5 Things to Stop (Or Completely Avoid) Doing in 2024 to Be Successful

As you get more and more entrenched in the process to improve yourself and as a result, your life outcomes – you start to become very self-aware.

Namely, you start to become self-aware about the things which help you and the things which don’t.

At a basic level, these things are very easy to spot.

But what about the more subtle things? What about the things that aren’t easily discernible on the surface?

This article is going to be about 5 things to stop doing in 2024 – if you want to become successful.

This article is also available in podcast form:

Here’s a quick example:

Something that helps you could be a group of friends who are also committed to improving themselves.

Something that hurts you could be participating in endless weekend gaming marathons with another group of friends.

On the surface hey, at least you’re around people, right?

In both of these scenarios, you could thoroughly enjoy both of these activities and both of these groups of friends.

But when we’re talking about being successful in your own life, doing things which will help you live a life you like living and not one you need to escape from–it’s obvious from that perspective that the latter will probably not help you.

In fact, it may even hurt you.

And I have nothing against video games or gaming – I used to be a competitive video gamer myself.

But it’s these subtle things which can over time lead you off track from your goals and your overall desires in life.

In 2024, we are surrounded by lots of these subtle things which on the surface don’t look that bad, don’t look that harmful – when in reality, they will prevent you from being successful at some level.

The following 5 things are a small subset of these, but a subset which I think can easily slip under the radar of your awareness if you aren’t careful and if you aren’t vigilant.

I also want to offer a disclaimer – just because you avoid these doesn’t mean your success is guaranteed.

You also need to do the right things that are required for you to be successful in your own way.

However, participating in and indulging in these 5 things will almost certainly ruin any current success you have or any future success you may have.

I also want to add that these 5 things are simple on the surface, but they have many nested points within them.

So just because it’s simple – don’t pass it off as easy. Many people fall into these to varying degrees, even people you look up to and admire.

Now with that out of the way, here’s the first one.

Relying on entertainment for mood regulation

This one can either seemingly go right over your head or be very basic but I believe it is important to understand.

So let here’s essentials.

Your brain is a machine which relies on neurotransmitters to do its job. To signal things to different parts of the brain and body, it uses different neurotransmitters.

Some of these are:

• Dopamine
• Acetycholine
• Serotonine
• GABA
• Glutamate
• Oxytocin

And the list goes on. All of these do different things. And all of these interact with other neurotransmitters in different ways to produce effects on the brain and body.

Another fact about the brain is that our brain is relatively unchanged from our earliest ancestors, with the exception of higher level prefrontal cortex functioning.

Our earliest ancestors lived in environments where their neurochemical baseline was relatively static. That means they weren’t getting dragged up and down the mood continuum by all of the stimulation we have in our current environment.

This means that when their brain activated, it was for a pretty damn good reason. Such as:

• Escaping a predator
• An opportunity to seize food
• An opportunity to mate
• Etc.

Fast forwarding to our current environment, we have no shortage of opportunities to eat food (for most people in the developed world).

We have no shortage of opportunities to mate (there’s 8 BILLION of us on the planet). And our world historically, is the safest its ever been.

But, we are now at the point where we are way too good at pushing our own buttons.

Meaning, we are way too good at the point of manipulating our neurochemical responses.

Here’s where we get to the heart of the matter.

There’s a lot of things in our environment where we can PUSH BUTTON and get whatever.

In this case, push button and manipulate our emotional response.

Feeling bored? Flip on the TV or scroll social media.

Feeling aroused? Open up a video of an Instathot.

Want to feel angry? Look up whatever’s going wrong the world today.

Want to just escape? Smoke a ton of weed and just bliss out on the couch staring at whatever’s on Netflix.

You can easily change your mood using entertainment.

Whether that be in the form of TV, Internet, gaming, sexual content, drugs whatever. Whatever you want, it’s there.

And again, on the surface – this looks alright. We all do this to a certain degree.

But here’‘s the clincher. The more you run to entertainment to regulate your emotional state, the more you need it to regulate your emotional state.

Why?

Because the brain can rewire itself.

And the brain will rewire itself to accept whatever you repeatedly give it.

And if you repeatedly give it something that releases a whole bunch of neurochemicals that make you feel good, your brain will crave more of that thing – whatever it is.

Over time, as you start to do whatever your entertainment of choice is more and more, you may find that life starts passing you by in certain aspects.

Maybe if you’re a young guy, you decide to skip major school events to play video games.

Or maybe you skip class because you want to get high.

Or maybe you don’t want to bother with dating women because pornography is more appealing to you.

Or maybe you don’t do your homework because what’s on YouTube is more entertaining.

