How to Grow in Life

Let me ask you a question, how far and how much have you grown in life?

Take a moment to compare with yourself 5 years ago…

  • Are you reaching greater heights in life?
  • Have you achieved most of your goals and are living your dreams?
  • And do you feel extremely fulfilled with your life right now?

I believe that everyone wants to live a fulfilling and great life. We all want our dream life to come true.

And nobody wants to go downhill, feel depressed, or live a mediocre life where they are feeling stuck.

And if you want to live a better life – a quality life – you must learn to grow.

Success will not come to you overnight, but it can be achieved through daily improvement and small increments over time.

Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, but they underestimate what they can achieve within 5 years.

Time flies and one year can be gone faster than you imagine, but if you have the intention to improve and commit to living a better life, follow these 7 steps below and you will see significant improvement in the years to come.

Just fully commit and give yourself at least 3 to 5 years for growth before you decide to quit and do something else. It may seem like a long time, but it is actually not.

And regardless, the next 5 years will surely arrive, the only question is, ‘where will you be?’

Will you still be doing the same thing, living in the same place, working at the same boring job, looking at your age grows but are not accomplishing anything, and still getting nowhere in life?

Or will you arrive with all your goals accomplished, are living your dream life, feeling healthy, vibrant, beaming with energy, and never have to worry about paying your bills, are driving your dream car, living in your dream house, and are financially, emotionally and physically successful?

You can choose the future you want.

You have a choice and it all starts right now.

Remember this, my friend, the future you want is created right now, not 20 years from now.

Hence, if you want to live a better life with greater success and fulfillment, then you should start doing something right now.

Here are 7 steps you can take to help you grow in life so that you can become more successful, accomplish your goals, and make your dream life come true…

1. Commit to Mastery

commit to mastery

First, commit to mastery. Commit to keep improving in every area of your life.

In today’s world, things are changing so rapidly that mastery has become a necessity. And if you want to be the best in your field, you must deliberately practice and improve.

You never know what will be coming next.

When Netscape was the best, Yahoo came around and took over the market. When Yahoo was in the spotlight, Google and eBay came around and shook the world. And next, comes the giant e-commerce store, Amazon that is still growing strong today. We all thought that Amazon is all there is, but Alibaba came in and put everyone in amazement.

So what will be next? Seriously, I do not know.

The only thing we can do is to commit to what the Japanese called, “Kaizen”, or what Tony Robbins called, “CANI”, Constant-And-Never-ending-Improvement.

If you don’t improve, you will become obsolete.

Take taxi drivers as an example. In many countries, including my country, taxi drivers are forced to compete with Uber and Grab drivers. Taxi drivers used to compete with only themselves, among other taxi drivers, but today, because of how technology has changed, the competition has become tougher.

And because of that, your commitment to mastery is not a choice anymore, it has become a necessity. If you don’t improve, you will be out of the game.

Do you still remember Nokia or Motorola or Sony Ericsson? What happened to them?

Regardless of what field or industry you are in or what work you are doing, you have to consistently ask yourself, “How can I improve and do better”, “What can I do to be more efficient” or “How can I make this more profitable”.

If you don’t commit to improving and constant striving to get better, others will surpass you and you will become obsolete.

Here are 3 tips to help you commit to mastery:

#1 – Decide What You Want to Improve

The first thing you need to do is to decide what and where you want to see the improvement. If you are in sales, do you want to improve your cold calling skills or your presentation skills? Do you want to improve the quality of your service or do you want to improve your marketing strategies?

You can also choose to improve other areas of your life such as your health and fitness, your cooking skills, your meditation skills, your parenting skills, your time management skills and so on.

But the first step is to identify where or which area you want to master.

#2 – Read and Learn from Others

Commit yourself to become an avid reader. The only way you can become better is to constantly inject new knowledge and thoughts into your head. So, commit to reading at least one or two books a month.

Read: Why Do You Need to Read Books and the Benefits of It

Try to learn from those who have been successful in where you want to improve.

The fastest way to learn something is to ask someone who has done it to show you how to do it.

So, go and network and mix around with other successful people in your industry.

See how they do it. Learn their thinking, their beliefs, and their strategies.

#3 – Commit to Taking Baby Steps

When you try to do something too much too fast, it will overwhelm you. Thus, try to go at it one step at a time.

Learn a skill at a time. Improve just one thing at a time. Do you know that it takes years for successful people to achieve extraordinary results in life?

