10 Subtle Habits That Are Ruining Your Life Without You Noticing

AVAlexander Volchek

Today we are going to go through a whole list of habits that lead to personal decline and get in the way of your own development. It is very important to know these habits. Knowing about them will allow you to grow many times over—truly, tens of times over, especially if you apply at least half of this list to yourself. It is important to look at the whole list, because everyone will find something important for themselves. What are these habits? First, I will explain how to work with habits that lead to decline. The first thing is to understand that you can find a solution right here and now. Whenever you notice a particular habit and reflect on it quickly and consciously, you can see actions you can take. Different habits will affect different people; it will vary a great deal and depends very much on the individual. The second thing to notice is that you can reflect on what has already happened in your life. You can always see that you had a particular habit in the past, pay attention to it, and draw conclusions, useful or otherwise. The third thing, which is actually the most important part of working with habits, is to lay a very strong foundation that will help you move forward over the next ten years.

In other words, something that gives you a foundation, rather than a one-time action. So, let us go through them in order, starting with the less complicated habits and moving toward the really important ones. Support my channel: remember to like the video and leave comments. That is very helpful to me, and I really need it—even if you have only been watching this video and have only known me for two minutes. The first habit is thinking that happiness will come after you achieve a goal. A person operates within a framework where they say, “I will make a million dollars and move to Thailand to live happily. Once I get a particular job, I will have time.” There is a habit I find interesting now: many futurists and people in artificial intelligence say that supposedly, once AI arrives, people will have more free time and will find time for personal or spiritual development. As though being busy and working now prevents them from developing as people. They create an entirely manipulative connection between those things. That certainly holds back your development. One of the fundamental problems it is important to recognize is that you may never achieve your goal at all. The longer you fail to achieve it, the more overwhelming apathy you will feel about your own state.

This leads to very serious decline. It does not simply slow your development; it takes you downward into decline. The second habit applies to an enormous number of people around the world: believing you do not need to develop in any direction at all. That is probably the most common underlying view people have. They say, “We are where we are, and we have enough of everything.” By development, I do not mean the kind that leads to decline. I do not mean increasing the knowledge in your brain, or being able to answer more test questions or solve more problems. I am talking about real, fundamental development as a person that leads to an incredibly strong inner state. What does it mean to think about development? Someone watching might ask, “What does being in a state of development even mean? What should I be thinking about?” First and foremost, there are two things to think about. Two things; this is very important. You need to keep thinking about who you are and where you are, and about the cause-and-effect relationships around you, in the processes that arise in your life.

Keep thinking about what is really happening. That means knowing the truth and acting from that truth. Notice that real development is not a state of needing to reach a certain score. Development is not about having to feel better. It is what I just described, with one condition—the second point: knowing that everything you do for your development is done with an understanding that you relate to other people genuinely and truthfully, that you treat other people honestly. Combining those two parts is what constitutes real, true human development. The third habit is a scourge of the late nineteenth—actually, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It is certainly evolving and developing rapidly today and will continue to do so. Incidentally, artificial intelligence will contribute to it too. It is the endless comparison of yourself with other people. Endless comparison. What does that mean? It is constantly trying to find something better in other people. It is constantly trying to find something worse in other people so you can put them down, so you can diminish them.

Constantly comparing yourself with others means living someone else’s life instead of your own. It is a big problem when a person sets up idols to guide their development, when they are inspired by someone without recognizing that they themselves are unique and that their own life is unique. Instead, they think that if they adopt something another person does, they will follow exactly the same path. That is impossible, because people are completely individual, entirely distinct. There is a very big problem here. I receive hundreds of questions every day. Many people ask about my experience or what I would do in a particular situation. I always begin my answer—always—with this statement: when you ask a question that way, you are asking from your ego, from a big, strong ego. Always; unquestionably, you are asking from a big, strong ego. Of course, people do not like hearing that, but it is important to hear and understand it at the outset. What difference does it make what I would do about a particular task in business, professional work, life, or relationships?

