If you want to be successful than you need to follow the success principles that others have mastered.
A lot of people have a skewed understanding of what success is. Success isn't a final destination. Rather, it's a journey moving towards the accomplishment of the goals that matter to you.
More importantly, success doesn't happen overnight. Rather, it is a by-product of the decisions that you make on a daily basis.
In the words of Bo Bennett, “Success is not in what you have, but who you are.” Are you ready to learn how to be successful in life?
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Do you want to learn how to master 21 habits of success? CLICK HERE for access to my free cheatsheet!
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What does it take to be successful?
This is a great question and something that I get asked often. There are countless books and courses that will offer their unique perspective on what success looks like to them. With so many perspectives, it can sometimes be difficult to know what to focus on. Everyone has their own definition of success and that is totally OK. I want you to define success on your terms.
Everyone has a strong desire to be successful in life. It's knowing what it means and how to get there that people struggle with. In my role as an entrepreneur and business coach, I want to help you figure out how you can achieve what you in life.
Not only that, but I want to encourage you to take massive action with it. If you don't take action, you are only left with a dream. Where people get stuck is that they have unrealistic ideas of what success is. They may hear about someone that achieved massive success overnight and think that they too can achieve it.
Overnight success stories make up only 1% of the population.
You've got a better chance at striking gold than making millions of dollars overnight. Don't get me wrong.. it's natural to want to look for get-rich-quick schemes. By nature, your brain is always looking for the path of least resistance. However, if you really want to learn how to be successful, you've got to go against your instincts.
After coaching hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs, I have found that the most common challenge that people face is the desire to achieve overnight success. If you adopt this viewpoint, you will dabble and most likely give up. Nobody wants to be a quitter.
In his book,Think and Grow Rich: The Original, an Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation, Napoleon Hill said, “If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a “quitter.” A quitter never wins and a winner never quits. Lift this sentence out, write it on a piece of paper in letters an inch high, and place it where you will see it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning before you go to work.”
For the majority of people, success takes time.
It took me over 3 years to start making any money online. You cannot replicate what I have achieved in a short period of time. Success in life is determined by what you do every single day. This is why I am a big believer in practicing consistent habits.
Your habits are the result of behaviors that you have been repeating for years. If those habits aren't healthy, that is when you get into trouble. Bad habits suck away your energy. The problem is that bad habits can feel really good while you are engaging in them.
Dr. Russell Poldrack believes that pleasure-based habits are harder to break. The brain releases a chemical dopamine when it experiences an enjoyable behavior. Dr. Poldrack says, “If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again.”
Conversely, when you adopt healthy habits, you are pulled towards your goals, instead of being pushed by them. I want to share 7 must-have success habits that I encourage you to integrate into your life today.
1. Manage Your Time Effectively
If you haven't realized it already, time is your most important asset in life. You can't get it back, which is why you need to maximize it at all times. When you manage your time more effectively, you create more freedom in your life.
Everyone has the same amount of time during the day. However, not everyone uses it in the same way. If you don't have time, then you haven't created priorities. When it comes to prioritizing your to-do list, if you want to get more done, you need to do less in your day. Determine what are the most critical tasks that you need to complete and forget about everything else.
If you want to learn how to be more productive, look at some of the most successful people in the world. People like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates understand that their time is precious. This is why they have mastered the art of productivity. Doing so ensures that they are always maximizing their time.
In order to do this, one thing that they do is wake up early. Almost every successful entrepreneur that I know starts their day at around 6 am. They are crushing their tasks before the world has even woken up. They don't necessarily work harder than everyone else. They've just learned how to work smarter and it pays off, tenfold.
2. Make Health Your First Priority
In my eyes, without health, you've got nothing. Everything in life feels hard when you are not experiencing optimal levels of health and wellness. Unfortunately, not enough people make health as much of a priority as they should.
Everyone has time to be healthy. Your body is a temple and it should be treated that way. Would you put low-quality fuel into a $300,000 car? I doubt it. Think of your body like an expensive car and treat it as such.
Work-life balance is a struggle for a lot of people. If you think that your work alone is going to give you success, then you may spend countless hours working, at the expense of your health. It all comes down to finding your version of balance and committing to adopting healthy habits.
