It’s easy to say that we want to live a successful life. The hard truth is that if you don’t do anything about living your dream life, nothing is going to happen. After 10 years, you will still be doing what you do now, be where you are, living the same old life.
I bet you don’t want that to happen. We all want improvement. We want to live a better life and be more successful across all areas of our lives – financially, physically, emotionally, and in relationships.
But things are not going to happen accidentally. If you don’t do anything to make a change, I can guarantee you’ll still be living the same kind of life as now in the future.
You have to understand that the future you want is created now, not 10 years from now.
What you want to achieve in your life, you can have them, but you must work on them right now.
A lot of people procrastinate and put things off because they think that there’s always a tomorrow. They don’t pursue their goals and they don’t work hard on their dreams because they think that things are going to work out just fine, which is wrong.
If you want to achieve your goals, live a better life, and make your dreams a reality, you must work on improving yourself and take action on what you want.
Here are 10 things you can do to make sure you live a more successful life.
1. Challenge yourself
You must be willing to upgrade yourself by venturing out of your comfort zone. You must challenge yourself to become someone better because if you don’t’, you will still be the same.
If you want to achieve greater success in life, you must first upgrade your character to become someone better.
You need to know the fact that you are where you are right now because of your thinking, your beliefs, your habits, your actions, your characters, etc.
And if you want to make a change, start by changing yourself. Improve yourself and become someone better so that you can produce better results.
Hence, make it a commitment to challenge yourself.
For example, if you want to be a leader but you are afraid to speak publicly, join a toastmaster club and learn how to speak in front of the public.
If you want to build a successful e-commerce business but you lack the technical skills, either you hire someone else to do it or attend a workshop and learn how to do it yourself.
The point is that you must challenge yourself to overcome the obstacles that are stopping you from living the kind of life you want.
Like a caterpillar going through a metamorphosis. If you don’t challenge yourself, if you don’t make a change, and if you don’t step outside of your comfort zone, you will stay a caterpillar forever.
You have to let go of being a caterpillar if you want to transform into a beautiful butterfly.
So, don’t be afraid of failures. Face your fears and challenge yourself each day and each week to become someone better.
“There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.”
– William Frederick Halsey Jr.
2. Reflect your life and review your results
If you want to live a more successful life, you must reflect on your life and review your results. Why? The reason is simple – if you don’t reflect and review, how can you tell if you are making progress or moving backward, right?
You have to gauge your progress, measure your results, and reflect on your life to know if what you do is working.
If what you do is not working, then that means you need to change something. You need to do something different to live your dream life.
Sadly, most people don’t do this. They live life as it is. They follow the crowd and they flow through the river of life without knowing where they want to end up.
Life is like a river and you are paddling on a boat. You have the oars and you can control which direction you want to go.
You don’t have to follow the current and where everyone goes. You can decide your own destiny because you have the oars and you can paddle to get there.
But to do so, you must first identify what you want. You must know your destination before you can get there. And you must constantly reflect your life and review the results you are getting.
So that if you are moving in the wrong direction, you can make a change.
“If today were the last day of your life, would you want to be doing what you’re doing?”
That’s the question legendary Steve Jobs asked himself every day in his speech at Stanford graduation day.
“Whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something,” he added.
That’s how Jobs reflected on his life. And this was how he managed to put his focus on what matters most.
Thus, reflect on your life on a regular basis. Review your progress and results to make sure you are moving in the right direction and are living the life you want.
3. Set goals, make plans, and stick to them
Living a successful life means living an intentional life. As I said, success doesn’t come automatically.
It is not like you wake up the next morning and you have a million-dollar in your bank account. And it is not like you will magically be promoted to become a CEO or takeover a billion-dollar business or company.
Things happened for a reason. And the reason is you. You are the one who should be actively and consciously working on your vision to make it a reality.
This is why you must learn to set goals, make plans, and then actively work on your plans.
First, most people don’t have a goal. They don’t know what they want to achieve out fo their lives. And this is why they are living in mediocrity.
Second, they have dreams and goals, but they don’t know how to develop an actionable plan to get them the results they desire.
