13 Amazing Habits of Successful People
Habits are the formula for success. Habits make people's characteristics and define people who they are. If you want to change your life, as a first thing you have to work on your habits.
Every successful individual is different and so their success stories. Following their footprint may not be a good practice to be successful but identifying the pattern among them and following that pattern may help you to achieve your goals (Thanks Morgan Housel for this wisdom). When we try to identify these patterns among the successful people, most of them have some habits which helps them in their success stories.
Here I have consolidated 13 habits of successful people. If you can adopt as much as possible from the list, you can truly see the change in your life. Without further delay, lets see them.
13 Amazing Habits of Successful People
1. Early Birds
Many successful people are having the habit of rising early. Not all the people who raise early are successful, but most of the successful people raise early and start their morning routines. Rising early in the morning has its own benefits. When you wake up in the morning early, that is your first victory, you have managed to score the first goal and it will give you a satisfaction in the morning.
Another psychological fact is, early risers will have a pride on that and it will boost their self esteem level. And you will have enough time to plan, workout and organize for the day. It means you are already ahead of the world of commoners, you started your day as an achiever.
(Checkout my article to know more about my thoughts on getting up early)
2. Take care of your Mind
Taking care of mind is another common habit between successful people. Let it be doing meditation or practicing Mindfulness, they spend sometime to reboot their mind. A clear, focused mind is an important key to success. You cannot achieve anything with a cluttered, unfocused mind. They have clear goals in mind and not letting anything spoil it.
They are aware and trained their mind that sometimes plans won't work out, uncertain things will happen but its just another day and not the end of the world. As Napoleon the Great said, "A Genius is the man who can do average thing when all around him are going crazy". So train your mind to be calm and take care of your mental health.
3. Health is Wealth
Whatever you want to do, body is an important instrument. Successful people realize that and they take care of their body very well. Yoga, Exercise, Meditation, Healthy Diets and enough sleep, they integrate something in their life style to make sure their body is in good condition. Stay healthy and fit to get more energy and you can achieve more.
4. Read Read Read
Successful people know that learning is a continuous process and should not be stopped. Ordinary people tend to think that the learning process is over once graduated or settled with a job. That is where successful people distinguish themselves from the crowd. They never stop the learning process and not only limited to their reading to their job interests. In a world, where ideas are respetced much, knowledge in various fields gives you an edge over others. When asked how he learned to build rockets, Elon Musk answered as 'I read Books'. What a powerful answer!!! So if you want to do something others think impossible, read a lot. You won't know where you can get an idea to connect the dots.
5. Focused Thinking
When hearing this term, most people will think, its just another word for mind related thing. No, its not. Focused thinking means knowing what one really wants and concentrate on that one goal. One of the common behaviour of successful people are, they know what they want and they work towards it one step at a time. As quoted by David Allen "You can do anything but not everything". Knowing what not to do is equally important as knowing what to do. People who wander between multiple targets wont complete any of them. To be successful, set your target and focus yourself to that single target.
6. Pursue your own goal
Successful people get inspired by others but pave their own path. As we discussed in the Intro, everyone's situations are different and one's solution may not be applicable to others. So they choose and chase their own goal instead of copying others. Think what is good for you, what is your strength, set your own goal, and pursue it.
7. A minute saved is a minute earned
Another trait of successful people is, Quality Time Management. People who effectively manage their time, get the best of theirselves everyday. The achievers know this and plan what to do, what can wait and what should be delegated. People who knows this formula, make their time for themselves first and people who don't, spend their time for other's works. You need not to be selfish, but must have a clarity of what is important for you and what can wait. Even the wealthiest person in this world can't buy an extra minute for himself and that is why time is valued more than money, "A minute saved is a minute earned".
8. Positive attitude
Having a positive attitude is a characteristic of many achievers or we can tell that people with positive attitude achieve more. Yes, its not one of the habits, but it is the most important character to be successful. Because Positive Attitude helps people to look the problems as a growing opportunity. Hunger is painful but it is an indication that we need fuel to energize our body and if we start to ask, why we need to energize? Because our body is growing. Problems are like hunger. Positive people saw the result of it as it is needed for the body growth and negative people saw it as a pain. The perception differs because of the attitude. If you want to grow in life, change your perception.
9. Networking
Networking is one of the skill many successful people develop. Networking is gaining relationship with mutual benefits. There is a proverb "If you want to go fast go alone. If you want go long, go as a crowd". If you help people, people will help you and the benefits of growing together is, as the network grow, the growth will be exponential. Concentrate on your network if you want to grow large.
10. Practice Gratitude
Be grateful and thank others, is the mantra of many successful people. There are researches stating that grateful people often have less stress compared to others. There are excercises like writing down 3 grateful things on a daily basis boost one's happiness and make them optimistic. It is one of the easiest way to become positive. "Wahei Takeda" is a great example of how gratitude makes a person more positive and help in Maro-up(a concept of having pure heart). He is called as "Warren Buffet of Japan" and strongly believed that gratitude helps us to purify our heart and it attracts success.
Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life. - Oprah Winfrey.
11. Grab the opportunity
Being positive and being grateful may create opportunities. But one should be always ready to grab them when they appear. Successful people always look for opportunities even in worst situation. When most people struck by the fear of market crash in 2008, Warren Buffet made billions from the crash. What others saw was a problem, what he saw was an opportunity. Opportunities will be presented infront of you, all you need is to grab it without fear or hesitation; Sieze the opportunity.
12. Comfort Zone Pit
People who doesn't want to spend their entire life in a small pit called comfort zone, achieve more. Comfort Zone is a place where you feel settled, relaxed and not stretching much. Sounds Good. right? But it silently kills your skills and make you as it's slave for life long. To achieve real growth, your potentials should be tested again and again, you have to learn something new to cross the barricades in your life. That is not going to happen in the comfort zone. If you want to grow, get out of your comfort zone, learn something new, try something you fear and grow.
13. Unplug
When fed more than what we need, we find it difficult to digest, whatever it is. Social Media, Data, Advices, even motivational stuffs, if we get more than we need, we feel stressed. So unplug yourself often. You have so much data and you already know most of the things. Go for an outing, be away from the digital world, even if you want, don't read anything, give sometime to digest the things you already have it in your mind. Best way to unplug is a morning walk without any gadgets in a park where you can connect yourself with a nature. You can find your own way to unplug, but do it regularly. When you return, you will feel a surge of energy inside you.
"We make our habits and then our habits make us." - Dryden
So choose your habits carefully and Learn the good ones.
