There are so many reasons that people become successful. It seems as though every second highly successful individual has found another road that leads to success, a different lifestyle set that has lead to their success.
It’s no secret that everyone is unique, and so it is expected that different people will find different ways to make something of themselves.
However, there have always and will always be certain core rituals that are extremely important on your road to success.
The Desire — You Got to Want It
Above all else you need to have the will to succeed. You need to really want what you are chasing, otherwise, there’s no point in chasing is at all. It makes sense that in order to be completely vested in achieving a certain goal, you need to be completely interested in driving yourself towards that goal.
There is no point in trying to go after something that you don’t really want. Let me rephrase that, there’s no point going after something that you don’t really want to work for. That’s the key point here.
We all have wants and desires. We all have things you want to buy and places we want to go. However, sometimes we simply want our dessert before we even touch our dinner. In theory, this can work for short periods of time, but it will never become a sustainable solution.
We need to work hard for what we want in this world. The proof is in the pudding. We can all do. And to be perfectly honest, half the fun of the catch is in the chase itself.
The Focus — Ignore Useless Distractions
No matter who you are, what you do for a living or where you live, there will always be a plethora of distractions getting in the way of your goals on a daily basis. This is life, and we’re all used to it.
However if we really want to succeed we need to achieve certain levels of focus. We may all be able to complete our daily tasks, however, it is the person that completes their tasks with the highest levels of focus that will do so in a much more efficient manner.
In order to achieve high levels of focus, we should take the time to reflect on our current lifestyles so that we may really understand what it is that is distracting us the most.
By simply making a list of our most counterproductive distractions and putting it up on our fridge we are already taking our first step in completely eliminating them from our lives altogether.
The Grind — Put in the Time
We all have dreams, want’s and desires. We are human and this is completely natural. However, we cannot expect to have what we want unless we are willing to work for it.
Someone once said in order to become a master in a given skill, you need to be willing to put in at least 1000 hours. There is certainly some truth to that saying. It doesn’t guarantee that after 1000 hours you will be successful. It does, however, guarantee that you will be far closer to achieving your goal than you ever were before.
So how do you actually get started or get on the road to putting in your 1000 hours? One simple way is to make a schedule for yourself and your daily activities.
Simply make a list of the tasks (the important tasks) that you would like to accomplish. The order these tasks according to their priority — note the best metric to use for priority here is the importance the particular task has towards helping you achieve your goal, not how much you want to do that task.
One your tasks are listed and ranked, use a calendar tool like Google Calendar to plan those tasks into your schedule. A great technique is to place your most demanding tasks early in the morning or afternoon when you are most awake and the less demanding tasks when you are almost ready to go to bed!
The Reflection — Learn from Yourself
It’s also incredibly important to learn from yourself, on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. We should all be in a constant state of self-reflection if we are to improve ourselves and our lifestyles.
When I was a young man, my father often said to me “Joey, I will always forgive you for making a mistake once, but damn if you make that same mistake a second time — I will kick your ass.” — Greatest Dad in the world.
It can’t be denied that a life spent without consistent learning is really and truly a life wasted. We will never grow as individuals unless we are getting smarter, stronger & better on a regular basis.
So how do we actually do that? Well, it’s quite simple and straight forward when we think about. Take each and every day as an opportunity to learn. Treat each situation, result and mistake as a lesson learned.
Try to extract the positive & the useful from every day of your life. You will find that even after a couple of weeks of doing this, the results will be nothing like you have ever imagined. You will feel unstoppable.
The Helpful Hand — Help Others
There are a lot of methods to becoming happy in life. Some routes to happiness are far more revealing that others. For example, buying a brand new Tesla / Mustang / Jet / Boat would be a few of mine!!
However, a lot can be said for the happiness that you feel when you put time aside to be used on helping other people. i.e. doing good things for other’s without ever expecting anything returned.
A lot of people would snuff their nose at this idea, and that’s understandable. This kind of happiness, the kind you get from helping others is not as tangible, so to speak, as the happiness you would feel buying yourself a brand new jet.
But just because it’s harder to see the benefits, does not mean that they do not exist. Or that they are not important. I’t so easy nowadays to become self centered, and more concerned with your own well being that that of any one else’s.
It’s what some of our most influential movie stars lead us to believe, however we must see through this and be strong enough to make the right decisions, follow our own code, and never falter as a result of anyone else’s influence.
There are so many great people in this world, so many fantastic people who have lived before us that we may learn from.
Never forget that you can always be the next greatest person the world has ever known. There are countless ways to achieve this, the bottom line being that if you are determined and willing to put in 210%, you may very well achieve your wildest goals.
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___I’m Joey, a software developer at Pilz Cork in Ireland. Founder of AppLandr & SwiftResume, Futurist & Fitness/Cooking nut — www.joeyt.net