The author of the bestselling book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell coined the 10,000-Hour Rule. In this rule, he stated people can only achieve extraordinary results when they have reached 10,000-hour of deliberate practice.

One of the best books about success that you should read. Get it here from Amazon.

And there is no way you can reach 10,000 hours of practice and improvement within a year. Thus, break it into a longer time frame and look at the big picture.

Take baby steps to grow your life. Grow your confidence and build your momentum step-by-step. Mastery takes time, my friend.

2. Cultivate Success Characters

grow daily habits

There’s a saying, “How you do anything is how you do everything”. If you want to become an extraordinary person who achieves great success in life, you must look at how you live your life.

How you do one thing is most likely the way how you do everything.

If you are not serious about your work right now, there is a high chance that you are not serious about your goals and your dreams too.

Successful people are successful because of their habits and their attitudes. If you are someone who always late for work, there is a high chance that you will be late for your goals too.

Everything in your life is intertwined.

How you do one thing in one area will reflect how you do another thing in a different area.

If you always find yourself having a conflict with your friends and family members, you will probably find that there are conflicts in different areas of your life too.

How you handle and manage setbacks, challenges, and situations in life is probably how you handle all of them in a different part of your life.

If you are an athlete and you are not serious about it, there is a high probability that you are not serious with your goals and dreams too.

Why is that so?

Simple, because your attitude is at play. It is your attitude and your habits that will determine everything you do in life.

Find it difficult to wake up in the morning and always give excuses? That will probably be the way how you treat your goals and dreams too.

Whenever you procrastinate or fail to achieve your target, you will give an excuse.

On the other hand, if you are someone who is serious and committed to your goals, you will find that you will play this game the exact way in other areas like in sports as well.

Take a Moment to Look At Your Life

Take a moment to reflect on what you have just read. Reflect on how you have lived your life up to this point.

Are you someone who always blame, complain and give excuses? Are you someone who always late for work, someone who does not keep promises or someone who did not treat things seriously?

If you want to grow and live a better life, you must upgrade your attitude and habits.

Start with every area of your life. Start with your daily habits. You may think that how you do things in another area of your life has nothing to do with your goals and dreams, wrong, it is your attitudes that define you.

And your attitude will never lie.

If you are someone who is hard-working, you will be hardworking in every area of your life. If you are not serious in your relationship, you might not be serious in achieving your goals and dreams too.

Cultivate Success Characters

So, start by cultivating success characters that will lead you to getting the results you want. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Here are 3 success characters that may help you grow to a higher level and make you more successful.

#1 – Be Committed With What You Have Decided

Most people are not successful because they are not committed enough. They simply quit and give up whenever they face some hiccups or obstacles in the process.

Whenever you have decided on something, commit to it and act on it.

When you decide to get to the gym to work out and suddenly it rains, don’t let the rain stop you. Just get changed and go.

Remember, what you want is to build up your character so that you will be more committed to your goals and you will do whatever it takes to achieve what you have decided.

When you have decided to do something and someone tells you that it is not possible, don’t give up just yet, do some research, study and find a way to work it out.

Stand by what you have decided. And be committed with what you want.

Read: 7 Easy Ways How to Increase Your Commitment to Success

#2 – Be Willing to Go the Extra Mile

Are you really serious about success and living your dreams? Go the extra mile. Do what others don’t want to do. Wake up earlier than most people, start your day earlier, work harder and stay later.

This quote below gives a clear picture of going the extra mile:

“Success is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

Are you willing to do more? The only way to separate yourself from the ordinary is to do the ‘EXTRA’ and so you will become ‘EXTRAordinary’.

#3 – Always Think From a Positive Perspective

No matter what happened, you must think from a positive perspective. Successful people are inverse paranoia. They look at challenges, setbacks, and failures as opportunities for them to grow stronger in life.

Michael Jordan once said:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

The same goes to Thomas Edison. When people asked him how he feels after failed more than 10,000 attempts, he said that he did not fail, but he has successfully discovered 10,000 ways that don’t work.

Change your perspective and change the way you look at things. Always be optimistic.

Whenever you started to look at things from a positive angle, things will change because everything becomes an opportunity for you.

Therefore, adopt these 3 success characters if you want to grow better in life. Start from your daily life and make these develop these 3 characters from now on.

3. Respect Your Time

respect your time

We all know that time is important, but are you treating your time seriously?

In order to grow in life, you must make good use of your time, and life. People who don’t value their time are mediocre people who will never grow to a higher level.

