Have you heard of complacency and its pitfalls? I’m sure you have seen it around you whether in businesses as a customer or people you knew.
Think of a time when you went to a new restaurant that started with fantastic food and customer service. How excited you were to discover the place, go to and celebrate important moments of your life, hang out with friends, or go on dates. And then after some time, the restaurant became a victim of their success and slid into mediocrity with dull or overcooked food and barely acceptable customer service. How did you react? After the first bad experience you never showed up there again …
This story is a prime example of complacency.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, complacency is a feeling of calm satisfaction with your own abilities or situation that prevents you from trying harder.
And the Merriam Webster dictionary describes it as self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.
Here are 5 ways complacency can quickly sabotage your success in any aspect of your life and how to avoid falling into their traps.
1. Taking Your Success for Granted
Whether you have a business or a corporate career, if you take your success for granted (just like the restaurant in the above story), it will slip away from between your fingers fast.
Why? Because the quality of work you deliver, services or products you sell will quickly deteriorate if you don’t appreciate or treat your customers the same way you did when you started your business or new role.
That’s why being clear on what you stand for, what are the values of your personal or business brand is so critical. Keeping your values & brand image at the forefront of your mind will help you avoid sliding into self-content and its dangers.
If you haven’t thought of your values yet and don’t know how to even go about it, click here and let’s set up a FREE strategy session where I can help you get started.
2. Letting Go of Networking and Marketing
Unless you are an unapologetic extrovert who loves schmoozing or a marketing enthusiast, business or career networking and marketing is hard work for a lot of us. No wonder then we will find any excuse or opportunity to avoid it.
However, staying connected to your friends, professional and business network will help you in times of trouble, present opportunities you never thought would exist, or allow you to test those ideas you have been mulling over in your head for a long time.
We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present. Thomas Edison
3. Letting New Opportunities Slip Away Right From Under the Front of Your Nose
With complacency you lose your curiosity. You fall into the trap of thinking that you know it all, seen it all, and you have so much experience that no one can teach you anything new.
Don’t be that person! We can learn everywhere, anytime, from anyone; not only from people with more experience than us. We can learn as much from those with less experience than us our even kids; the main reason being – that they have a different perspective.
It is nice to be around people who think differently than you. They challenge your ideas and keep you from being complacent. Tucker Carlson
I can’t count the times when people much younger or less experienced than me, including my 4-year old son, thought me something valuable or inspired me to have courage to do something I was afraid of doing.
Without curiosity and an open mind, you will also lose on a great opportunity that might be laying right in front of feet and all you need to do it look down to notice and bend down to pick it up.
4. Not Staying Up to Date With Your Industry
What is the last time you read a book or magazine relevant to the industry you are in? Do you ever attend the industry conferences?
The world we live in today is going through exponential growth and crazy changes. What it means is that the progress is not linear anymore, it’s cumulative. It compounds like interest on your investments; that why the financial planners always say to start investing young.
80% of the technology that we will be using in the next 10-15 years have not been invented yet. Everything we know is obsolete almost the moment we learn about it.
Staying up to date with advancements in your industry will allow you identify the gaps in your skills that you will want to bridge or become aware of what your business needs to improve on or invest in to stay competitive on the market.
You can never get complacent because a loss is always around the corner. Venus Williams
5. Stop Investing In Your Self-Development
The content with your abilities, for sure will not motivate you to invest in your self-development. However, in order to grow, to achieve the big audacious goals you have, you need to relentlessly invest in you, your self-development.
As Jim Rohn said: Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.
And please don’t let your complacency convince you that you are too busy to find time for investing in yourself. You do have time, we all do. All it takes is having clarity of your goals and discipline in planning and organization of everything you do around these goals. If you don’t take charge of your time and life, others will run it for you, and you won’t even notice. Don’t let it happen. You are a LEADER of your own destiny. Take action today! And if you don’t know where start, click here for help and schedule a FREE consultation.
Do you see one of the complacency symptoms in your own life? Are you in danger of sabotaging your business or career this way? Beware. We are living in times of unprecedented growth and marketplace competition. In such a world, the necessity of learning new skills, new technologies and continuous improvement is critical not only to moving ahead but even to maintaining your current status. Taking a strategic approach to your career, business and life, allow you to stay ahead of the game. And if you need a friend to brainstorm, I am here for you one click away.
Never be complacent about the current steps; don’t agree and follow the status quo. Be determined that you are making an indelible impact with great change. Now, dress up and go to make it happen!
Israelmore Ayivor
