In studying and dealing with many people over the last few years I have come to the realisation that success is essentially a multitude of habits and beliefs. Successful people have established habits that set them up for success. I have been implementing some of the habits of the most successful people I have come across and found these 8 habits to have made the biggest contribution towards my own personal success:
- Gratitude
My mentors Bob Proctor and Sandra Gallagher have taught me to always start my day writing out 10 things I am grateful for. Those 10 things can be a mixture of what you currently have and what you want. The key with this is to get into the feeling of being grateful for already having what you want. To achieve the feeling of already having it I suggest you write it out in the present tense. e.g I am so happy and grateful now that I have purchased my dream home by the beach.
In the amazing book “The Science of Getting Rich” Wallace Wattles says “The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best; therefore it tends to become the best; it takes the form or character of the best, and will receive the best.” He also went on to say “faith is born of gratitude. The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith.” Expectation is vital to your success because we never get what we want in life, we get what we expect. Your expectation controls your behaviour and your behaviour causes your results.
When you develop the habit of keeping your mind in an attitude of gratitude, you will attract more good in your life. - Study yourself
“Know thy self” is good advice. Bob Proctor has helped me understand that the most important thing I need to study is myself. For approximately 3 years I have developed the habit of studying myself every day. This has made such a massive improvement in my results it isn’t funny! It has helped me go from being an electrician to being one of Bob Proctor’s top Personal Development consultants in the world within 12 months. I use the very program I coach my own clients through, Thinking into Results.
Studying yourself dramatically raises your awareness of any limiting thoughts and beliefs you have that are in the way of you achieving the success you want. When you can become aware of the unconscious thoughts and beliefs that are causing your results, you can then replace them. You see, those unconscious thoughts and beliefs are nothing but ideas that you have accepted along the way. You can choose to keep them or change them for ideas that help you prosper. - Exercise
There are obvious health benefits from doing daily exercise. One of the obvious ones is that exercise releases happy hormones called endorphins. Endorphins help you feel good and when you feel good, you will also attract more good. One other benefit of exercise that you may not be aware of, is that it also helps you disconnect from your work because it gets you to focus on something else. When you can disconnect your thoughts from work even for 30 minutes, you then have a different perspective on any challenge you may be facing. Your happy hormones will keep you in a positive vibration longer than you think, so it’s a good idea to exercise in the morning to set up your day. There’s no coincidence that developing a healthy mind and healthy body are 2 key ingredients in achieving long lasting success. - Leave EVERYONE better off
This has to be one of the essentials to successful living. I was taught to make it a habit of leaving everyone with the impression of increase. This means, to leave EVERYONE and I repeat EVERYONE better off for having come in contact with you. When you can make this a habit, you will never have to worry about money or repeat business ever again. This may not be the easiest habit to adopt especially when you are dealing with people you don’t quite see eye to eye with, so here’s a tip: Train your mind to look for the good in the person and then let them know about it in a sincere way. - Planning
How do you plan your day? How productive are you? Do you assign yourself goal achieving activities to do daily? I suggest to write out a list of goal achieving activities every day. You want to write them out before you start work or before bed at night. Now the key thing to remember with this habit is this: You need to order the activities from most important to least important and work your way down the list. When you start an activity, you focus all your attention on completing it in a successful manner. You don’t think about the next or last activity, you focus all your attention on the task at hand. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get the whole list completed for the day, just move them to the next day. When you make every activity a success you will have a successful day. Make every day a success and you will live a successful life. - Persistence
In the famous book Think and Grow Rich, where Napoleon Hill interviewed and studied the most successful people of his era, Napoleon said “There is no substitute for persistence! It cannot be supplanted by any other quality! Remember this, and it will hearten you, in the beginning, when the going may seem difficult and slow. Those who have cultivated the habit of persistence seem to enjoy insurance against failure. No matter how many times they are defeated they finally arrive up toward the top of the ladder.” After my first experience at one of Bob Proctors seminars, Bob instructed my wife and I to read Napoleon Hill’s Persistence chapter aloud together every day for 30 days. If we missed a day we had to start again. It’s safe to say that engrained persistence on a very deep level for me. When the going has been tough, certain parts of that chapter flash onto the screen of my mind telling me to keep going! Therefore persistence makes it on my list as an ESSENTIAL habit to living a successful life. - Attitude
Any really successful person I have come across, has always had a great attitude. Attitude can be broken down into 3 parts. It is a combination of your thoughts, feelings and actions directed towards a specific purpose. Whenever I myself am being challenged by something, I am reminded by my own mentor to check my attitude. You can do the same, think about it. What are your thoughts, feelings and actions towards the problem or situation? Are they positive or have they been negative? If you have a problem, and you’re being honest with yourself, there is a very high chance you will see where the problem lies. It’s your attitude. You have the choice to develop a positive mental attitude, it takes consistent work but the reward is Huge! - Focus
There is a saying that I love. “Whatever you focus on expands and grows.” What do you spend most of your time and energy focused on? Are you focused on a worthy goal or are you focused on the trivial things in your life? Are you focused on problems or solutions? Just become aware of where your attention is spent most of the time and work at steadily directing your thoughts towards something worthwhile. This habit alone has the power to propel you into the success that you desire.
These are 8 habits that I highly recommend you apply in your life. When changing habits know that when you try to change too many at once you won’t successfully change anything. So pick one that you want to work on right now and apply it in your life for 30 days and then move on to the next one. Remember change is hard at the beginning, messy in the middle but worth it in the end.
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