How to be Successful in Life

Every month, 14,800 people ask Google “How to be successful?”. Unfortunately, they ask this question before asking themselves something more important first.

Watch the above video to find out what that is and then continue on reading.

It is very important that you do the exercise explained in this video. It will take only few minutes of your time, but it will give you clarity on what you want and motivation to achieve success in life.

It is imperative that you write down the answers for these two questions because I am going to explain the psychology behind them and you must have the answers on questions WHAT and WHY in front of you. Don’t even try to keep reading further without these answers :).

What is Success?

There are many different definitions of success, but the most important one for you is how YOU define success. What does success mean to YOU?

People who I find most successful are those who have helped thousands of other people to improve their lives. What I learned from them is that success is a numbers game. For me, that is the best definition of success that I’ve heard so far. This definition comes from Jim Rohn and to illustrate what he meant by that I will quote him:

My mentor taught me that success is a numbers game and very early he started asking me my numbers. He asked, “How many books have you read in the last 90 days?” I said, “Zero.” He said, “Not a good number.” He said, “How many classes have you attended in the last six months to improve your skills?” And I said, “Zero.” He said, “Not a good number.” Then he said, “In the last six years that you’ve been working, how much money have you saved and invested?” I said, “Zero,” and he said, “Not a good number.” Then here’s what he said: “Mr. Rohn, if these numbers don’t change, your life won’t change. But if you’ll start improving these numbers, then perhaps you’ll start to see everything change for you.

No matter what YOUR definition of success is, you can always break it down to numbers. You don’t have to be a good mathematician to play with the numbers. It requires simple math.

If you want to be successful in life, you MUST find a way to measure your success daily!

Here are some questions that might help you to judge if you have had a successful day or not:

1. How many problems did you solve today?
2. How many new things did you learn today?
3. How many people did you help today?
4. How many tasks did you finish today?

In the end, it all comes down to the numbers. Make sure that each day, the answer for at least two of these 4 question is different than zero!

Successful people are good with numbers. Remember that!

Why Do You Want to Be Successful?

Many people who want to be successful in life have often failed because they don’t have strong reason WHY they want to be successful.

We need to understand WHY we are doing something before we even start doing it!

The reason WHY will give us motivation to keep doing it!

If you want to lose weight, WHY do you want it? Do you want to be healthy, feel better or be good example to your kids?

The stronger your reason WHY is, the more motivation you will have to actually do it.

Many people who want to lose weight start their new diet and exercise program enthusiastically, but soon they give up and they go back to their old, unhealthy life habits.

If you want to be persistent and successful in achieving your goal, you need to constantly remind yourself about the reason WHY you are actually doing it. By constantly, I mean every day, and I am serious about that.

You can’t achieve big success in your life in one day. Sometimes you will need weeks, months and even years to achieve important goals. One of the hardest things is to keep motivated every day.

If you don’t remind yourself about your ‘reason why‘, you can easily end up doing nothing that moves you towards your biggest goals.

If I didn’t find my ‘reason why’, I would never have started writing my blog and sharing my thoughts and experiences with the world.

Only by finding your ‘reason why‘ and your higher purpose in life will you be able to overcome all of your obstacles and get enough motivation to achieve your goals and to become successful.

Have you ever come up with a New Year resolution and failed to achieve it? If yes, then you know how hard it can be to be persistent.

According to the University of Scranton, Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 8% of Americans are successful in achieving their resolutions.

Lack of persistence is how many people fail to achieve success in life.

In our busy lives and overwhelming schedule, it is very easy to forget about higher purpose and the deeper reasons why we actually want to do something.

That’s why I asked you to watch that video at the beginning of this article and to write down the answers to those two questions. Your task is to put this piece of paper near your bed or on some visible place where you can see it every day. Take a look at it once before you go to sleep and once when you wake up. It will take only few seconds of your time, but you will have a constant reminder of your reason WHY, which will give you motivation to be persistent.

One of my favorite Brian Tracy’ quotes is:

“To achieve something that you have never achieved before, you must learn and practice qualities and skills that you have never had before.”

I hope that you have done something that you have never done before – write down answers on the questions, “WHAT does success mean to you?” and “WHY do you want to be successful?”

You can also write your answers in the comments field below the article!

Written by Eva Lu

Eva Lu is an ex engineer who decided to give up her successful career and dedicate her life to inspire and motivate others to find the best in themselves. She founded the “Mind of a Winner” website because she strongly believes that success is a skill developed by persistent people and her passion is to motivate others to become persistent enough. Her inspiration and her mentors are self-made millionaires who helped thousands of people to change their lives and who managed to build careers with their passion and vision towards doing something what they love. She also helps young entrepreneurs with business advices and encourages them not to give up on their dreams. She teaches them how to turn dreams into clear visions and ideas, and ideas into actions and results.
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