Your habits can either make or mar your success in life and career. Bad habits can fester and grow into a lifestyle that takes you away from the things you want to do while good habits can help you create a life that’s full of action and accomplishment. If you look at your mentor or someone who’s successful, you would see that they spend each time doing the things that help them accomplish their goals. This isn’t to say they’re perfect but despite the things that are not perfect in their lives, they continue to make moves that have positive impact. Every positive step they take draw them closer to their goals. This all begins with their daily habits. Here are few habits of successful people that you can totally adopt to be the person you really want to be:
- Be purpose-oriented
A popular saying goes “ If purpose isn’t known, abuse is inevitable”. Purpose gives direction to a man’s life. Without this, you end up living by somebody else’s standards, or just follow the crowd and never live up to your dreams and full potential. Describe your life purpose with a plan, include details about every aspect of your life. Be sure you want these things and aren’t just doing what others expect you to do.
- Never give up
It is important to know that after setting a purpose and trying to follow it never give up about it. It might not look like it from the start but with time and consistency it would get better. “If you give up quickly what were you actually fighting for?” Sometimes you just have to hit at it from a different angle. I often conceptualize chipping away at the wall. Different angles, different tools and a little muscle. Rarely you get the answer you want out of the gate and often times through the process you find you need to adjust your approach, but the end goal always the same.
- Embrace failure and try again every time
To change your habits, you’ll need to change your mindset. Something you’ll need to accept failure (in order to form the habits of successful people), is that failure is not just part of the process, it’s a stepping stone. You need it to form the mental patterns of a winner and continue trying until you finally reach all your goals. Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka wrote Waec 9 times just to make a complete result and today, he’s a living legend. Most people avoid trying new things, as there’s always a chance of failure. However, that’s exactly why they don’t make any change and continue living the same life that makes them miserable. It is good to know that failure is powerful and that you can even benefit from it. Learn from it every time you make a mistake. Analyze exactly why that happened. Then, make a plan on what to do next time to perform better.
- Surround yourself with positive people
It’s best you surround yourself with people of common goal or achievements because you smell like the company you keep and the Company you keep speaks a lot on where you are going on life. Don’t let negative people hold you back. Understand that negativity generally comes from unhappy people and those who envy you. Happy successful people don’t tear others down. Surround yourself with ambitious, positive people. It’s too easy to focus on the negative and there’s just no upside to that.
- Take risks
There’s no successful man who never took a risk. Life itself is a risk. To be a successful person you’ll need to be a risk taker. All high-achievers learned how to take risks, accept uncertainty, embrace change, go out of their comfort zones, and do something (even when the situation looked hopeless). Often, you might hear from others that your goals are impossible. Remember though, you are your best motivator and shouldn’t let others interfere with your vision. Impossible is just a limitation you set for yourself, you can easily remove it and be unstoppable. Change your habits by taking risks often.