“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”

Bruce Lee

Time is the most important value that we all equally have. No matter whether you are a student or a doctor, we all have 24 hours a day, nothing more and nothing less.

Time tells us how far we have come and how much we have grown, or not. No one can escape the passing of time and we all will age and die one day.

Thus, if we understand the how valuable time is, we will never waste our life on things that don’t matter. We will work on our present to materialize the future that we want.

People who don’t value their time are people who always procrastinate, put things off, don’t take things seriously, and always succumbed to laziness.

If you have a dream or a goal that you have long desired to achieve, do it.

Don’t wait until when you are 80 years old only to feel regret that you have not done it.

It doesn’t matter even if you do it and fail. At least you have tried and acted on it.

Here are some tips to help you better understand time and wisely use it.

Live in the moment. No matter what you are doing, make sure you put your full attention because this moment is the most important moment of all. When you are drinking coffee, enjoy the aroma of the coffee. When you are taking bath, enjoy the water flowing down your body. When you are doing a presentation to your clients, enjoy the process.

Value every moment. If you have a goal, go for it. If you want to travel the world, plan and act on it. If you love somebody, express your feeling and tell him or her. You don’t have to wait for signs, or you will live your life with regrets.

Don’t procrastinate. Don’t delay on things and put it on a later date. If you have something you need to accomplish, do it and get it done. When you procrastinate, you are creating a mental burden in your mind that will block you from moving forward.

Read: Top 10 Reasons Why Do People Procrastinate and How to Overcome It

Use your time wisely. Be conscious of how you are using your time. Are you doing something that will add value to your life or are you wasting your time on unnecessary activities?

Understand that you are in control. This is your life and you can and you have the choice to choose how you want to live your life. No one is pointing the gun at your head and force you to do things.

You always have control and it is time to exercise this power to live a valuable life.

Time is important and if you are serious about growing, moving forward, and living a quality life, be conscious of how you use your time.

Once it is gone, you can never get it back. So live wisely.

4. Keep Your Promises and Commitment

keep your promise

Another important step you need to take if you want to grow in your life is to always keep your promises, especially the ones that you make to yourself.

Just like what you have learned above, how you do anything is how you do everything, when you don’t keep your promises, you will never be committed to what you want to achieve in life.

The moment you said that you are going to achieve your goal by the end of this year, that’s it. It is decided and there’s no turning back or giving up.

You keep the commitment you made to yourself.

Don’t set goals and give up halfway when you face difficulties. When you say you are going to do something, keep your words and do it.

Remember this, you are what you do, not what you say you will do. So take action on what you have promised and committed to doing.

When you started to keep your promises and commitment in one area or towards one thing, you will build up the character and grow it to other areas in your life too.

Think about it, if you keep your commitment and wake up at 5am to hit the gym every day, there is a higher chance you will commit to your other goals such as growing your career and working your financial goal that you have set yourself.

Apart from that, people will notice your accountability and opportunity will start flowing to you.

You will then become a more responsible person and become an inspiration to others. When others see that you are committed, they will also commit to you.

More importantly, when you have become someone who keeps your promises and commitment, you will value yourself more.

You will create your own standard and grow a higher level of acceptance in every area of your life. You will value your worth more.

And when you know what you are worth, you will be more successful in life.

Read: Top 10 Tips How To Be Successful and Accomplish More In Life

5. Commit to Financial Success

financial success

You cannot grow and consider yourself as successful if you are not financially well off. Financial success is the #1 aim that almost everyone wants, but unfortunately, most people fail to achieve it.

When you are wealthy, it will be easier to reach the other goals in another area.

For example, if you are financially successful, it will be much easier for you to travel across the world, visiting exotic and beautiful locations in other countries. You can drive your dream car or live in your dream house.

On the other hand, if you struggling financially, you will need to think twice before you spend on luxury items. You need to budget and make sure you have enough to pay bills and put food on the table.

Thus, financial success is important. Most people desire to be rich, but they hate to talk about the subject because they don’t feel like they are ‘there’ yet, which is not right.

If you want to improve and grow in one area, you must talk about it and work on it. Hence, let’s talk about reaching your financial goal and becoming rich.

Below are 3 powerful tips you should stick to:

#1 – Pay Yourself First

If you want to be rich, you must commit to paying yourself first. When you get your salary or any income, set aside a certain portion and pay yourself first.

Put the money into a different account that is meant for investment. No matter what you plan to invest in, you must make it a habit to pay yourself first.

Even if you are just an employee working on a payroll, you can become rich by adopting this habit.

