3 Habits of Success

Three primary habits of success create your experience of this world. How one interacts with or manages these key areas will determine the experience they have in this life. Those who accomplish great things are intentional about managing themselves in relation to these habits. Napoleon Hill talked about how “cosmic habit force” begins to take over in our lives, carrying us along with the momentum of its rhythm. This means that first, we choose our habits, then our habits create our world. Let’s dive into the three key habits of success.

Plan — The most successful people set goals in four critical areas of success. They focus on their mental/emotional/spiritual well-being, physical health, personal relationships, and professional accomplishments. By focusing on these four areas in order, they establish fulfillment, purpose, and value for themselves and their teams. I have read several studies indicating that roughly 3% of people set actual goals for themselves and their business. Of those that establish written goals, nearly half of them reach those goals. While 1.4% of people reaching their goals can seem small, that isn’t the disturbing part. The part that should bother you is the fact that 97% of people don’t establish written goals! How much more could we accomplish if people had a stronger goal focus?

Prioritize — The most successful people establish a rhythm to their lives. They put the most important things in front of everything else. They schedule the time to invest in those things. And, they block out distractions. In a previous post, I discussed the “law of the vital few.” This law indicates that each of us has between 3 and 5 things we need to do every single day to find and achieve success. It is the other 40 things during the day, competing for our attention, that put is in a bad place. When something is important, you put it on your calendar. When something is an idea, you put it on a to-do list. When you think about the value of the things you are doing, you can assign a percentage to the desired outcome they bring. If your day consists of 100% value, how much would you assign to forwarding emails? Would it be 0%? How much would you assign to watching funny videos… 1%? When you begin to think in terms of outcome value received for the time spent, you begin blocking out things that either don’t move you toward your goals or actively prevent you from achieving your goals.

Persist — The most successful people understand why they are doing the things they are doing. They have the right emotional reasons for pushing themselves past any roadblocks. On my radio show this morning, one of the co-hosts used the quote, “If you don’t want to think in the moment, you have to think in advance.” I loved the quote and felt it was perfect for discussing persistence. I don’t want to focus on roadblocks to my success, so I think in terms of completion and in terms of destroying those blocks before they ever happen. Persistence is a decision to keep moving forward even when it’s hard. Go back to the balance of goals and think about the value you bring to your life by achieving your goals in the right order. Then think about the positive benefits of goal accomplishment. Finally, think about what you would be knowingly giving up if you didn’t persist. I think the greatest feeling of regret a person could experience would be meeting the person they could have and should have been, but they chose not to persist in becoming that person. Who you are and who you are capable of being are never the same person. This is a continuous striving toward the accomplishment of the better you. You simply cannot give up!

When you do these three things, you find that life eventually gives up and gives you everything you want. But life will test you first. It will test your will to keep moving forward. It will test your will to persist in the face of adversity. Never give up!