Complacency Kills Progress

March 21st, 2023

There is nothing more harmful to further desire and pushes for progress than thinking we are “good” to go. Becoming complacent with the current status of our ability, progress, the status of goals, or with where we are in life is a detrimental perspective to have for our future. Complacency has nothing to do with celebrating the small wins, taking a reset break, or going through the motions. Complacency is thinking to yourself that you don’t need to learn more, you do not need to improve. It is thinking that you have achieved all you need to. Complacency is a feeling of completion. Becoming complacent takes away exponentially more than it gives.

Complacency kills progress because there is loss of drive. The loss of drive promotes an idea festering inside which causes our inner voice to say we are okay where we are. Becoming complacent makes us lose the critical edge we have where we live in the black-and-white world of feedback. It makes us lose our inner fight when darkness comes. We no longer believe in enduring, we simply want to turn the lights on and find what is comfortable. We are okay with being second or even third-tier because we are happy with where we are. The feeling of complacency is the enemy.

Progress is not the only victim of becoming complacent. Dreams also die when feelings of complacency grow. Every itch to act, idea we come up with, or painstaking project we are working on becomes an afterthought if we choose to accept the feelings of complacency. Sometimes dreams are killed before we even start the journey because of becoming complacent.

If you dream of being a quarterback but become complacent, you are okay with not throwing or practicing footwork on a daily basis.

If you dream of becoming a writer but become complacent, you accept writers’ block and hide behind empty pages of type.

If you dream of running your own business but become complacent, you find yourself back at a 9-5 job sooner than you think.

Dreams are realized by commitment and action—completely opposite to what becoming complacent promotes. If we stop learning we find ourselves on the path to irrelevancy. If we stop pursuing and challenging ourselves, we become purposeless. Complacency has an umbrella shadow cast over the path to irrelevancy and purposeless lives. Complacency is a killer and must be stopped. We must aim to avoid its choking grasps at all costs.

We are never finished. We never know everything. There is always something else to seek. Keep going and don’t get complacent.

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