When you choose to pay yourself first, you are delaying gratification and working on your financial future.

You put aside some money and save it for investment that will grow and eventually make you wealthy.

#2 – Apply the Money Jar System

Learning to pay yourself first is crucial, but there is also another important technique you can use to grow your wealth – the money jar system.

You may have heard about this. If you’re not, it is simply a system used on how you can manage and grow it.

According to T. Harv Eker, the author of Secrets of The Millionaire Mind, he suggested this distribution below:

  1. 55% for necessity and spending
  2. 10% for long-term saving
  3. 10% into play account
  4. 10% for education
  5. 10% into financial freedom account
  6. 5% for giving and charity work
secrets of the millionaire mind
This is my most-recommend book for financial success. If you want to master your wealth, you need to read this book. Get it from Amazon here.

Of course, you can alter the percentage and how much you want to put in for each category. However, do remember that the more you spend and use for necessity, the less you can have for savings and investment.

One of the richest people in America, John Templeton, saved 50% of his income and used the money for investment to grow his wealth.

It is a very aggressive distribution, but it is also one that is responsible to make him rich and wealthy fast.

Depending on what you want, the more you save and invest, the faster you can reach financial freedom and live a good life.

#3 – Start Small and Start Now

Now that you have learned the two very important lessons about money; first, you learn to pay yourself first, and second, you learn the money jar system to manage your money, and now, you must learn to execute.

Stop saying that you don’t have enough to save or distribute or to pay yourself first.

Even if you have just $1 dollar, learn to manage that $1 dollar.

You have to understand that it is the habit that is important, not the amount.

If you can learn to manage $100 properly, you will have no problem managing $1 million. If you can’t manage $100 correctly, you will never be able to manage $1 million when you have it, no chance!

People thought that they should wait until when they have more only to learn to manage their money, wrong!

It is when you manage it, you will have more, not the other way round!

So don’t get it wrong. Start to adopt the habit and manage your money right now. When you learn to manage, you will grow it and have more to manage.

After all, it is the habit that counts, not how much you have in the bank. Do you understand, my friend?

6. Nourish Your Body

exercise quote

There is no point to be rich and successful if you don’t have the health to enjoy what you have accomplished.

Learn to take care of your body. Commit to living a healthy lifestyle. I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to live until 90 to see my grandchildren.

Some people just don’t care about their health. They drink, they smoke and they don’t exercise. They thought they are healthy right now and that’s why they don’t have to take care of their health.

The problem is that when your health starts to deteriorate, you will regret.

Trust me, I have seen many people who just don’t care about their health until when they suffer chronic illness, only then they wanted to do something to improve their health.

Don’t let this happen to you. Work on your health right now.

Here are a couple of tips to help you maintain a good and healthy lifestyle:

#1 – Drink Plenty of Water

Experts suggest us to drink at least eight 8-ounce of water each day, which is about 1.9 liters. Do you know that our body consists of 75% of water and if we want our body to function properly, we need to keep our body hydrated at all times?

Furthermore, water has the ability to flush the toxin from our body, use for digestion and keep our organ hydrated and function at an optimal level. So drink more water, my friend.

#2 – Sleep More

We simply don’t get enough sleep each day. Science shows that we need at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a day, but most people sleep only about 6 hours a day.

We simply have too many things to do and too many distractions to keep us awake. If you want to keep your brain function at its best level, get enough sleep. The more you sleep the more creative you will be.

More importantly, when we sleep, we are repairing and rejuvenating our body. We rest and relax so that we can work and perform better the next day.

#3 – Exercise

Do I need to emphasize more about this? I hope not.

We all know that exercise is important, but the sad news is that most people are not spending enough time exercising. Some people don’t even exercise and sweat for years!

We all know that everyone is busy, but we should at least spend about 20 or 30 minutes to exercise each day.

One of the easiest ways to exercise your body is to walk more. Choose to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. You will be amazed by its effect on your health level.

So commit to exercise from today on. Get a partner to make yourself accountable or sign up for a gym class and do it regularly.

#4 – Eat More Vegetables and Fruits

Again, this is another common sense in keeping us healthy, but most of us don’t prefer to eat vegetables and fruits.

Greenery foods contain a lot of fiber, natural vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that our body requires. So the next time when you order food in a restaurant or cook at home, try to eat more vegetables and fruits.

When you are healthy, you can grow better in your life.

When you are in a good shape and are beaming with energy, you can achieve your goals better. You will be more productive and active.

