13 Telltale Signs Someone is Failing at Life
Failure in life is never permanent. As long as you can breathe, you can progress in all areas of life.
Some would go as far as to say failing in life is a crucial step to achieving their dreams. But there are two kinds of failures. Failing to progress further and failing at life because of personality traits.
This curated list focuses on the latter and includes the obvious signs someone is failing at life. Remember that anyone can better themselves at any time. These signs are a gentle reminder to nudge yourself in the right direction.
1. Irresponsibility
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Irresponsibility left untrained becomes a habitual response to life’s problems. Any problem in life, be it small or big, becomes a mountain of trouble.
People who fail to take responsibility for their actions to others also neglect their own needs. Basic hygiene becomes a chore, and maintaining health becomes an even bigger problem than progressing in life.
2. Blaming Others
A person whose immediate response to any problem is blaming the world or other people is failing at life. Sometimes, we fall into difficult situations because of factors out of our control, but learning to overcome obstacles instead of choosing who to blame fixes these problems quickly.
The solution isn’t to switch blame to yourself but to focus more on the problem. The sooner you get to work alleviating the issue, the sooner you move on to other tasks.
3. Bragging About High-School
The entertainment industry will make you believe high school is the best time of your life. While everyone’s experience is different, it’s true that high school is the peak of youth. However, life has much more to offer.
Someone going through life bragging about their high school years believes there is nothing better ahead. This mentality forbids them from achieving greater success. Instead, they tend to go through life chasing the highs of their youth.
4. Rigid Opinions
Being inflexible with your opinions is a surefire way to never learn anything new. Different perspectives and cultures teach us a lot about human nature and provide much more information on life. The better informed a person, the clearer their decisions.
Unfortunately, for a lot of people, it’s either “my way or the highway.” Failing to respectfully hear out others is damaging to no one else but yourself.
5. Escapist Personality
Escapism means escaping any form of entertainment, helping you forget about life’s problems. Everyone needs a break now and then, but choosing to stay in mental vacation mode for lengthy periods is detrimental.
When happiness becomes as easy as putting on a nice movie without getting any work done, motivation becomes much more difficult to obtain. Escapists commonly have irregular sleeping routines, procrastinate often, and struggle to deal with imminent problems.
6. Lacking Independence
The older you get, the better equipped you should be to deal with problems yourself. This problem applies more to young adults. Depending on others to solve your problems for you means you will never learn about responsibility.
Driving, cooking, and cleaning are basic life skills everyone growing up should learn. Fortunately, they are never too late to learn.
7. Lying About Successes
Compulsive liars lie about almost all areas of their lives. It doesn’t matter whether the lie benefits them or not. People who lie about their lives and showcase them in a seemingly fancier light are one step closer to becoming compulsive liars.
Sooner or later, the truth prevails. This means friends, family, and others will lose trust in the liars. If you find yourself lying about life to others, the best solution is to redefine your definition of success. Success can be making your own bed at the start of a busy day.
8. Social Media Addiction
Social media is a great way to catch up with the world and see what friends and family are up to. However, more often than not, people get addicted to reels and the opinions of others.
To these people, winning at life means getting thousands of likes on a post. Alternatively, scrolling through reels for hours on end becomes a form of escapism. I’ve learned the best way to deal with this problem is to take a short break from social apps. The mental clarity is akin to taking a short walk in a forest.
9. Self-Sabotage
Believing in your ability to be successful is one of the core pillars of achieving your dreams. People who consider all of their successes a product of luck don’t credit themselves enough.
In this way, they believe they lack the skillset needed to excel in life. They fail to seize opportunities and often feel like imposters. What they fail to understand is that luck is just being in the right place at the right time. Showing up and dealing with problems improves the chances of getting lucky again.
10. Believing They Are Better Than Everyone Else
People who label themselves better than others are shooting themselves in the foot. In their minds, they can do no wrong, and failure means never trying again. This is because since they are better than everyone else and still fail, there’s no chance of success.
The key to success is to understand everyone has bad and good days. You might feel like you’re on top of the world one morning and feel like you’re down in the dumps another. Consistency is ideal but rare when it comes to human emotion.
11. Entitlement
Some people believe they are entitled to receive special treatment. Without doing anything of value, they deserve respect and others to be in their service. This way of thinking results from rigid opinions and believing in fallacies.
People who feel entitled need to reflect on their lives and fly back down to reality. Being respected and getting better treatment is as simple as doing the same for others.
12. Can’t Handle Criticism
The number one problem hindering improvement for many is distaste for criticism. If you only consider your own opinions as the sole authority on progress, you will make less of it.
Ideally, you should hear out others and take their advice into consideration. Failing to do so means making rash decisions and hitting a roadblock in life every now and then.
13. Judgemental
Judging others for their actions teaches you how to undermine yourself. People who partake in judgemental conversations and criticize someone else’s choices just for the sake of it fail to progress in life.
More often than not, we don’t know what someone else is going through. Choosing to judge others with absolutely no prior information means treating yourself the same. If you’re afraid of judgment from yourself and others, you will never try new things.