What difference does it make? My life is unique, my business is unique. The people around me are unique, my work is unique, my children are unique—my friends, acquaintances, relationships, the place where I live. What I would do fundamentally cannot be applied in a one-to-one comparison like that. You can hear a particular recommendation from me. You can hear a perspective on the question, but you should not start from “What would he do in my place?” I am not in that place. I have never been there and never will be. I always make that qualification at the beginning so the person does not build an illusion. Incidentally, people really like to compare and say things here. It is amazing: people love comparing, yet they say, “Well, you live in California. Everything is so great for you; that is why you say that.” Then why were you comparing before? Why live through comparison in the first place? That is, of course, a very big mistake, a habit that leads to serious decline. Another form this comparison habit often takes is saying, “I do not make ten thousand dollars a month, so something is wrong with me.” Or, “I do not make a hundred thousand dollars a month, so something is wrong with me.”

Or someone says, “I do not have children, so something is wrong with me.” Or, “My husband drinks at home, so something is wrong with me.” Or, “My wife does not support me at home, so something is wrong with me, whereas he gets support.” People are living in comparison. But if we really begin looking into people’s lives—

We will find an incredible number of combinations: wealthy people who are unhappy in marriage or are not married at all; poor people with many children; poor people with no children; people happy in a relationship with one friend and unhappy in a relationship with another; one person supporting them while another hates them and constantly tries to put them down. We will find an incredible number of combinations to compare. That is the problem—the enormous problem with comparison. I said artificial intelligence will only intensify this habit, because fundamentally AI will produce a single view. But how can you produce a single view of a countless number of combinations? Notice that the number of combinations is countless. No mathematics, physics, or any other science can calculate the patterns of a human life here. It is absurd, an illusion. Now, one of the most fundamental habits. I keep talking about fundamentals and importance, but all the habits in this video really are important. There are more than ten of them. This one is very important: a person loses themselves and is set back decades—decades. It is the habit of focusing on criticizing other people and looking for their mistakes.

If we look at this fundamentally, it does not happen only with people someone comes into contact with or lives with. It begins happening with people they do not know personally. They begin discussing and criticizing people they see on television. In essence, we certainly lived in a society—and it is not just us; the whole world lives in a society—that discusses people, criticizes them, and looks for other people’s mistakes. From presidents, athletes, stars, performers, and businesspeople all the way to, worst of all, one’s own family. The worst thing, of course, is self-criticism. If someone is looking for mistakes in other people, they will inevitably become locked in self-criticism. Yet that is a separate, major cause. I make a very clear distinction between the two. When we were preparing the list of causes, my editor said, “But criticizing others and criticizing yourself are the same thing.” Self-criticism, though, is on a completely different level. It leads to a state in which you can begin hating other people and can begin hating life very intensely.

Self-criticism: why is it guaranteed to stop development? Because we develop by getting to know ourselves, by truly understanding cause and effect. When you are genuinely getting to know yourself, you cannot be in a state of criticism. You can be in a state of exploration or understanding. Your main task is to explore yourself, expand your perception of yourself, and learn about yourself. If you criticize yourself instead of simply understanding what is happening with you, you will constantly be relying on a false foundation. The task is not simply to find a mistake. It is not to destroy yourself or compare yourself with other people, because any criticism involves comparison. The task is to understand cause and effect: why a particular event happened in your life, even if you acted wrongly. I certainly want to add relationships to this discussion. Let me say right away that in every area you can find many habits that will help you grow. In my videos on the channel, I talk a great deal, on the one hand, about states that bring strong development and growth, that lead to significant growth.

