

14. Fear of failure

Fear of failure is one of the biggest obstacles to personal development. It is a fact that plans fail, and people fail, but failure also means that you are constantly trying to grow and improve. This means that you try new things, change the way you think, take risks, get out of your comfort zone, learn new skills, and learn how to live.

Pushing out fear and taking that leap will give you some of your greatest accomplishments. Most things that cause a little discomfort are generally good things, but when you give in to fear, you practically box yourself in and stay in your shell.

You gave up before you even gave yourself a chance. As the popular saying goes, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. After all, only those who don't try never fail.