And third, even if they have a goal and a plan, if they don’t stick to their plans, they are still not going to accomplish their goals and dreams.
“Success is science. If you have the conditions, you get the results.”
Yes, success is science. You can achieve what you want if you know what to do, how to get there and take the necessary action.
Therefore, ask yourself, do have goals? Do you have plans? And are you sticking to your plans?
If you don’t, learn to do so using the Goal Setting Formula method.
Set your goals and create plans to reach them. And more importantly, live an intentional life by taking purposeful actions to produce the success you want.
4. Develop good disciplines
There is no way you can achieve extraordinary success without developing good disciplines.
I know it is hard and it is difficult. That’s the price you need to pay to become someone extraordinary.
Either way, you have to pay. Either you pay for the pain of regret, or you pay for the pain of discipline.
The choice is yours. Some people choose to work hard and develop good habits so that they can become a person worthy of success.
But there are also people who don’t want to pay for the pain of discipline. They prefer to do something convenient, something easy, and something comfortable.
Instead of working hard for their goals, they choose to play games, watch endless movies, and waste a lot of time on social media.
After 10 years, the people who built disciplines and work on their goals may have been successful.
As for those who choose to live an easy life, after 10 years down the road, they are probably having a difficult time because they are still living in mediocrity and their commitments have increased.
You see, you can be disciplined and work hard for your dreams, and in the future, you may be successful, but there’s no guarantee.
Here’s what I know – you may not be successful even if you work hard, but if you don’t work hard and you choose to live an easy and comfortable life, I can guarantee you’ll never attain the success you want.
“Self-discipline is the #1 delineating factor between the poor and rich, the successful and unsuccessful, the happy, and unhappy people.”
– Robert Kiyosaki
5. Focus on the main thing
You need to be disciplined and you need to work hard, but you must choose to work on the right thing.
When it comes to getting things done, you have to know that not every task is created equal. Some tasks will give you a huge impact in life while others are just non-essential.
Your mission is to focus on the main because that’s what gets you the most results.
So, what is your main thing? Your goals.
Focus and put all your energy into your goals. Work on your goals the first thing in the morning.
But what if you don’t have time? What if your goal is to build a business but you are currently holding a full-time job?
Use the 90/90/1 Rule – for the next 90 days, use 90 minutes to work on your most-important goals the first thing in the morning.
That means, if you usually get up at 7 AM and get to work at 8 AM, what you need to do is to get up earlier than your usual time. You need to sacrifice a little bit for the sake of a better future.
Get up an hour or an hour and a half earlier to work on your goals. Spend at least 90 minutes to work on before you go to work.
And after 90 days, trust me, I’m pretty sure you will have produced significant results and success that you desire.
Choose to consciously and purposefully work on your goals and the things that you want.
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
– Stephen Covey
6. Read a good book every day
I can’t stress enough about reading. I’m a reader and I try to read at least a book per week. Every day, I spend about 30 minutes to an hour into reading.
I have a bookshelf full of books and I’m planning to get another new bookshelf because there is just not enough space to keep all my books.
If you think that reading is not important, think again. Here’s what Oprah Winfrey said about how reading changed her life:
“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age 3, and soon discovered there was a whole new world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”
You have to understand that what you now know set the reference point for your life.
For example, if all of your friends are earning an average of $3,000 per month, you will think that making $5,000 or $8,000 per month is a lot.
However, once you learned to increase your perspective, you will discover that there are people who earn $20,000 or more per month.
And this will change your perspective and reference point. Suddenly, making $5,000 a month may not seem like a lot to you.
This is how reading can change your perspective. When you read, you are reading from the author’s mind. You are seeing the world from the author’s point of view.
Thus, if you read good books, you are programming good knowledge into your mind. Like the movie Matrix. When you see a good program you want to learn, just click a button and you can download it into your mind.
Reading has the same effect.
Plus, if you learn just one new idea from a book, reading a book a month will give you 12 new ideas a year. And within 5 years, you will have 60 new ideas with you. Don’t you think this is a great way to improve yourself and to produce better success in life?
If you have no idea what books to read, check out my recommendation here.
