Successful people often seem to have achieved success without breaking a sweat. These people have realized their goals and ambitions while we work ourselves to exhaustion, feeling like we have been left behind and getting nowhere, unable to come even close to realizing our dreams.

What are the secrets of success? Well, hard work, determination and perseverance are all vital components as well as a strong mindset, positive attitude and the necessary skills. These values are clear, but what should we ‘not’ be doing if we want to succeed in life? Here’s a list of 5 things highly successful people never ever do.

They never stay in their comfort zone.
Successful people didn’t achieve their success without taking risks. Learning new skills, starting a business, following your dreams, setting new goals, these all require moving out of your comfort zone.

They don’t insist on perfection.
It takes many small steps to achieve success and successful people know these smaller steps do not need to be completed perfectly. They are just stepping stones towards the final goal. Trying to achieve perfection is not only a futile pursuit, but minor goals take far longer to complete than needed and the quest for perfection can lead to procrastination.

They don’t let their past dictate their future.
Successful people do not stress over past mistakes because there is nothing they can do to change them. But mistakes are valuable as you can learn from them and use that experience to make better decisions in the future. Achieving success is going to require taking some risks and you can’t allow past failures stopping you from succeeding.

They don’t work harder, they work smarter.
Successful people of course work hard, that goes without saying, but they don’t necessarily work harder than everyone else. They certainly work smarter though, focusing most of their efforts on the tasks that will give them the greatest return.

They don’t care what other people think about them.
To achieve a high level of success you have to be able to ignore pessimists and not base your decisions and actions on how you believe other people think you should act. Not easy to do, but necessary to achieve great success.

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Also published on Medium.