As I have studied successful people across different areas like business, investing, and sports over the past 20 years some repeating patterns have emerged. Successful habits can be learned, modelled, and repeated to give you an edge in your own career, business, or industry.
There are ten habits that all successful people share from all walks of life. Let’s take a deeper look at each one.
1. Goals
2. Take responsibility
3. Self-Discipline
4. Self-Development
5. Reading
6. Time Management
7. Risk Takers
8. Perseverance
9. Find a Way to Win
10. Follow Their Passion
Goals
All successful people know what they want out of life. They may not know specifically how they will accomplish their goals but they know what their ultimate goals are. Written goals can tell your subconscious what you want even if you forget on a conscious level. Your goals can influence your decisions to move you closer to what you really want only when you know what you want. Goals are like a map on your journey to get where you want to be. Knowing what you want greatly increases your odds of success.
Take responsibility
Successful people take responsibility for their actions, results, and behavior. Successful people believe they are responsible for their own destiny and are proactive in making things happen. Winners don’t have a victim mentality or a fixed mindset. They don’t believe their destiny is predetermined but instead that they determine where they go in life.
Self-Discipline
Winners in any area of life possess self-discipline in at least their one area of expertise but it usually shows up in most areas. Self-discipline is the ability to control your own actions through inner willpower regardless of how you feel or how strong your impulses become. It’s the skill to overcome the temptation to violate your inner principles and get off track from your goals. Self-discipline enables you to pursue your goals, follow your own strategy, and become the person you want to be.
People that become and stay successful are guided by self-discipline using their mind and positive desires to make important decisions and aren’t led away with the wrong decisions by their feelings and negative desires. Self-discipline keeps you on the right path to your goals.
Self-Development
Successful people start self-development at a young age by growing, training, learning, and practicing to become the person they want to be. Self-development is different for everyone but the most important part of the process is getting experience doing the things that lead your toward your goals. You need a feedback mechanism to see results and make adjustments and get better systematically. A mentor, coach, or trainer can speed up this part of the process dramatically.
Reading
To master something you must first know it well and in great detail. Reading is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest path to binge on information that can move you toward your goals.
Successful executives read the best business books.
Successful investors read balance sheets.
Successful entrepreneurs read their profit and loss statement.
Successful traders read charts.
Successful athletes read their playbook.
Successful politicians read history books.
Successful people read books.
Time Management
Time is your most important asset and successful people spend their time wisely. Successful people put a high value on their time and use it wisely in high value activities to move them toward their goals incrementally. Time is a limited resource and can’t be replaced once wasted. You can buy time by paying others to do activities that you consider low value. How successful you are has a high correlation on what you spend your time on and how well you manage it to optimize results.
Risk Takers
At some point in their journey successful people took risks to get to where they are now. It takes the right psychology to both calculate and take risks to move you toward your goals. Most people hate to take any risks and can’t see what could go right with opportunities but only what could go wrong. Taking smart calculated risks is a skill.
Perseverance
Not quitting is the best strategy for eventually winning. Most people don’t lose they just quit too early. Successful people are the ones that didn’t quit, they kept trying one more time. If you have the right effort and are on the right path then only time separates you from success if you persevere until you win. Even if you are doing the right thing you have to keep doing it until you breakthrough. Your odds of success increase with each good attempt at winning.
Find a Way to Win
Successful people find a way to win their game of choice. Operating a business, playing sports, and having a career are a lot of work on their own. However, successful people do the additional work to learn how to rise above their competitors both internally and externally and win. It takes a lot of research, experience, and understanding to find an edge in life. Winning takes both knowing what to do and then putting in the effort consistently to execute the plan.
Follow Their Passion
One primary key to success is following your energy and passion and doing what you love. It’s never easy to do a lot of hard work for a very long-time, but if you enjoy what you’re doing the odds are you will keep at it. In studying successful people in every industry the one thing that kept becoming clear is that they all had a passion for their chosen business, sport, or career and worked at it tirelessly like it was their game of choice. For successful people the line between work, hobbies, passion, and life blur together as they love what they do.
Find your true passion for what you love to create, build, and do everyday and you will move closer to finding your own successful journey.
Integrate as many of these ten habits as possible into your own life to increase the odds of your success with whatever you pursue.