Over time, these incidents pile up over days, weeks, months, and then you find that you are vastly off track with living a life that you want to live.

And then, you become what I call an NPC. A non player character in their own life. Someone who passively needs stimulation to fill the black void of emptiness.

Which, it doesn’t even really fill because that’s not it’s job.

And while this may sound like fantasy, this is the reality that many young men of various ages find themselves in.

They can’t focus for more than 5 minutes because they have trained their brain to be addicted to stimulation.

They can’t read a book for more than a page because their eyes glaze over.

I know several men who have social anxiety because they have spent years living this NPC/hermit-like lifestyle that its hard for them to engage in the real world.

They don’t go out, they can’t engage in conversation, they feel nervous even checking out at the grocery store…

This is not normal behavior.

A young man your age 100 years ago would have been doing all sorts of things with his life.

But now, we have a large contingent of people, not even just young men who cannot live life because they NEED the entertainment.

They NEED the dopamine rush.

They NEED the neurochemical fixation.

They NEED the world to create a sense of psychological safety that they experience in their nice warm cocoon at home – or they just won’t engage with it.

And according to B.F. Skinner, who was the father of behavioral psychology, this is known as conditioning.

Meaning, that your default responses will be shaped by whatever you engage with repeatedly.

And how do you know if you fall into this category?

Simple. Ask yourself if you can sit in a room for an hour alone and be cool with it.

No phone. No TV. No Internet. No music. No whatever.

And I’m not even talking about meditation. Just vibing with yourself.

Can you do that?

Something to think about.

Catastrophizing & Minimizing

These are both two different things, but they both fall under the category of cognitive distortions.

Pretty easy to understand – catastrophizing is when you exaggerate situations beyond what they should be exaggerated to.

Minimizing is when you minimize situations beyond what they should be minimized to.

So…an example of catastrophizing would be when you’re driving and you get a flat tire. You then have to pull over to the side of the road. This has never happened to you, so you start freaking out and pretty much hyperventilating.

In reality? A flat tire? No big deal. You’re not the first person to have one and you won’t be the last. It sucks, yes. But you’ll live.

An example of minimizing. Let’s say you’re in school and you BOMB a major test. You say, ah yeah, it’s no big deal, no big deal to make yourself feel better.

And yeah, that’s possible, especially if you had nothing but As…but if it’s a major test or assignment and lets say you’ve had an assortment of Bs and Cs, you could be in danger of failing the class. Especially if it happens again.

And these two are very minor examples, but they’re things that many people fall into.

How does this keep you from being successful?

If you exaggerate things that you shouldn’t exaggerate and minimize things which you shouldn’t, as the weeks, months, and years pile up – you will just take L after L after L.

Then you end up falling into escapist behavior to compensate for your terrible life, which leads to the first one – entertaining yourself to death.

I hope you can see how this is easily a cycle. A giant cycle of failure and misery and despair.

I made a podcast on common thinking errors that many people fall into:

Stop wasting time

Despite what anyone says – we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

Some of us have more or less obligations than others, but we all have moments in our day which will determine the direction our life will go in the near and long-term.

More importantly, we all have things which are a better use of that time than others.

For example, if one of your goals is to become one of the highest paid people in your field or to become a stellar pianist, there are activities in your hours, days, weeks, and months which will lead up to those long-term goals.

But if you’re someone who needs entertainment just to feel OK or if you’re someone who needs instant gratification to feel OK, then you might as well kiss those goals goodbye.

It’s not that you can’t achieve those things… but the path to them will be significantly harder than if you were someone who was able to take the long hours of repetitive practice and study to achieve those goals.

In addition to that – you can’t talk about wasting time without talking about procrastination.

Procrastination is something everyone on planet earth is familiar with, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to define it.

But just in case you have any shadow of a doubt, procrastination is the act of delaying or even putting off tasks even in the face of negative consequences.

Running to entertainment for mood regulation and procrastinating are two main ways you practice escapism.

And of course, this loop tightens.
The more you procrastinate, the more you waste time.
The more you waste time, the more you will minimize and justify that you waste time.
And when you do this for a long enough time, you need to escape your life because you can’t handle it anymore.

Stop trying to control everything

This should be obvious, but there is very little in this existence you have control over.

You can’t control weather, you can’t control:

• other people’s opinions
• how the economy works,
• other people’s actions and life choices.

But despite this, many people try to control all of these things and more.

And obviously, since you can’t control much – you will end up wasting time trying to do it.

And then we fall back into the loop of things which will drag you down.

As these behaviors stack up, the momentum of failure starts to increase.

The solution to this is identify what you do have control over and make sure you do your best to steer those to the right direction.

What are some examples?

