3 ways to avoid success

How can you tell if someone wants to be successful? Perhaps they arrive at the office earlier than others, tackle challenging work, or propose innovative ideas toward progress. There are some obvious signs of success.

How can you tell if someone is a failure? Perhaps they sleep in until 8am, passively market their ideas, or do not have any ideas. There are some obvious signs of failure. There are some less obvious signs too, and three are listed below.

Three routes to avoid success and find failure:

1. Coattail Riding: Success does not come to those who ride the coattails of others. If you do not work hard yourself, you will not experience the same level of success as others, even if a little of their light shines on you.
2. Copying: Success does not come to copycats. Be original. Have something new to say. If you do not work hard to be a leader in your field of expertise, you will not be an expert. Reading someone else's work can be helpful and interesting, but copying it as your own will not make you successful. 
3. Crying: There's no crying over errors. Successful people keep moving forward, as it says in Put Your Whole Self In! Crying, wallowing, and whining are guaranteed routes to failure.

Those three routes to failure seem like they would be obvious too. Yet, many people ride coattails, copy, and cry rather than do the work required to be at the top of the heap.