8 things successful people never reveal about themselves in public 

Successful people are doing things right.

These are people who are reaching their goals and getting what they want in life.

Ad while openness and honesty are two of the hallmarks of successful people’s characters, this doesn’t mean that they have to put everything out there.

You may actually be surprised at some of the cards they hold close to their chests. 

Many of these things are kept tucked away because they’re not relevant or simply don’t serve the present time.

But some are hidden away so that they don’t detract from the image of success that people are trying to cultivate.

Others are intensely personal and simply have no place in the public sphere.

Whatever the reason, here are eight things successful people never reveal about themselves in public.

1) The current state of their finances

While there are a whole lot of different measures of success out there, most people agree that wealth is a good one.

After all, when you have special skills and advanced abilities, you tend to get paid more for them.

If you’re really great at sniffing out a deal, you make a whole lot more money.

And people with money have more power and freedom to do the things they want.

But at the same time, this doesn’t mean that it’s everyone’s business how much money you have, where it is, and what it’s invested in.

The fact is that you can even have suffered a large financial loss but still possess the ability to bounce back from that stronger than ever.

Sometimes it takes money and losing a lot of it in expensive life lessons to make money.

You wouldn’t want people to take a snapshot of your wallet after you’ve just emptied it to pay a big bill and use that to indicate the state of your financial success, right?

That’s why successful people don’t make the state of their finances public, not unless there’s some strategic reason to do so, anyway.

2) Details of their sex lives

Unless they’re rock stars or sex gurus, you rarely find successful people putting the details of their sex lives out into the public sphere.

That probably sounds like a no-brainer because this intensely personal information really should have nothing to do with any work or business deals anyone is doing.

It’s private and really ought to stay that way.

At the same time, though, many people might ask, “Isn’t being open and honest important for success?”

Of course, it is, but I think we’ve got to be careful about making sweeping statements like this.

Being open means not having dark secrets or hiding certain parts of our lives away while presenting other parts to create a false persona. 

But this doesn’t have to extend into every part of your private life!

There’s a reason why it’s called “private,” and details of your sex life should definitely be filed in that category.

3) Their wild pasts

Are you the real-life Frank the Tank?

Did you win your sorority’s trip beer pong championships three years in a row?

What about that time you got so blasted you woke up half-naked, sleeping in the lap of a statue in the middle of a public park?

Oops, or was that me?

If you have a really wild past, you probably feel one of two ways about it – you’re either extremely proud of how epic your partying was, or you might feel pretty glad that you’ve left that part of your life behind.

But either way, if this wild life is in the past, it’s because you’ve moved on to a different stage of life.

And if you’ve tamed the inner beast, matured, calmed down, and grown up, this is the person that people you meet need to know about.

That younger, wilder version of you isn’t really relevant to what you’re doing now.

That’s why successful people focus on who they are today and put their wild pasts to bed.

4) Personal or family problems

If they’re going through a divorce or have some sort of drug addiction in the family, successful people don’t feel the need to plaster these problems all over their public platforms.

They’re just not relevant to their skills, what they can do, and what they offer, so there’s no value in hanging their personal problems out for the world to see.

But you should never say never…

There are times when personal and family problems might be things that successful people would reveal.

If their success lies in helping others with their problems, imagine a therapist or a life coach, then revealing their own problems and how they’ve conquered them might serve some people.

But unless there’s a good reason, revealing these problems will most often just seem like attention-seeking or looking for pity, and that’s not behavior that most successful people follow.

5) Past mistakes that are irrelevant now

Just like leaving your wild past in the past, the big whoopsies that you may have made in the past don’t need to follow you into the present or the future.

It’s not that you shouldn’t learn from them – of course you should!

It’s just that they are mistakes that you made then, and now you’ve learned from them.

That means you hold this new knowledge, and you’re most definitely not the same person you were when you made those blunders.

So why let them hang around your neck to bring you down for all to see?

Successful people don’t.

They take their mistakes as learning opportunities and move on from them in a positive direction.

6) That they’re looking to change jobs

Of course, if a person is currently unemployed, they will have no qualms about announcing that they are looking for exciting new opportunities.

But that’s very much different from announcing that they’re looking to leave their current job for something new and better.

This is something that successful people are never going to announce publicly because it’s in no one’s best interest.

This kind of announcement would not only alienate their current employer, but it may also unfairly paint the current employer in a negative light. It’s not great, even if they really hate their job.

You might want to make more money, gain a higher position, or try something new, but that doesn’t have to mean that anything is wrong with your current job, right?

But if you were to make this kind of public announcement, it would definitely read that way between the lines.

Successful people value their connections and don’t make the mistake of burning their bridges behind them.

And that’s a really healthy way of living life.

7) That they dislike someone

I had a coworker once who was brilliant.

This woman was always coming up with valuable new ideas for the company and always produced work that was quality.

But when opportunities for advancement came up, over and over again, she was passed over.

New positions and openings went to other people.

And why?

There was a downside to this coworker of mine.

She was quite a serious gossip, and if she ever had a problem with anyone, everyone in the office found out immediately through the rumor mill.

This caused hurt feelings, animosity, and a general feeling that she was someone to avoid, or at least not get close to.

A truly successful person wouldn’t let their negative opinions about others get out into the public sphere because all this does is alienate others and make them wary.

Who knows when they might end up being the next target of this kind of negativity?

8) Their own bad habits

Even if a person has done tremendously well at work, financially, or even socially, they might still have one or more bad habits that really don’t look great.

I’m talking about things as simple as nail chewing or as serious as uncontrolled gambling.

These habits are often seen as not such a big deal by most of us and definitely not an impediment to success.

But in fact, successful people keep their bad habits to themselves.

They don’t see any value in letting this personal information get out.

And to do this, to keep their bad habits hidden away, they also have to recognize that they do have bad habits. This allows them to put their habits into focus so they can work on breaking them

But none of this has to do with their public lives.

The things successful people don’t reveal in public

The bottom line is that there are a lot of things that successful people never reveal about themselves in public, but most are related to the same reason.

Successful people are able to focus on the positives and distance themselves from negative things or things that simply don’t serve them in the present.

And this focus on positivity helps to drive their success even further.

Marcel Deer

Marcel is a journalist, gamer, and entrepreneur. When not obsessing over his man cave or the latest tech, he’s failing helplessly at training his obnoxious rescue dog ‘Boogies’.

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