On the other hand, I talk a great deal about frameworks that lead to decline. One major habit in relationships is living through manipulation and expectations of your partner. I will touch on this briefly, because there are certainly substantial materials on this subject. It is being with a partner because you want them to bring you something. It is being with a partner because you want them to change. It is being with a partner for yourself, while thinking you know what real happiness is, what harmony means for both of you. In reality, you are thinking only about yourself and what you need. An enormous number of people live together every day while thinking only about themselves, not about other people. I recently spoke with an acquaintance and told him, “One of your biggest problems is that whenever you visit anyone, or interact with anyone at all, you are actually thinking only about yourself.” This applies to everyone, quiet and outgoing alike. So many people think only about themselves. It is important, when meeting anyone, to keep checking in with yourself before, during, and after the meeting: “How am I really feeling right now, in this moment with this person?

“Who am I thinking about? Am I thinking about them, or only about myself?” One enormous problematic habit today is setting a false goal when you are learning and taking in content. For example, you watch this video and say, “I will watch this; it will help me make more money.” Or you watch someone else, perhaps a famous entrepreneur: “I will watch this well-known entrepreneur’s content, and my income will quadruple.” Or, “I will watch someone who has a happy relationship, and my relationship will improve.” You set a false goal for consuming content. What is the problem with a false goal? It is not simply false because you actually want something else. Another problem is that you often do not know the person you are watching. People rarely take the trouble to understand the people they watch, especially on YouTube, where videos are served through recommendations. Someone seeing me for the first time, for instance, has no idea who I am. Even someone who has watched twenty videos with me still has no idea who I really am: my inner state, my mood, what I live for, my ideas, my impulses, my life.

What are my relationships with my children, my friends, my partners? What businesses do I have, what professional work do I do? How did I feel ten years ago? How will I feel twenty years from now? I can say things, communicate things. This distorted sense of what a person is saying, combined with a mistaken perception of your own goal, creates a big problem. What is a mistaken perception of your goal? What does setting a false goal mean? People often say to themselves, for example, “I want to study these videos so I can learn a new profession.” In reality, they do not want a new profession; they want to increase their monthly income. Or they say, “I will take a particular course and learn how to make twice as much money, and that will change my income.” They may learn how to make twice as much, but that does not mean their income increases or will increase. Nothing of the kind has been said. There is such a profound substitution going on here. People have developed this habit of having a false goal over many years. Why over many years? Because it is conveyed from childhood, when someone goes to school or university.

Take school as a basic example. A person is given a direction, an intention and an impulse to learn, and is told, “Here you will receive the education you need for life—for the right kind of work, for example.” Or, “You need this education to genuinely feel right and good in society.” Or they receive an education so they can become part of a particular social circle. They are told, for example, that if they go and get this education, they will enter a particular social circle. This is an interesting subject. For a long time, about eighteen or perhaps twenty years ago, I had the idea that I wanted to get an MBA at one of the world’s top five educational institutions—a Harvard MBA or a Stanford MBA, for example. One of the ideas behind that was—

One of the ideas behind it was that I would gain the right circle of people. An MBA education supposedly gives you a good network. But you need to be clear with yourself: do you simply want a network, or do you want one that will change your income in the near future? That is very important. Why do I want that circle? So I can have great evenings with people, or go on interesting trips together from time to time? Or so I can land great contracts in the future? That makes a very big difference. Having a network says absolutely nothing about whether you will get big contracts. Nothing at all. I know many people in very influential circles—very influential. That does not mean those circles bring them anything. There are a great many people in my life who have brought me nothing in terms of contracts. Likewise, I have brought nothing to many people in my own circle, people who have spent decades with me. There are even people to whom I have brought losses: they took advantage of an opportunity, wanted to get a contract or start a business alongside me, and it did not work out for various reasons. Sometimes because of them, sometimes because of the circumstances, and sometimes, perhaps, because of me.