Eat well, get a lot of sleep, and exercise. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to nurture your needs first. This is what will give you the mental strength to go out into the world and achieve success.
3. Spend Time With People Who Inspire You
Successful people spend time with people who inspire them. This is how they are able to accelerate their success in life. As the renowned personal development coach Jim Rohn used to say, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Take a look at your circle of friends and determine whether they are lifting you up or bringing you down. Don't ever forget that your peer group ends up affecting your self-image. If you are spending time with people that aren't going anywhere in life, you will follow suit.
Energy is infectious and that includes the bad stuff as well as the good. Make it a point to remove yourself from environments where toxic and negative people like to hang out.
The best way to find people who inspire you is to be in rooms where you know the least. I know this doesn't sound fun, but it works. If you think you know everything, then you won't be open to learning anything new. Your ego is your enemy.
Take every opportunity to attend events, seminars, and masterminds where you can absorb the knowledge of super successful people that have been where you want to go. This will motivate you to accomplish your goals in life.
4. Commit to Learning
The most successful people in this world share a passion for learning. They are committed to constantly broadening their understanding of the world. It has been said that Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. How many books have you read this year?
The problem is that people don't take learning seriously enough. If you want to be successful then you need to make learning one of your core habits, just as much as you exercise. In today's ever-changing world, if you aren't learning, you aren't growing.
Making an effort to deepen your knowledge and have a solid understanding of your industry is critical to building credibility and becoming a person of influence. Learning, in general, is great. However, I suggest that you choose a specific area of interest and master it.
There are other people who have already achieved what it is that you are striving for, so why not learn from them? Don't reinvent the wheel. That is only a waste of time and energy. A great way to take your knowledge to the next level is to hire a coach or mentor who can help you master the principles of success.
5. Embrace Failure
A life without failure is a life without growth. You don't become successful by hanging out in your comfort zone. This is a safe, warm place but nothing exciting happens there. You have to stretch yourself and go beyond what you think is possible.
Yes, you could fail. The unknown can be a scary place. However, this is a weak perspective to have. When you embrace failure, you open your eyes to new opportunities. Failure is the stepping stone to success. With every failure, you get one step closer to what you want in life.
If you live a life that is void of challenges you will never know how far you can go. This why you need to fail more. It's your tool towards being a better version of yourself. Are you ready to get out of your own way?
6. Take Action
Learning is great, but it means nothing without action. People fall into a state of inaction when they procrastinate. If you struggle with this, I encourage you to start with your most important task first thing in the morning. Once you tackle that task, you will be motivated to take more action.
Successful people take action even if they aren't fully ready to do so. This is how they are able to continually move towards the accomplishment of their goals. I'm not saying that you should make bad decisions.
However, sometimes it's better to make any decision than no decision at all. If you end up making a mistake, learn from it. That's how you become more successful in the long run.
Opportunities come and go in life so if you are not taking advantage of them, you will miss out. If you are taking action every single day, you will have a competitive advantage. Even if your progress is small, all that matters is that you are consistent with it. As Tony Robbins once said, “The path to success is to take massive, determined actions.”
7. Be Willing To Work Harder Than Ever Before
You will not achieve real success in life if you are not willing to put in the hard work to get there. Hard work compounds over time. It gives you the opportunity to create your ultimate dream lifestyle. Don't buy into the stories of overnight success.
Success is hard work. Yes, there will be blood, sweat and tears shed. However, if you want it bad enough, it will be worth every second of the fight. It will mean that you need to sacrifice evenings and weekends and be okay with missing out on fun stuff.
I spent years making sacrifices. It wasn't easy at first. However, once I started to see results from my efforts, I realized that my sacrifices were worth it. Successful people work harder than anyone they know. They hold themselves to the highest of standards every single day and inspire others to do the same. Their work ethic is paramount.
JC Penny said it best – “Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.” Are you ready to go all in? You owe it to yourself to do so.
This is how to be successful in life.
If you can master these 7 habits, you will put yourself in the driver's seat of success. Always remember that the person you become matters more than any amount of money that you make. Are you ready to master success?
Do you want to learn how to master 21 habits of success? CLICK HERE for access to my free cheatsheet!
Are you ready to learn 3 things that you can do when you feel like giving up on your business? CLICK HERE to read the article that I wrote on Medium!