The Complacent Mindset — Your Worst Enemy
“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” — Richard Branson
You will never grow and learn anything about the juice of life if you have succumbed to complacency. It is a threat to your personal growth, your business and even your relationships.
A complacent person may confuse himself to be an optimist — someone satisfied with what they have and hoping everything will be great in the future. Risks are not seen as risks, but rather opportunities. Nothing bad will happen nor should the way they’re living. undoubtedly, a complacent person and the complacent mindset is not ready for a disaster, it does not prepare for a setback, mistake or failure but these are inevitable for every person, and this may be the end of a complacent person’s happy life.
What is Complacency?
The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It is not failure but aiming too low, that is life’s greatest tragedy — Benjamin E. Mays
Complacency is a feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, often combined with a lack of awareness of pending trouble.
Like the quote mentioned; complacency can be dangerous and holding you back. The worst part about having a complacent mindset is that you won’t even realize the very changes in front of you or rather the lack of changes.
Dangerous of a Complacent Mindset
Complacency destroys progress: Complacency is mediocracy’s best friend. When complacent you’re not pushing for better things or improvements in life. Instead, accepting things as they are and welcoming mediocrity. The chances of you achieving your goals will be lower because you have settled for less.
Complacency In Your Personal Life: Instead of striving for life goals and working towards a healthier body and mind, complacency welcomes laziness into your life. You start laying around more, watching T.V all day, and indulging in distractions.
Complacency and Professional Life: You focus on not getting fired rather than not getting promoted. With that mentality, the truth is someone better and hungrier will replace you soon. Someone out there is training with a goal in mind and your job may be in the way.
Building An Anti-Complacent Mindset
Set Meaningful Goals
Don’t worry, complacency is not an incurable disease. In fact, a few things can help you become anti-complacent and put you back on the right track.
Always work towards your goals. By making progress you’re stopping complacency from rooting. These goals should be relatively long-term with meaning and purpose. A meaningless goal will result in many breaks along the way leading to laziness and ultimately complacency. Find goals and have a strong why.
Embody The High Standards Mindset
Don’t settle for less. When you raise your standards and turn “should” into “must,” you are making an inner shift to take control over the quality of your life. According to Jeff Bezos, high standards are teachable and domain-specific. People are generally good at learning high standards simply through exposure. High standards are contagious. Set yourself up with people who will help you grow and become a better person. Unfortunately, high standards are not universal, this means you must learn high standards in one area at a time.
Another key tool in developing this mindset is: identifying what high standards look like in that area, and how realistic is it for you to achieve them.
Recognize Your Blind Spots
One of the greatest dangers of complacency is that it creates blind spots. The first step is accepting there are areas in your life that need improvement and looking for vulnerabilities. You may be happy with the way things are now but will everything remain the same a few years later? For example, you might enjoy eating chips every day and may not have noticed a significant increase in your weight — but will this eventually bite you back?
Final Note
Building an anti-complacent mindset is very important. Although don’t confuse this for being unsatisfied and ungrateful. You must appreciate everything you have. Acknowledging areas that need improvement while appreciating everything you have is key to developing an anti-complacent mindset.