It makes no difference. It did not work out for them. A network can also bring and generate losses. So when it comes to education, when you want to develop and gain new information or knowledge, it is very important not to confuse these things and set a false goal for yourself. One major cause of personal decline is the inability to break connections that are leading you into decline. What does that mean? People often stay in a group that leads them into decline. They may have a job that leads them into decline, or consume content that does. This is an interesting point: connections that lead to decline are not necessarily contacts, personal acquaintances, individual people. They also include the information you receive on social media or through videos, the space you live in, the home you occupy, or people you encounter somewhere every day. I am certainly not saying you must end every one of these connections that is wearing you down.

I am talking about being able to end the connections that truly need to end. In reality, a person very often understands that something is hurting them, but does not move toward ending it. It takes a great deal of time for them to recognize it. Remaining in that state becomes a habit. Being dependent, including on people who bring decline into your life, becomes a habit. Staying in a group that leads to decline becomes a habit. It really is a habit. I know many people who complain about their bosses. They could have changed jobs long ago; it would have been no trouble for them. They do not do it precisely because this has become their life, their inner state, what gives them harmony and a sense of joy. There are two more causes. One of them will certainly be the subject of a very substantial video; we will get to it in a moment. First, I want to discuss copying someone else’s strategy. I live in Silicon Valley, and it is very widespread here. It is widespread in many places, actually, but especially here. You often see people writing to different bloggers, “You are my role model.”

Someone writes that and uses the blogger as a role model. There is, of course, a very big problem here. I mentioned it in connection with comparing yourself with other people. But there is also the specific issue of living by completely copying someone else’s strategy. When you copy another person’s strategy wholesale, the first thing to understand is that you are trying to impose the strategy of another life on your own unique life. Know from the outset that everything will happen completely differently for you than for the person telling you about it. I am talking about the big picture. I certainly do not mean small things, as though your neighbor had planted a particular plant and, if you copied them and planted it, the same plant would not grow for you. It would. I am talking about the big things: looking at other people and copying their strategy without really understanding who that person is. What do I mean by who they are? How do they feel? Think back: can you feel and know the state you were in twenty years ago? Can you sense your state from twenty years ago? In reality, people do not know their own state from twenty years ago.

They can guess. They can introduce an illusion or try to describe it in some way, but they do not truly know that state. You did not know yourself, did not feel yourself. Can you feel another person? That is very difficult. Trying to feel other people is a very substantial, interesting exercise: seeing whether you actually know or do not know them, whether you understand them. Living by someone else’s strategy is a big mistake. Now the final cause. I deliberately saved it for last, as something that wrecks people’s lives in today’s society. It is the basis for manipulation, major political manipulation, and manipulation in a great many companies: countries and politicians say, “We need more time before everything will be good, and then it will be good.” Or a company says, “We need to work for a few years now, and then it will be great.” This has to do with rest: treating rest as disconnecting from reality. Saying you first need to work for a year and then you will rest, or work for five years and then rest.

First you need to reach a certain social status, and then you can rest. The child will grow up, and then you can rest. Rest is somewhere later. I have four children. People with one child say, “Once the child grows up, we will be able to rest.” I stand there looking at them and understand how hard it must be for them, because I have four children and one is still quite young. I think how wonderful it is that he is still young. How wonderful to observe children of completely different ages and in different states. It is such happiness. More than that, to observe different combinations of ages. Right now I see the combination of five, nine, eleven, and fifteen. There will come a time when I see a completely different combination: twenty, sixteen, fourteen, and ten. That is a completely different combination, also very interesting, but different. It is a different feeling. The combination itself is different—can you imagine? And I see joy in that. What is the problem with rest? People look for it separately from their reality. They cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that the very concept of rest is essentially absurd, because you can never describe what rest really is.

As I record this video, can I be in a state of rest or not? When I write a text, can I be resting or not? When I prepare a report, can I rest while doing it? Well, perhaps I cannot rest if I still have a forty-meter tunnel to dig. I will probably get tired. But I certainly can rest while leading a meeting. I certainly can rest while giving a talk. I certainly can rest while analyzing large volumes of complex data. Notice: complex data. Because what is rest? That is a big question. Write in the comments what rest means to you.