7. Learn something new and improve your skill
When was the last time you pick up a new skill or improve the current one? For most people, they don’t improve their skills after they graduated from schools.
No matter what industry you’re in, you must constantly work on improving your skills so that you can become better.
If you don’t learn, you’ll become obsolete and outdated real soon.
My mother is 60+ years old and she doesn’t understand English, yet, it doesn’t stop her from learning to use YouTube and WhatsApp.
My point is that no matter who you are, at what age, or in what industry, you must strive for improvement.
When I was in real estate sales, I attended many sales seminars and workshops. Plus, I also attended the training provided by the company. The key is to learn how to do things better.
Even at this point of writing, I have 2 seminars scheduled in the coming months. And I already have plans for what seminars and workshops to attend next year.
You cannot achieve greater success without improving yourself and your skills.
The only way you can overcome a level 9 obstacle or problem is to level up yourself to get to a higher level. If your level is low, say at level 5, a level 9 problem will be a big problem for you.
But once you become better and get to a higher level like level 15, a level 9 problem is nothing to you.
Do you get that?
The better you become, the more you can achieve.
“The size of the problem is never the issue, what matters is the size of you.”
8. Start a side project
What does start a side project has to do with living a more successful life? Nothing and everything.
It depends on how you look at it. If you want to be financially successful, you cannot just depend on one stream of income, you need more.
Plus, if you are working full-time, it will be difficult to venture into a business. And the best way to do so is to start a side business.
Patrick J. McGinnis, the author of The 10% Entrepreneur suggests his readers start a side business. Put in at least 10% of time, effort, and capital into building a side project.
You will never know how your side project will turn out. Sometimes, your side project can kick off and become big and successful. You will never know until you do.
Furthermore, when you pursue a pet project, it becomes a place where you work on your passion and things that excite you.
Not only that, building a side business can challenge you to grow into areas where you normally don’t have the experience as a full-time employee.
Starting a side business can be easy these days. A lot of people rely on the internet to build an online business. Whether you are selling their services or products online, you can utilize your time, learn something new, and create better opportunities for yourself.
9. Identify your roadblocks and obstacles
When it comes to achieving success, one thing most people neglect is about getting rid of their roadblocks and obstacles.
For example, if you want to build an online business but you lack the technical skills, and this is what causes you to put the project off, what you need to do then is to get rid of this roadblock.
Once you have acquired the technical skill to build a website, you can proceed further and make significant progress toward your goal.
The key is to identify what are the roadblocks and obstacles that are stopping you right now.
- If you want to start a blog but you don’t know how to install WordPress, you can learn how to do so.
- If you want to invest in real estate but you aren’t sure where to start, attend an investment workshop.
- If you want to lose weight and have a fit body, take classes and get a trainer to help you.
You want to shortcut your learning curve and make great progress by getting rid of your obstacles.
A lot of people procrastinate on their dreams and goals because they face problems on their journey, and they allow those obstacles to stop them from going forward.
Learn to understand what is stopping you. What are the roadblocks that you need to get rid so that you can proceed forward?
10. Build an encouraging environment
Your environment plays an important role in shaping your life. You simply can’t make good choices and decisions if your environment and surrounding are not supportive enough.
Think about it, if your workplace is in a mess, the culture of your company is negative, people are backstabbing each other, do you think you can achieve good career results?
Not likely. Your workplace must be supportive of what you do.
Like reading a book. If you read a book in a noisy area, you can’t concentrate, and you will be distracted all the time. Perhaps, you can only read a few pages in 30 minutes.
But when you switch your environment and read the book in a quiet and cozy environment, things will be very much different. Perhaps, you can finish the entire book in an hour.
Can you see the impact of your environment?
“You are a product of your environment, surround yourself with the best.”
This is why Jim Rohn said that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
Therefore, create an inspirational space for working and living. You want to go to the office feeling inspired by your dreams. And you want to build an environment at home where you truly feel like home.
Conclusion
As I said earlier in this article, if you want to live a more successful life, you can’t sit around and wait for things to happen. You need to do something and make a positive change right now.
Your future is created now, not 10 years from now. Hence, find out what you need to do to improve the quality of your life, and do it now.
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