Paul Brian
Highly successful people come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life.
But they have one thing in common:
They practice excellent habits that you can also copy to achieve success in your life.
I call this the ACHIEVE system:
(Allocate, Collaborate, Hit Hard, Innovate, Exercise, Value, Earn).
Follow this system and you will succeed.
1) Allocate your time!
The first of the key habits of highly successful people that you can adopt today is to allocate your time.
This means keeping a schedule and checking it off.
But it means more than that.
Allocating your time is about deciding on priorities and committing to them.
We all only have a certain amount of time in the day, week, month and year.
What will you use that time for?
There’s only so much time to go around and so many slices of the temporal pie before the proverbial plate is empty and only has crumbs left.
You need to make conscious and forceful decisions about what’s important to you and then go after it with all of your focus and will.
Winners and those who succeed at life decide what to use their time for and then stick to it as much as possible.
They are conscious of time and what they’re spending it on, which makes them more effective, productive and accountable.
The result: success.
2) Collaborate with winners!
The next of the crucial habits of highly successful people that you can adopt today is to collaborate with winners.
We don’t always have a choice who we associate with.
We don’t choose our dad or mom, our siblings or who our classmates or work colleagues are, for example.
But as we grow up we get more and more choices about who we spend time with and how much we cultivate a connection with them.
This is particularly the case in our professional life, where we will come across a wide array of individuals, some being dragged down by the demands of their jobs and some innovating and rising up.
Successful people are not stuck on positivity. They recognize the potential and value of negativity and struggle in some situations.
But they will tend to collaborate and gravitate towards those who are on the upswing or who have fire in the belly.
This isn’t really about emotions or vibes, it’s more about logic.
Think of it this way:
Say you wanted to open a new flooring company in which you would focus on design and sales and your partner would focus on sourcing high quality marble and materials.
You know a guy who has immense knowledge about flooring and materials, but he’s constantly complaining to you about money and making doomsday predictions about the future of the flooring industry…
You know another person who’s still starting out in the business, but she’s extremely enthusiastic about flooring and has been traveling all over Tuscany the past three months learning about traditional Italian design and marble…
Who are you going to pick?
I’ll take door number two, please! And if you want to succeed, you will two.
3) Hit hard in whatever you do!
The next of the habits of highly successful people that you can adopt today is to hit hard in whatever you do.
This means to apply all your energy and focus when you’re working on a specific task.
Don’t half-a** it.
There are far too many brilliant people out there who work hard for a few moments and then slack off, or start a project and then get distracted by a TV show.
You don’t want to be one of those people.
You want to make a habit of allocating your time, collaborating with winners and putting in your full effort when you do something.
This includes knowing when to take a break, of course.
But it also includes making a commitment to yourself and to others:
When you hit the on switch, you are truly on.
4) Innovate on a regular basis!
Now we come to another of the key habits of highly successful people that you can adopt today:
The habit of innovation.
Having a routine is good. Habits are built on routine.
You get up early, you do your stretches, you go through your process.
But innovation is also a habit that you need to work into your routine, as paradoxical as that may sound.
If you look at the most successful and fulfilled people in history, they didn’t sit around or just find one formula that worked and hit the repeat button over and over.
They innovated and changed and came up with new inspirations and new ideas.
Now and then, you need to get in the habit of letting your mind wander, of questioning, approaching things from different angles, talking to people you normally wouldn’t talk to.
Large amounts of failure and mediocrity are born of complacency and rote work.
Much of the progress we see in our world never would have happened without people asking questioning, disrupting staid patterns and trying to find new and better ways to live life, make money and succeed.
You can be one of them. Just let your mind wander and practice asking questions that you normally wouldn’t.
5) Exercise and eat right!
No list about success would be complete if it didn’t include the complete necessity of exercising and eating right.
If you put junk in your body, you get junk out (and your mind and attention don’t focus well, either).
If you fail to exercise, you become stagnant both mentally and physically, experiencing low energy, depression and apathy.
It’s important to get your body moving and pick up the pace.
Successful people know that the physical, mental and emotional are intrinsically linked, and they put that knowledge into practice on a daily basis.
If you want to have a rest day or two, that’s perfectly fine.
But make a habit of doing at least half an hour of light exercise per day.
Also make a habit of eating well, eating healthy foods and getting enough sleep and rest.
6) Value yourself every day!
The next of the healthy habits of highly successful people that you can adopt today is to value yourself every day.
The world is so full of social media hype and attention-grabbing advertisements that we can often lose sight of our own value.
Society encourages us to be “useful” and to fit in somebody else’s plans.
This all leads to a lack of success.
As the saying goes, if you don’t live your own dreams, you’ll live for someone else’s dreams.
It’s true.
“Your life will change drastically once you make the choice not to settle for a mediocre life.
Quit blindly accepting your life as it is and begin to live your life as it is meant to be.”
Successful people make a consistent habit of raising their standards and accepting nothing less.
They will do a stressful or low paid job if it leads somewhere, certainly, but they will never be placed in a stagnant position of disrespect or downward mobility that relies on undervaluing themselves.
Value yourself! Always!
At the same time, never think that your existence means you automatically get everything handed to you.
Which brings me to the last point of the ACHIEVE system.
7) Earn your stripes!
The last of the crucial habits of highly successful people that you can adopt today is to delay gratification.
This includes when it comes to the small pleasurable things like eating, watching films or relaxing.
We live in a culture of consumerism and ease that tells us we “deserve” to relax whenever we want and just take it easy.
The fact is that if you go too easy on yourself you’ll end up miserable, poor and purposeless.
It’s much more satisfying to have an ice cold beer at the end of a day of productive work than it is to start cracking open a can at 11:30 a.m. while scanning the sports news from the morning.
Earn your stripes before rewarding yourself.
The same principle goes in business, relationships and projects you commit to.
Don’t hand yourself all the rewards right at once. Practice patience and a habit of humility.
Nobody ever succeeded in the long run who just chased a short term buzz and dopamine hits.
Good things take time.
Whether that’s working out, starting a company, pursuing a relationship or becoming a stronger and more confident person, it takes time.
And that requires a habit of thinking more long term and putting off instant gratification in favor of deeper, more meaningful results and achievements.
The habit of success
Success isn’t a plateau.
It isn’t beating the video game of life and sitting in splendor after the final level.
Success is a habit.
It’s something you do every day, something you get addicted to.
If you follow the steps above, you will be on your own way to true success in life.
Remember: there is nothing you can’t ACHIEVE.