You can control what time you wake up in the morning.
You can control your morning routine.
You can control your responses to situations.
ou can control your attitude.
You can control your energy.
You can control your thinking.

Over time, as you start to control these, you see your circle of influence starts to increase.

Maybe waking up early allows you to get more time in your day so you can do things that are important to you.

Maybe your attitude and your response to situations makes you an attractive candidate for a promotion.

Maybe that promotion allows you to make more money which allows you to do things which you couldn’t previously.

Like starting a charity for a cause you care for. Donating some money to charities for causes you care about.

The ability to retire early or make a career transition.

All of these come from the ability to control what is in your direct control as best as you can. Not spending time worrying about what you can’t control.

Falling for get [whatever quick] scams

I think of all the things I’ve talked about here, this is the most important because it immediately impacts your short and long-term wealth, your success.

So why did I include this one.

I was watching a video on YouTube called Is this a Golden Age of Fraud by a YouTuber named Patrick Boyle.

Boyle is a hedge fund manager at Palomar Capital and a former investment banker. I thought the video was great because it highlighted how prevalent fraud and scamming is in society is today.

Since the pandemic, scamming and fraud has picked up to a dramatic pace. Why?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

A lot of people are feeling the financial CRUNCH lately.

Lots of people are broke, so some people are going to use that as an opportunity to get one up on someone or that person who will get scammed may be desperate.

Maybe for money, so they apply for a loan from a shady financial organization and then they get scammed.

Scamming is nothing new. It has been around since man could walk and realized that they could take advantage of people.

And I was telling someone the other day that the story of Jacob and Esau in the book of Genesis is an example of fraud. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and deceived his blind father. That can be seen as the first example of identity theft.

Whether you believe in this story or not isn’t the point, the point is that this behavior has been recorded in ancient texts – so this is nothing new.

And the people who say “I’m too good to get scammed” are the first people to get scammed out of money. They’re easy targets.

So what is a scam?

A scam is simply a way to embezzle resources from another person in a dishonest fashion.

This often comes in the form of money, which in that case, this is embezzlement which is a serious crime.

And embezzlement gives rise to the word “bezzle”. Bezzle, is a contracted word of embezzlement which is an economic term more less meaning “illusory wealth”.

Meaning, if you get scammed out of money, you may think that you got a great deal on whatever it is.

Meanwhile, the person who ran off with your loot knows he increased his wealth. And it might be weeks, months, or even years before you realize what happened.

This creates the bezzle.

On the macro scale, this screws up the economy because there’s a giant gap between what actual, tangible wealth is vs. wealth that is perceived. It just creates a lot of this watery hot air because there’s no value being created.

This creates situations like the Great Depression in 1929, the Great Recession in 08, and various other schemes that were seen in the pandemic and to this day.

Now, the schemes vary – you’ve got ponzi schemes – which is investor fraud.

Pyramid schemes – which is commonly seen in multi-level marketing companies.

There are different types of fraud such as:

• credit card fraud
• identity theft
• loan fraud
• bank fraud
• document fraud
• advanced fee fraud
• tax refund fraud
• forgery
• phishing

The list goes on and on and on and on and ON. It is literally endless.

And yes, there’s a chance that someone you know has been scammed at some point in their life.

I’ve been on the Internet for quite a while now and I’ve seen all kinds of people get scammed in all kinds of ways.

These people aren’t even hiding anymore. They’re just in plain sight. And some celebrities are getting in on the fun now, too.

That’s why in the podcast I made on consumerism late last year, I suggested to limit your time on social media. Why? There’s so much fraud on social media.

And on a long enough time horizon, you’ll end up being the victim of it.

So why will this prevent you from being successful. Pretty, pretty obvious.

Scammers take advantage of your inherent need to be instantly gratified.

They take advantage of your greed.

How does this connect to everything I just talked about?

Most things in life that will make you successful are often incredibly routine, almost to the point of boring.

But if you need to be entertained, you won’t know that. You think everything should be fun, fun, fun, fun fun. And that’s where you end up losing out in the long run.

So If something is too good to be true, it probably is.

Now, I’m not saying to be paranoid. Not everyone is out to get you. But let’s be honest, there are a lot of people who are.

And it’s your duty to always do your research and pay attention to your gut instincts.

Conclusion + Wrap Up

There’s a lot of things out there in the world that will prevent you from being successful at some level.

It’s your duty to identify these things and ask the question:

“How is this really helping or hurting me?”

You need to develop self-awareness to do so. After all, you don’t want to end your life with massive regrets.

Let us know in the comments: Have any of these stopped you from being successful now or at some point in the past? If so, what did you do or what are you doing to remove it from your path?