How to Be Successful at Anything
“Bottom line: If you show a genuine interest in learning about how others became successful, you can open up a world of opportunities.”
— Armstrong Williams
“Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue eludes you. Success is something you attract by the person you become. If you want to have more, you must become more.”
— Jim Rohn
In a lot of cases, the reason some people are more successful than others is their ability to have a clear vision of who they are and what talents they bring to the table.
“If you could find out what the most successful people did in any area and then did the same thing over and over, you’d eventually get the same results they do.”
— Brian Tracy
Passion is one of the key ingredients in success. You must be passionate about whatever it is you want.
We are going to be using this term “successful” throughout this book. So we’ll define it, so we all have the same definition in mind as we proceed. Success means not having to accept substitutes for what you really want. It’s knowing your purpose in life. It’s being able to help others and give back. It’s being the best you can be.
In order to be successful at something, you have to create a powerful enough WHY. If you don’t have a strong-enough reason for what you do, you’re much more likely to give up and not commit. The concept behind being successful is simple: Do what others aren’t doing. Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Unsuccessful people are not willing to work as hard, study as hard, practice as hard, invest in themselves as much — you get the point. However, they are willing to sit on the couch, watch TV all day, play games all day, and be distracted all day, and they’re more than happy to invite you to do the same with them. Misery and mediocrity love company. You must not follow the herd. The seats on the success train are not saved for the mediocre. You must break free of the herd and become your own leader. It sounds scary, but you aren’t alone. There are many amazing mentors who have wonderful material for helping guide you on your path to success. It is also important to have at least one mentor or friend who you trust, with whom you can keep in touch to keep you on track. It is easy to fall off the train and give up. This is why it is so important to create a strong enough WHY that will keep your internal fire and drive going. Keeping your forward momentum is the key. We will elaborate on the amazing powers of compounding in the chapters to come, which will describe how important it is to maintain continuous progress — even if it’s minimal.
PASSION! What are you passionate about? You probably involve yourself in whatever it is that you’re passionate about in some way or another. If you’re passionate about sports, you probably watch sports, play sports, have your kids in sports if you have kids, coach sports, etc. Every successful person in any industry is passionate about what they’re successful at. Ask any musician if they’re passionate about music. Ask any chef if they’re passionate about cooking and creating new dishes. Passion is what will allow you to stick to it and not give up. Passion is what will take your success to another level. Passion is what fuels your internal fire and drive. Passion is what allows me to choose listening to self-development audio programs and read books instead of watching TV or listening to music while I drive. Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoy myself and listen to music and watch TV or movies — just nowhere near as long as the average person does. Passion is what’s allowed me to write this book at age 22 while getting my Bachelor’s degree instead of relaxing, playing, partying, etc. Again, I still do those things — just in moderation. Without passion, you won’t accomplish anything worthwhile.
Do you think, if you applied yourself for even just an hour a day, that in a few years you could get really good at doing almost anything, like playing an instrument, learning another language, learning how to play golf, etc.? I’m sure you could. So what makes you think it’s any different for achieving anything else in your life? There’s no difference at all. You can get really good at anything if you just apply yourself and practice a little bit daily. The next step after believing you can is finding the patterns, strategies, and behaviors of other people who have achieved what you want and then to just “model” or mirror those patterns, strategies, and behaviors — maybe identically or maybe by adding your own personal twist to. You can honestly do whatever works best for you, as long as you still achieve your desired goal(s). Your goals can be anything: A goal to get healthier and lose weight, a goal to make more money and have more financial freedom, a goal to increase the passion in and better your relationship. This is just a quick, condensed version of how to accomplish and be successful at anything. If you apply what you just learned, you can now go achieve and fulfill your wildest dreams and the lifestyle that you’ve always wanted.
To be outstanding at anything, you must be specific, crystal clear, compelling, motivated, determined, passionate, focused, driven, and absolutely clear as to what you want. Then just create a crystal-clear plan of action as to how you will accomplish your goal of being outstanding. It’s highly recommended to find out how other outstanding people achieved what your goal is.
If you want to be the best, you can either make all the mistakes yourself (learn the hard way through personal experience) and brutally work your way to the top OR you can get all the best advice possible from people who have already made the mistakes and can tell you how to avoid them. This strategy gives you a huge learning-curve advantage and saves you tons of time and hassle. Yet most people, for some strange reason, don’t seek the best advice possible. They either make the mistakes themselves and move up the ladder at a snail’s pace, or they take advice from the wrong people. Where you get your advice largely determines your results. So be very cautious about where you get your advice.
If you play a sport, you probably have a few goals — to be good, great, or even the best. Then your other goal is to win at your competitions. If you didn’t have these goals, you wouldn’t be working toward anything. Without having anything to work toward, you’ll be nowhere near as driven to work as hard as if you have a goal to achieve. You’d just be going through the motions, and it’s very unlikely that you will ever make much progress. Basically every time you step on the court, you should have goals for that day. You’re going to focus on your form and shoot a hundred baskets, keeping track of how many you make. The next day, shoot another hundred baskets, keeping track of how many you make. Eventually, you should begin to notice you’re making more baskets.
Now let’s step away from sports and see how this relates to life. If you are just going through the motions every day, doing relatively the same thing, how can you expect to produce different results? You can’t! So, just as in sports, you set goals for your life. Each morning you wake up, have a list of goals for the day that you’re going to accomplish. Today I’m going to meditate for 10 minutes, go to the gym for an hour, go to work for eight hours, meet with John at 8:00 pm, etc. When you want to improve at something, whenever you do it, have a purpose.
“If you want to achieve success that you have not yet achieved, then you have to be willing to do what you have not yet done. If you always do what you’ve always done (and are comfortable with), you will keep on getting what you’ve always had. Success is not a mystery — it’s a science.”
— John Assaraf
Find out your success in all the areas of your life — your true net worth.
I heard this cool strategy for rating your true net worth from John Assaraf. To know your true net worth, rate each area of your life on a scale of 1–10 and then divide the total. For example, if you are a 10 in happiness and a 7 financially and an 8 in your relationships, you can get an overall average by adding your score up and dividing it by three. When you take an average of all the most important areas in your life, you’ll get a truer sense of your net worth. Once you get an average, you can see which areas you want to improve that are important to you, and this will increase your average/true net worth.
Here are some amazing mentors who have helped me and can help you grow and improve your personal and professional skills to help you become more successful in all areas of your life. If you aren’t a big reader, then I would advise getting their DVDs or audio books.
John Assaraf
Tony Robbins
Brian Tracy
Jay Abraham
Deepak Chopra
Darren Hardy
Jim Rohn
Napoleon Hill
Dale Carnegie
John C. Maxwell
Zig Ziglar
Harvey Mackay
Chet Holmes
Brad Sugars
Random Fact
Apple seeds are poisonous.
