People Who Stay Successful Well Into Their 70s Have Said Goodbye To These 7 Habits
If you want a life chalk full of contentment, banish these habits sooner than later.
Satrio Ramadhan | Canva I know the feeling. We can often be our harshest critics. We see others succeeding, and then we look at ourselves and judge that we’re not doing well enough. This is especially common in ambitious people. I’ve struggled with this self-judgment for decades.
We all have bad habits that hold us back. Whether we procrastinate, mindlessly scroll through social media, or eat unhealthy, these bad habits can keep us from reaching our full potential. The most important thing to realize is that even if you don't think a bad habit hurts anyone, people who stay successful well into their 70s have said goodbye to these things years ago.
People who stay successful well into their 70s have said goodbye to these habits:
1. Believing every thought in their head
TetianaKtv / Shutterstock
Newsflash — we lie to ourselves. We do this in one simple way: we give credence to a fictitious thought.
We see a negative thought float up about our lot in life, and we dare to sit there and believe it. Do you believe that? Don’t be a dum dum. See thoughts for what they are.
2. Buying in to what society believes is successful
Yuri A / Shutterstock
It’s a heady elixir we’ve been gulping down since Mom first dropped us off at Kindergarten. What is considered success seeps into our minds like osmosis from our friends, teachers, and families.
And we fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. And we carry these standards into adulthood and pollute our hoy with our fears of falling outside the line of what society considers successful.
Society generally views success as requiring a combination of factors, including high intelligence, hard work, determination, strong social skills, a positive attitude, resilience, adaptability, a high level of education, and a stable career path. However, these perceptions can vary significantly depending on cultural context and individual values, with some emphasizing factors like wealth, status, or personal fulfillment.
A 2023 study by Asia and the Global Economy found that many societies hold a meritocratic belief that success is primarily achieved through individual merit, meaning hard work and talent, rather than external factors like family background or luck.
Your task? Sit down for thirty minutes and question what success really is. Can you be successful in ways most people haven’t considered?
3. Criticizing others as a personality trait
Yuri A / Shutterstock
Sure, I like to have a moan about others with friends now and then. But don’t make this part of you. Get in the habit of complimenting and lifting your fellow human.
Not because you’re a goody two shoes. But because you know at an atomic level, we are all connected. This has extremely relevant psychological consequences. If we criticize others, we project our insecurities onto them.
No one who is truly happy in themselves needs to bring others down. Quit doing it, and the color will return to your cheeks.
4. Viewing failure as a step back
fizkes / Shutterstock
Human beings have even crafted a clever little word to emphasize the false nature of failure — we call it a ‘setback.’ No failure is a setback.
Viewing failure as a setback rather than a complete defeat is strongly linked to increased resilience, a growth mindset, and the ability to learn from mistakes.
Findings from a study by Applied Psychology concluded this allows individuals to bounce back from challenges and ultimately achieve tremendous success. This is often attributed to the attribution theory, which states that individuals can attribute failures to external or controllable factors, promoting a more positive outlook on setbacks.
Let’s say you’re trying to build a log cabin. Maybe you do the cement mixture for the foundation wrong. If you didn’t know how to do it right, you’ve now learned a lesson. You didn’t go backward. You gained ground.
You don’t gain anything if you don’t work on the log cabin when you otherwise could have. You don’t gain new lessons from failures, and you don’t gain in the accrued building of the cabin.
When you welcome failures, you’re far more likely to take action, because now you’re not out to berate yourself for making a mistake. Yes, take care, but don’t hold back from gaining valuable data.
5. Giving in to time-stealing habits
CarlosBarquero / Shutterstock
Instead, turn bad habits into one-off rewards. I know you enjoy the thing. I know you just can’t stop. But it isn’t because it’s so hard to quit that you can’t quit the thing.
It’s because secretly you don’t want to quit. If you did, it would be easy. As the quit-smoking guru Allen Carr says, it’s not nearly as hard as we make it out to be psychologically.
You don’t want a bad habit to be a regular habit. If you can enjoy it as an occasional one-off, great, but otherwise quit.
When we do, we see ourselves in a new light — we’re not constantly self-sabotaging. This sends out a clear message that you’re not to be screwed with.
6. Tolerating cycles of self-judgement
insta_photos / Shutterstock
You could say this is the big bazoomba in all the bad habits. Judgement gets a bad rap. It is a useful thing. If we see something that isn’t working in our environment, and we judge it as bad, and then we take action to change it positively, that’s great.
The most effective ways to stop self-judgment are mindfulness meditation, self-compassion exercises, cognitive restructuring, and identifying the root causes of self-criticism. 2023 research recommended becoming aware of your inner critic and actively replacing harsh judgments with more supportive self-talk.
The issue comes when we get into patterns of thinking harshly about ourselves without breaking the cycle. There comes a point when we must ruthlessly turn away from these judgments. That’s all there is to it.
There’s no particular action you need to take. Just stop judging yourself so much. The void this creates will be filled with a warm sense of self-respect.
7. Desperately needing to get ahead
Dragana Gordic / Shutterstock
It seems counterintuitive to drop what looks like a very healthy drive to outcompete others around you.
It’s something I’ve grappled with most of my life. And when I’m particularly strong in this mindset, I am rarely happy.
It just puts me into comparison mode — ironically sapping me of my drive to do much else. Know the feeling? Instead, focus on enjoying the work you set your heart on doing.
Do one thing at a time, with enjoyment, absent of the continual keeping up with the Jones-esque comparison trap. When you do it this way, you become significantly more effective and surge forward anyway.
Alex Mathers is a writer and coach who helps you build a money-making personal brand with your knowledge and skills while staying mentally resilient. He's the author of the Mastery Den newsletter, which helps people triple their productivity.