Success habits that will help you achieve your goals and reach new heights.
To Achieve Success is not solely determined by luck or talent, but rather by the habits we cultivate in our daily lives. Developing success habits is crucial for achieving our goals and reaching our full potential. One important habit is setting clear and specific goals. By defining what we want to achieve, we can create a roadmap and stay focused on our objectives.
Success may appear in society as leadership, extraordinary sales numbers, positive press or perhaps an impressive industry award. But what are the daily habits, the thoughts, the behaviors of those who rise to great success? What happens inside the mind of those we admire? How are the actions they take different than those who don’t achieve their goals?
In this post, we will uncover the secrets of those who have created a system for success through nothing less than deliberate mastery of nine key habits.
Self-Discipline
The most important habit you can develop for success, achievement, and happiness is the habit of self-discipline. Perhaps the best definition of self-discipline comes from Elbert Hubbard, “Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”
The habit of self-discipline is closely tied to the Law of Control that says, “You feel happy about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are controlling your own life.”
Self-discipline is the key to self-mastery and self-control. The more capable you become of disciplining yourself to do what you have decided to do, whether you feel like it or not, the more positive and powerful you will feel.
There is a direct relationship between self-discipline and self-esteem. The more you discipline yourself to behave in the manner that you have decided, the more you like and respect yourself. The more positive and confident you will feel. The stronger and more in charge of your life and situation, you become.
This is why the happiest, most successful and most respected people in our society are all of great self-control, self-mastery, and self-discipline.
Become a Lifelong Optimist
Perhaps the most helpful mental habit you can develop is the habit of optimism. Optimists are usually the happiest, healthiest, most successful and most influential people in every group and society.
If you become what you think about most of the time, what is it that optimists think about most of the time? In its simplest terms, optimists think about what they want and how to get it, most of the time.
They think about where they are going and how to get there. The very idea of thinking about what they want makes them happy and positive. It increases their energy and releases their creativity. It motivates and stimulates them to perform at higher levels.
Pessimists, on the other hand, are the opposite. They think and talk about what they don’t want most of the time. They think about the people they don’t like, the problems that they are having, or have had in the past, and especially, they think about who is to blame for their particular situation.
And the more they think about the things they don’t want and who is to blame for their problems, the more negative and angry they become. The more negative they become, the faster they attract into their lives exactly those things that they do not want to happen.
Think About Your Goals
Goal-orientation is a second quality or way of thinking practiced by optimists and all successful people. In future-orientation, you develop a clear, ideal image of what you want to accomplish sometime in the future. With goal-orientation, you crystallize that image into specific, measurable, detailed goals and objectives that you will need to accomplish to achieve that ideal future vision.
Successful people soon develop the habits of personal strategic planning. They sit down and make a list of exactly what they want to accomplish in the short, medium and long term. They then use a powerful, seven-part goal setting methodology to create blueprints
and plans of action that they follow every day.
Once you develop the habit of setting goals and making plans for their accomplishment, it will become as natural for you as breathing. By following a proven goal setting process, you will increase the likelihood of achieving your goals by as much as ten times, by 1000 percent or more. This is just not a theory; it has been proven and demonstrated
on a national basis.
USA Today reported on a study of people who had set New Year’s Resolutions the year before. They found of the people who had set New Year’s Resolutions, but not in writing, only 4 percent had followed through. But of those people who had written down their New Year’s Resolutions, fully 46 percent had carried them out.
This is a difference in success rates of more than 1100 percent! The habit of doing something every single day that moves you toward an important goal develops
within you the power of momentum. Daily action deepens your belief that the goal is achievable, and activates the Law of Attraction.
As a result, you begin moving faster and faster toward your goal, and your goal begins moving faster and faster toward you. Single habit has been more responsible for their success than any other idea they ever learned. Try it for yourself and see.
Set Your Goals Each Day
One of the most important success habits you can develop is the habit of daily goal setting. Daily goal setting is quite simple. Get a spiral notebook to write your goals in, and resolve to keep it nearby for the rest of your life. Each morning, before you start out, open your spiral notebook and start a new page. I always begin with the words “My goals are the following: . . .”You then write down your top 10-15 goals in the present tense, as though you have already achieved them.
Your subconscious mind is only activated by commands that are stated in the present, positive, personal tense. So instead of writing a goal such as, “I am going to lose weight in the months ahead,” you would write instead, “I weigh xxx number of pounds by (a specific date.)” Instead of saying, “I will earn more money over the next year,” you would say, “I earn X number of dollars by such and such a date.”
The more specific you can be in terms of what you want and when you want to achieve it, expressed in the positive, present tense, and beginning with the word “I,” the more powerful the effect will be on your subconscious mind. Goals written and stated in this way activate the Laws of Expectation and Attraction.
