11 Silent Enemies that Wreck Havoc in Life

When you have enemies like these internally, you don’t need external enemies to wreck havoc

1. Fear of Failure

Every one has fears of failure but your degree of fear of failure will determine your degree of inaction on things that matter. It is not that you won’t take action if you have fear of failure but it is that you will miss treading the edges to make radical progress. [ Please see: Pushed to an edge ]

2. Fear of Rejection

Since people still can’t read your mind, you have no choice but to “ask” for something you want. Granted, you need to deserve it before you ask for it but the degree of fear of rejection will determine how much you will avoid asking even when you deserve something.

3. Indecision

The irony is that not deciding is making a decision to stay in an “undecided” state. It is a stalemate situation that generally leads to inaction again. Because it is a connected world and you are not living in an island alone, the effect of your indecision has (not so good) consequences for others in your network that have a stake in that matter.

4. Unable to Accept Reality

The common term for this is to live in your ivory tower thinking that it will all work out because it has to. In your mind, the universe has to take care of you or else why did it bring you into existence in the first place??? When you don’t accept reality, you will take actions that will work in “your imagination” but have very low probability of success in the real world.

5. Chronic Pessimistic Attitude

The glass is perennially half-full and there are always things that can go wrong with everything and everyone. Imagine embarking on any adventure with that mindset. Good luck to you and others in your life if you have chronic pessimistic attitude.

6. Extreme Positive Attitude

Extreme positive attitude is on the other end of the chronic pessimistic attitude. Extreme positive attitude has only one advantage – your life may be going to dogs but you are smiling all the way in that journey.

7. Hubris

Hubris is confidence gone awry. Unless you are surrounded by total dimwits (in which case you have a bigger problem) everyone around you know the difference between hubris and confidence and they CLEARLY know that you have the former. The real problem with hubris? Your promises are deeply discounted by others – meaning you will rarely get real support for your projects.

8. Lack of Gratitude

One reason people have (or show) lack of gratitude is to escape from the need to reciprocate. If you don’t acknowledge that you didn’t receive anything, then you don’t have to feel guilty that you didn’t reciprocate back. This is a cop-out strategy as the only outcome of this is that slowly (but steadily) you will stop receiving anything meaningful.

9. Lack of Self-Esteem

When you seriously lack self-esteem (this is almost the opposite of hubris) only a miracle can present you good opportunities. This is because when you don’t believe in yourself, it is hard for others to show that belief.

10. Unhealthy mood swings

Unhealthy mood swings not only result in inaction, they will also annoy people around you like crazy.

11. Recovery Latency

This is the mother of all enemies. if you are moving ahead in life, there is guaranteed to be bumps in the road and there will be times when you will fall. When there is too much recovery latency – you end up staying down for longer for every fall. Reduce the recovery latency and you will make rapid progress.

Note: The above is not an exhaustive list of silent enemies. I chose them as starters.