The Gateway to Wealth & Prosperity in 2023
Habits are the things that differentiate us.
A habit is formed when you perform a certain activity or do things in a particular way over and over again for a period of time. By definition, habits are neutral, and we need them because they make life easier. Habits require little to no effort to execute once they have been cemented in our brains, and that can be a good or bad thing, depending on the kind of habit formed.
Habits are either empowering or disempowering. Running late to meetings for example, is a habit but obviously not an empowering one since it can get you fired. But the opposite of that always going to meetings early-will serve you a great deal.
Your habits can either help you succeed or contribute to your failure.
The difference between super successful people and those struggling to make headway in life lies in their habits. A successful person has a habit that's making him successful, likewise, an unsuccessful person is doing something that's contributing to his failure.
Take the late coming habit for example. A person used to going to places late wouldn't know why he's always late to work. And if he's working in a strict organization, that habit can cost him his job when it's flagged as time theft.
If you want to succeed in any area of life, there are key habits you must develop. These key habits are timeless, and they work for anyone who implements them. For the rest of this summary, we’d be considering top success habits proven to work for super successful people from all walks of life. The habits would be presented in actionable bits so you can implement them right away.
Do your best while you can.
A career is long term, takes time to build, and most of your adult life will be spent pursuing it, so it's certainly worth talking about.
Most people start out working under someone else, while very few venture into a vocation without really working under anybody. Whatever path you're on, the only thing certain to guarantee speedy progress is growth. When you're intentional about growth, you'd gather knowledge and experience quickly and these would propel you to great heights.
For an employee, a growth mindset means taking the business as your own, doing your best and exceeding expectations. People tend to consider these things as foolish; they believe it makes you a "yes-man" for your boss. But what they fail to see is that imbibing a growth mindset isn't as much about what your employer or organization would gain from it as it is about you growing fast.
"Successful people, whether they're working for somebody else or working for themselves, do whatever they do to the best of their ability - as if the boss is watching them every minute of every day" - Dean Graziosi
Try it and see. Rather than set goals to just meet expectations, decide to go the extra mile. For example, if you're a sales rep, don't just work with your current level of knowledge, experience and exposure. Go out of your way to learn more about being an amazing sales rep. Yes, your organization would benefit from it, but you're also developing yourself so much so that if you leave the organization, you'd still remain a valuable person. A sales rep who is intentional about growth would advance faster than one who just does what it expected of him. Whether you're an employee or business owner, decide today to make growth a priority.
Pause this chapter now to draft out a career growth plan for yourself. Include career enhancing activities you'd do daily, weekly, or monthly. This could be anything from following a career mentor online to attending niche seminars.
Vision brings meaning to your actions
Let's begin this chapter by asking a serious question: why do you wake up every day? In
other words, what is it that motivates you to get up in the morning?
Unfortunately, for far too many people, their motivation is their bills. A lot of us get all set for work early in the morning and return late, all just for the bills; there's nothing else driving us. No higher purpose, no vision, nothing. And that's why it's easy to get distracted in the day. It also explains why our lives seem to end after the day's work is over; why we keep negative friends; why we indulge in destructive habits and so on.
Without a vision for your life, the likelihood of living a wasted life is very high.
Success is all about meeting set targets and that means if you have no target you're pursuing, then you can't succeed. It's just like getting into your car with no destination in mind. You'd waste gas without getting anywhere or accomplishing anything.
"The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder-waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you" - Thomas Carlyle
Understand that your time and energy are very limited resources, hence the need to maximize them. Pause for a moment to think about your life and the things you'd like to accomplish. Find a nice piece of paper, write an area of your life-say relationship or money- then below it, write down the things you want to see in that area. For example, if you write romantic relationships, under it, create a vision that appeals to you. Do you want a mutually satisfying relationship with your significant other? Do you want to go on vacations more often? Do you want to have kids? What kind of family would you like to raise? Write them all down as they come to you.
Do the same exercise for every other area of life. It may take hours or days to complete, but don't stop until you're done.
By the time you're done, you'll have been clear on what you want out of life. From now, you'll seize to live just for living sake, but every moment of the day, you'd know the reason for doing what you do. You'd become less distracted, more focused and less likely to make mistakes your future self would regret.
Understand the WHY behind your actions!
Life is tough. No matter how smart, careful or meticulous a person is, they are bound to make mistakes at some points. Things will sometimes not go their way, and circumstances can tempt them to give up.
All these are the inevitable of life. What keeps a person going in the face of challenge is not smartness. Not even mental toughness, but a strong why.
"When you have a strong, emotional reason for doing what you do, it becomes difficult for you to let go. "
Consider a young lawyer seeking justice for her father's murder. She would go any length to find justice and would stop at nothing until the perpetrators are brought to book. She'd face challenges and legal battles along the way, tempting her to give up, but what would keep her going will be the strong emotional connection she has attached to getting justice for her father.
Imagine if you have a strong WHY that keeps you pursuing your life goals no matter the hurdles you face. It's possible and in this chapter, you'd learn how.
We'd use the seven levels deep exercise to accomplish this. Pick a piece of paper or use your mobile device to write down anything you want in life. Then below it, write down why you want it. For example, you may want financial freedom because you've been broke before and you don't want to return to that kind of life. Next, ask yourself the "why" behind the first why.