They cause you to develop new beliefs about what is possible for you. They activate the
Laws of Emotion and Correspondence. They increase your energy and stimulate your creativity. Positive, personal, present tense goals, written down repeatedly each day, activate your subconscious and super conscious minds and step on the accelerator of your own potential.
As a result, you start to move more rapidly toward the achievement of your goals and they begin to move more rapidly toward you.
Identify Key Professional Skills
Professional success requires that you make a list of the key skills that are essential for success in your field. There are usually only about five to seven skills, or key result areas, that determine most of the success that one achieves in any field of endeavor. Your first job is to identify these key skills and write them down.
Here is an interesting discovery. You have achieved your level of success in your field today because of your talent and ability in certain key areas. But at the same time, you are being held back by your weaknesses in other areas.
The rule is that your weakest key skill determines the height of your results, and your income. In other words, you could be excellent at six out of seven key result areas, but your
weakness in the seventh area will determine your overall results and rewards in that job or field.
You therefore ask yourself this question, “What one skill, if I developed and did it consistently in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?” This is one of the most important questions that you ask and answer throughout your career.
You must develop the habit of continually identifying and working on your weakest key skill. Bringing up your ability in this one area will usually have a greater and more immediate impact on your results than anything else you can do.
Commit To Lifelong Learning
Another key habit of thinking and acting practiced by top people is growth orientation. It is the high road to excellent performance and essential to developing the habit of optimism. This method of thinking and living is the foundation of excellence orientation, and is essential for you to develop if you want to move into the top 10 percent of your field.
Growth orientation requires that you develop the habit of continuous learning, the habit of continuous personal and professional development. Just as you exercise physically regularly to remain fit and healthy, you must exercise mentally daily to become better and better in your chosen field.
Merely reading a book sometimes is enough. Truly successful people embrace a deeper, lifelong attitude of learning and regularly grow their knowledge through three methods. These methods include waking early each morning to read 30–60 minutes in their field, learning from experts at seminars and conferences a few times a year, and making use of commuting time to listen to audiobooks.
The average person spends 500 to 1000 hours each year in his or her car. This is the equivalent of three to six months of 40-hour weeks, or the equivalent of one or two university semesters.
Adopting a mindset of continuous learning enables average people to become top performers in their fields. It enables people to rise from poverty and frustration to affluence and success.
Increases your intelligence and creativity and puts you onto the fast track in your career. It is one of the best success habits you can ever develop, and the pay-off from continuous learning will last you all the days of your life.
What You See Is What You Will Be
The most powerful affirmation or message that you can send from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind is a visualization or mental image. Develop the habit of creating clear, positive, exciting pictures of yourself performing at your best, and of your goals as if they were already achieved.
Each time you create a mental image in your conscious mind, you send a message that activates your subconscious mind, triggers the Law of Attraction, stimulates your creativity, and moves you toward the realization of that mental picture in your external world.
Positive, successful people make a habit of continually visualizing the outcomes that they
desire, thereby programming their subconscious minds and shaping their self-image and their external performance.
Be Around the Right People
Make it a habit to only associate with the kind of people that you like admire, respect and want to be like. It is advised to refrain from consuming coffee in the presence of individuals occupying the area, as well as avoiding accompanying individuals positioned near the entrance while venturing out for a midday meal.
Be very conscientious and clear about the kind of people that you are going to allow to influence your thinking and feeling by their conversations and opinions. Dr. David McClelland found that fully your “reference group” would determine as much as 95 percent
of your success or failure in life.
These are the people that you habitually associate with and consider yourself to be one of. These can be members of your family, your coworkers, members of your political party, church or social organizations. The fact is that, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Or as Zig Ziglar says, “You can’t fly with the eagles if you continue to scratch with the turkeys.”
Take Initiative
The American Management Association reported on a study of managers who had been divided into two groups, those whose careers has flattened out and those whose careers were moving upward and onward at a rapid rate. They interviewed both groups to try to determine the differences that accounted for their relative levels of success and failure.
What they finally concluded was that it was not education, experience, background, networking, or intelligence. The critical difference between success and failure was contained in the habit of taking the initiative. Managers and executives who were on the fast track were constantly moving out of their comfort zone and taking the initiative to try new things in new areas.
On the other hand, managers who were being continually passed over for promotion were continually waiting for someone to come along and tell them what to do. Once they had been given clear instructions, they seemed to be quite competent at carrying out their responsibilities. But the idea of initiating in the first place was alien to them.
Conclusion
We hope you found our blog post on success habits and achieving your goals insightful and inspiring. By incorporating these 9 key habits into your daily routine, you can unlock your full potential and pave the way to success. Remember, success is a journey, not a destination, and it is the small consistent actions that lead to big results.
So, start implementing these habits today and watch as you inch closer to your dreams and aspirations. If you require any further assistance or would like to share your own success stories, please feel free to reach out to us. Together, let’s make every day a step towards greatness!