7. Enrich Your Soul

nourish your soul

Finally, your process of growth in life is not complete without enriching your soul. You must learn to enrich your soul to grow your life and to achieve great success.

Every day, we go through our life facing a lot of rejections, negativity, challenges, setbacks, obstacles, and energy-draining activities.

Therefore, learning how to enrich our soul has become something important in today’s world.

Imagine living each day with stress, negativity, pressure and not feeling happy at all, do you think you can grow in these circumstances, not at all.

We know it very well that if we want to grow in our life, we must learn to nourish our soul too. Living in a happy and fulfilling environment allows us to grow faster and unleash our creativity to achieve our goals.

Here are 5 tips how you can enrich your soul through your daily life:

#1 – Meditation

There are plenty of benefits you can get from meditation. For instance, it can relieve your stress and put your mind in a peaceful state. A lot of studies and researches have shown that meditation is good for our soul and we should do it regularly.

In fact, a lot of successful people meditate. For example, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, Arianna Huffington, Katy Perry, Clint Eastwood, Kristen Bell, Steve Jobs, Ellen DeGeneres, Bob Stiller, and much more meditate regularly and they credited meditation as part of their success secret.

Go here to learn how to meditate the right way and get the most out of it.

#2 – Be In Solitude

When you are alone and in solitude, it is the time that you can be with yourself and reflect on your life. We are living in a busy world where instant-messaging has become the norm, not to mention the distractions from social media.

Thus, when you spend time in solitude, you are able to think, dream and connect better with yourself. If you study extraordinary people like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, you will notice that they spend a lot of time in solitude to cultivate their creativity and nourish their soul.

#3 – Rest and Relax

Remember that life is not a sprint, but a marathon. If you want to go far, you must take a rest and relax to recharge your body and soul.

Most people who are living in the big cities these days don’t spend time to rest and relax. All they do is to work, work and more work. This is why more and more people are living in stress and all sorts of illnesses have been induced from it.

Don’t get yourself burn out; take some time off to relax. Get close to nature and recharge your soul from time to time.

#4 – Connect with Your Purpose

Why do you live in this world? What is your purpose here? You have to connect with your inner self and reflect on your purpose regularly. Goal setting and writing down your thoughts can help in this.

A lot of people gone through their life without having a clear purpose these days. A life without purpose is not what you are looking for. You want growth and at the same time, you want the growth to align with your purpose.

Use techniques such as visualization, affirmations and goal setting to connect with your purpose. Write down your thoughts and keep a journal are also great ways to live with purpose.

Read: Why Clarity of Purpose is Important to Success and How to Get It

#5 – Help and Make the World a Better Place

Do you know that one of the easiest ways to enrich your soul is by helping and making the world a better place?

Help others who are in need. When you help people, you are helping yourself because you are telling yourself that you have done something good and it makes you feel good.

You don’t have to donate if you don’t have money. Smile to a stranger, greet and say ‘good morning’ when you meet someone in the lift, hold the door for someone and pick up rubbish on the floor are great ways to start.

The key here is when you do something good, you will feel good. And when you feel good, you will perform and live better in life.

There are many other ways how you can enrich your soul. And you can always start with these 5 mentioned above.

Conclusion

These are the 7 steps how you can grow your life to be more successful, to be a better person and live a fulfilling life.

Growing your life to a higher level requires time. You don’t have to rush it. What you need to do is to improve your life one step at a time.

This article may contain affiliate links. Meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. As always, I only recommend products and services I trust.

By Shawn Lim

Hi there, this is Shawn. I inspire people to achieve their goals and dreams and to reach for higher success in life. If you want to learn more about me, kindly go to the About page. By the way, have you downloaded your FREE copy of The 90-90-1 Rule? Don't forget to do so. Cheers. :)

21 thoughts on “7 Steps How To Grow In Life And Become More Successful”
  1. Thank you for this. My believe is that this will help me a lot as I will definitely start right away, no rush. This is just great!

      1. Such a great article I ever read…may u reach higher and higher in ur life🙂🙂my dear friend ♥️;-) God bless you

  2. You are apsolutly correct to succeed in life , these steps are to strictly implement to active the goals.Thank you so much.

  3. Shawn , you have really been a blessing to me always inspiring me, you are a mentor to me,every of your emails and articles are just too important to ignore in my life,thanks for all your work and for all the impacts. I appreciate you sir. Much love from Nigeria.

  4. Brother,
    Your blog really motivated me…
    Today i am reading this..
    Hope for the new dawn in my life.

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