Highly dissatisfied people are not to be confused with unhappy people. There is one key difference between these two – highly dissatisfied people look for things to improve on and strive to become better because their critical self-analysis overrides their fleeting emotions, whereas unhappy people are more reactionary when external things render them helpless, so they find it difficult to stop moping around and do something to help themselves because their feelings consume them.

Being highly dissatisfied is an integral component of success because self-improvement and uncomfortable changes never occur when people fall into complacency and find satisfaction in remaining where they’re at in life.

Here are some ways you can tell that you’re a highly dissatisfied person:

1. You ultimately believe that you can be better than you are now.

You know that your future self has the potential to become better than your current self, but only if you put in the work to change all the things you’re dissatisfied with.

2. You’re always scrutinizing your mistakes and learning from them. You’re obsessed with listing out every single way you can improve.

Even when thinking about the mistakes of your younger self makes you feel ashamed, you wisely note that repressing the painful memories of failure and rejection will bring more harm than good. You’re good at looking at the past straight in the eye, acknowledging the results, and taking away some harsh but insightful lessons that would guide you through your next steps.

3. You panic at the idea of remaining exactly where you are now in five years.

Nothing causes you to hyperventilate more than visualizing yourself staying exactly the same and doing the exact same things every day for the next five years. You know you definitely don’t want to live your life stuck in the same situation, and you’re honest with the way you express how dissatisfied you are with never growing and never changing.

4. You don’t shy away from discomfort and uncertainty.

Most people place their lifelong goals into the hands of comfort and certainty because they’ve been brought up that way and simply put, it’s a hell of a lot easier to do so. However, you know that life experiences that involve discomfort and embracing uncertainty will ultimately push you beyond the limiting mindset you’ve been conditioned to hold. You’re proactively living your life by trading everything you’ve known for the unknown and sacrificing a life of pleasure for a life of excellence.

5. You plan a lot of escape routes, not out of fear of reality, but out of fear of stagnating and repeating all the things that make you dissatisfied.

Despite how readily you accept the present for what it is, you like to escape from your current life and imagine how things could be better. You’re never one to settle for anything less than you know is possible, and you’re always envisioning all the possibilities and adding them to your masterplan after some deep and honest self-reflection.

6. You don’t equate self-acceptance with complacency because you know you can accept who you are and still be dissatisfied and desire growth.

You’re dissatisfied with being complacent because you ultimately accept who you are – this may sound counterintuitive, but complacency comes from a place of surrender and people who don’t accept who they are the ones who don’t see the point of changing for the better. However, because you have self-acceptance, you know you deserve to go after more in order to thrive in a manner that’s more resonant with your inner self and to do that, you understand you have to let go of things that keep you dissatisfied.

7. You find yourself starting over a lot and regrouping instead of being dead set on achieving goals of your past self.

When you intuitively know that you’ve been treading further along a path that you shouldn’t be on, you act instead of ignoring the urgent warning signs. You give up on anything that’s no longer serving you, and you aren’t afraid to start over, despite how intensely you feel like you’ve wasted your effort. You know that giving up on past goals is a sign that you’ve grown more powerful and relentless in the pursuit of mastery, authenticity, and personal excellence in life.