Structure it this way: I want financial freedom because I don't want to go broke again. But why don't I want to be broke?
Think about it and answer the question. Let's assume you don't want to be broke again because you were broke as a kid and it forced you to take on jobs you didn't like, just to pay the bills. Up next, ask the third why.
Note: Always repeat the want, followed by all the why's you've discovered before asking the next why. Do this until you've asked yourself seven times. Make sure it's seven! Not five, not eight, seven.
"Successful people live by a different set of rules and success habits and they don't conform or accept mediocrity" -Dean Graziosi
Deal with the enemy within
Have you heard about the fight of the two wolves within? It's said that a Navajo woman famously explained to her grandson that there are two wolves fighting inside him; one is a good wolf and the other is a bad one and the wolf that wins is the one that's fed the most.
That illustration is so true of our everyday experience. There's a hero in you as much as there's a villain in there, but the one you concentrate most on is the one that wins. In this chapter, we'll share two keys you can use to keep the villain at bay. Ready?
Don't let the news dictate your emotions. These days, we're bombarded left, right and center by negative news. The media has found that spreading negativity is what brings in the biggest bucks, so they focus more on it. From social media to the papers to television and radio, the media is filled with stories of kidnaps, killings, economic downturns and so on. When you focus on these, your mind gets filled with so much negativity it becomes difficult to think creatively. As counter intuitive as it may sound, you need to reduce your news consumption. And don't hesitate to take a news break if you realize that you've consumed too much negative stuff.
Focus on your strengths. All through life, well-meaning people have taught us to work on our weaknesses but how far has that advice taken us? For most people, the advice to work on weaknesses has only resulted in frustration. The truth is, you'd never be good at everything.
"There are things in life that you'd suck at and that's not a bad thing."
You may not be a good planner, but who cares? You can always hire someone to help out. You may be a coach but writing and editing doesn't come easy for you. So what? Get your ideas out anyhow and get a professional editor to fine tune your work. Work on your moral weaknesses, but when it comes to certain activities that you've tried and just can't be good at, get someone to do it for you. Focusing on your weaknesses and failing will feed the villain in you which in turn waters down your confidence. Don't let it happen.
Did you know? Time magazine covers were roughly 90% more positive in tone and content in the 1950s until they realized positive content wasn't selling and decided to major on negative stories in their covers. Guess what? Their readership and profits went up the roof and that's why news outlets still don't joke with negative content.
Create a positive story for yourself!
We talk to ourselves more than we communicate with any other person, including our spouses. Hence, it's important that we take self-talk seriously.
Yourself talk is a sum total of the story you've been telling yourself overtime and have come to believe. For instance, if you tried giving a presentation and failed at it, you may tell yourself "I'm no good at this stuff," and that's a negative self-talk, but what you just told yourself is a part of a bigger story you've come to believe about yourself. To change your self talk, you must change the underlying story.
We form personal stories from our experiences and the kind of information we allow ourselves to be influenced by. Let's take the person who failed his presentation for example. A number of reasons could be responsible for that. He may have failed to prepare, or was involved in a heated argument with his wife the morning before that destabilized him. Anything could have been responsible, but you can't just hold the surface level cause responsible because there's always something deeper.
It may have been that right from childhood, the man has always believed he wasn't a good communicator. That was a story he was telling himself and all through his life to the point of that presentation, the story has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. To change the outcome, he would have to change the underlying story.
"When your life doesn't seem to be yielding the result you want, you're probably holding onto a false belief that's keeping you from progress."
How do you identify a limiting belief or negative story you've been clinging to? All it takes is a little soul searching. When you consider starting something new like a business or getting married or having kids, what's the first thing you say to yourself? What's that first thought that comes to mind? If it goes something like "marriage is hard, no point trying or I'm not smart enough to grow a business from scratch" then, bingo, you just found the belief holding you back. Follow the trail of that thought, keep searching your soul and you'd find the story that's been keeping you. Usually, it has something to do with your past.
Now that you've discovered the limiting story and belief, it's time to change it. Write down the opposite of that belief or story and keep it in a place where you'd easily see it. Say the new belief out loud to yourself as often as you can until it's buried deep in your subconscious.
Conclusion
Your habits can either make or mar you; they either push you forward or limit you, so choose them wisely.
The things you do daily are what come together to create the future big thing you're seeking. If you're going to have a more impactful career in the future, it's not up to what you do tomorrow, it's what you do today and the day that follows that will eventually add up to create the future you desire.
So far, we've discussed multiple success habits starting with doing your best on the job, creating a vision for every area of your life, and using the seven-step exercise to discover your true why. We also talked about creating a habit of starving the villain within by refusing to feed on negative content and focusing less on your weaknesses. All these are success habits that will take you places. Every day comes with an opportunity to practice the habits till they become part and parcel of you; don't pass on such precious opportunity.
Try this.
Create an empowering story for your life. Make sure it's about the goals you want to achieve, and it highlights your strengths while saying nothing about your weaknesses. Here's an example: "I may have advanced in age, but I'm still as strong as a youth. I am committed to achieving a fit body that has no extra pounds and nothing would stop me."
