Everyone wants to be successful, but sadly, most people don’t have what it takes to produce the outstanding results like successful people do. If you want to be successful, you must first start with yourself. You must change the way you do things.
When you change the way you do things, you will get different results in life. It is what you do each day that gets you where you are right now. Therefore, if you continue to do what you have always been doing, you will never get to the new place that you wanted to go.
We are the creatures of habits. It is what we consistently do that will determine who we are. Rome was not built in a day. Bill Gates did not grow Microsoft into a multi-billion company in a year. The same was true of Michael Jordan, he did not become a basketball star in just a month.
Great work takes time. If you want to be successful, it is going to take time and you must be able to change and improve yourself to get there. So start by learning what successful people do differently, replicate their success and innovate their habits and mindset to make them yours. Here are the 7 things successful people do differently than ordinary people…
1. Successful People Have A Big Dream
Don’t talk about being successful if you don’t even know what you want out of your life. Most people are not doing great in their life simply because they don’t know what they want their lives to look like. They are unclear with their dreams. Never let this happen to you. Find out your purpose in life and know what you want to accomplish.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the skills or talents now, all you need now is to find out who you want to be and what you want to accomplish in your life. It is only when you know exactly what you want; that you can then craft your journey and prepare yourself to get there.
Bear in mind, think big and dream big. Donald Trump always says, “As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.” Thinking does not cost you a dime. And if your dream is big enough, it will inspire and drive you into taking action.
2. Successful People Are Passionate With Their Work
Look at all the successful people out there; whether it is in business or in sports, all the great people are extremely passionate with their work. They love what they do and they are obsessed with it. Steve Jobs once said this, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
If you are not passionate with your work, you will give up whenever you face obstacles or any setback. Living a successful life is not going to be easy, you will have to have a lot of discipline, a lot of commitment and determination to do it. And if you don’t have the passion for it, you will quit and give up sooner than you can imagine.
When you are passionate with something, you are willing to sacrifice and commit for it. Look at Michael Jordan; do you think that he was passionate about basketball? Absolutely, he was extremely passionate about it and that is why he was able to wake up earlier than most people, train harder than most people, and go the extra mile to achieve outstanding results. So be passionate with what you do.
3. Successful People Are Extremely Committed And Determined
How committed are you with what you want to achieve in your life? Are you willing to sacrifice your leisure time for it? Or would you just prefer to watch TV or play computer games? Success is all about getting out of your comfort zone and do things that most people hate to do. Watching TV and playing computer games are easy things to do, that’s why successful people will never do much of it.
You have to be fully committed to your dreams and your goals in order to make them come true. Don’t just dream about your dream, take action and make it happen. You have to commit to it. When you decide and commit to what you want to accomplish in your life, that’s it, no more questions asked, there will be no other options for you except to just do it and make it happen.
This is how all the great people out there do it. They never give up and they never ignore their dreams. They focus in on what they want and they take massive and consistent action until they create the results that they want. You have to be the same way.
4. Successful People Believe In Their Dreams
“Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something? Go get it, period.” This is one of the most meaningful quotes from the movie, Pursuit of Happiness about believing in yourself and your dreams.
Look, if you don’t believe in yourself and your dream, who will? You must first believe that you can do it and that your dream is possible. Only then will you be able to tap into your potential and make things happen. The Wright brothers who invented the airplane were just bicycle repairman; they didn’t have degrees or a PHD in engineering. Thank God that they had a strong belief in their dreams, flying with airplanes are possible today.
People will only do things to the extent that they believe are possible. It is just like if you don’t believe you can fly, you will never dare to jump down from a building. If you don’t believe that you can climb Everest, you won’t even try it. It is when you believe that you can do it; you will train, research, prepare and eventually do it. So believe in yourself and your dreams. This is how you tap into your maximum potential.
5. Successful People Learn From Mistakes And Keep Improving
Success will only come to you if you keep trying and improve your strategies and refine your action. Doing the same thing over and over again will never get you a different result. If you want to build a successful business, but you took action and failed, what do you do? Quit and give up? Of course not; you change your strategies, learn from your mistakes and improve your action to get better results the next round. This is how successful people are able to make it.
No one was born a champion or a master at something. Every master was once a disaster. Every champion was once a beginner who learns through their own mistakes and improves from there on. Do you think Richard Branson was born with all his business skills? Do you think Steve Jobs was born with amazing computer skills? No, the great people you and I know were once ordinary people. However, because of their hard work and their persistence in wanting to achieve great results, they went the extra mile and became extraordinary.
Remember, there are no failures, only feedback. As long as you never quit and treat your failures as feedback for you to learn and improve, you will never fail.
6. Successful People Don’t Work Alone
You can only accomplish so much by yourself. If you want to go to a higher level, you need a team and partners who can help you to scale. There are just so many things waiting for you to do, for instance, you need to focus on sales, making the call, following up with clients, doing the marketing, meeting clients, etc. You cannot do it all by yourself.
Did you know that Walt Disney had Roy Disney with him along the way to build the theme park? And did you know that Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak with him for assistance as well? One of the most important reasons you want to have a team by your side is so that your team can balance out your weakness and you can focus in on performing in your area of strength.
Most people never see this and they think that they can handle everything by themselves. That is why most people never take their business to the next level. Even champion athletes need coaches to guide them along the way. So do you think that a normal athlete doesn’t need help?
7. Successful People Always Give Back
If you look at the richest people such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, they donate most of their wealth for charity and back to the society. They did not do this because they are rich; they do this because they know that doing this will make them even more successful.
Jack Ma from Alibaba put this so well, he said that when you donate to someone who is in need, the person that changes the most is not the one who receives the money, because we cannot change what has happened to that person. The one that will go through the most change is the person who donates. This is because when you contribute, you know that you have enough and you know that deep within you, you have done something good.
And when you do something good, you will feel good and you will feel satisfaction. It is this feeling that will make you more confident because you know that you have helped someone else before. So practice this habit right now. Contribute back to the society and to the world. Start small and grow from today.
These are the 7 things that successful people do differently than ordinary people. Remember, what you know can only get you where you are today. If you want to go higher, you have to change and do what successful people do.
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Shawn Lim is the founder of Stunning Motivation. He has been involved in the personal development industry for over 7 years and has helped countless hungry seekers to achieve outstanding success. Visit him at StunningMotivation.com.
Recommended reading:
* Success Lesson: Pick a Lane
* Creating Consistent Motivation From Within