Unless you’ve just won the lottery, success isn’t random. It usually requires lots of things to happen and normally those things aren’t random happenings.
Sure, there may be some luck involved (being in the right place at the right time is always a plus point) but almost all of success is due to the habits you’ve developed over the years.
Most of what we do in life is habitual. All sorts of things we do routinely, almost without thinking.
You probably get up at about the same time each day, have a morning routine (clean teeth, have a shower, have breakfast) that doesn’t vary much from day to day. The same goes for the other routines or habits that you’ve got.
You could even call going to work every day a habit – there’s not much difference between habits and routines.
But if you’re not developing habits to put you on the road to success, there’s a lot less chance that you will be successful.
A lot of the habits that successful people have developed over the years help them to be more successful.
Being positive and grateful
Positivity is infectious – if you’ve ever been close to someone whose enthusiasm bubbles everywhere, you’ll know it’s almost impossible to ignore and get infected with the enthusiasm yourself. So being positive affects not just you but the people around you.
Being grateful sets your mind up for positive things to happen. It can be as simple as saying thank you more often – out loud where appropriate, in your head at other times (I thank traffic lights for turning or staying green!)
Keeping a gratitude journal reinforces this with your mind. Write down three things each day that you’re grateful for. If you do this last thing at night it sets you up for a better night’s sleep as the positivity is there radiating round your body as you drift off to sleep.
Follow through with your goals
Goals are another habit – you set them and you work towards them.
Or at least you should.
Writing down your goals is a good start. Apart from anything else, that helps you keep on track with them rather than letting your mind change the goal posts over time.
Write down what your life will be like when you achieve your goal – every small detail helps. The closer you get to being able to step into this place, the better your mind will imagine it and the easier it will be to reach it.
Once you’ve got your main goal, split it into smaller items. Each item should be do-able relatively quickly. If it can’t be, split it down further. The reason for doing this is that it’s less daunting and it means you’re far more likely to work on your goal every day if you can spot yourself progressing.
Which, of couse, means do something every day to help you reach your goals.
Focus on yourself
That doesn’t mean be self centred.
It means make sure that you’re doing everything possible to help yourself succeed.
If you don’t focus on yourself, you won’t hold yourself accountable and you won’t be anywhere near as likely to succeed.
Embrace change
Change happens, whether you want it to or not.
You can’t go back in time to those “golden” years that in reality were never quite as golden as your memory thinks they were. And would you really like to go back to the days where your phone was wired into the wall and the internet didn’t exist?
Embracing change and accepting it means that you can take full advantage of it as well. Because every time things change, there are new opportunities that someone will take advantage of. That should be you!
Read more
If your television is bigger than your bookshelf and you spend more time watching TV (or its internet equivalent) than you do reading then you need to re-focus.
And, OK, the books on your Kindle count as being part of your bookshelp so long as you’re adding new books and reading them.
The same goes for physical books – you can’t just read the first chapter or two and then leave a bookmark, never to return to the book. With “look inside” there’s no excuse to not like a book after you’ve bought it as you can get a feel for the style of writing and the information in the book before clicking the buy button.
Think big
Even if what you’re creating is physically small, think big. An iPhone isn’t enormous but it holds a lot of information and worldwide sales are definitely big and enough to keep Apple as one of the world’s biggest companies.
Thinking big is good even if you don’t completely reach your target. After all, Amazon hasn’t taken over the whole world yet (his original domain is Relentless,com) so there’s still room for them to think even bigger.
Believe in yourself
Self belief is important.
After all, if you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else?
This is part of the habits you should be developing – improving your mindset so that your mind works with you more often.
If you’d like help with developing your success habits, check out this 10 step hypnosis program that’s designed to help you be more successful. The different audios are designed to complement each other and re-train your mind for success so it’s a good starting place.
Most of what we do in life is habitual. All sorts of things we do routinely, almost without thinking.
