Steps to Success
Steps to Success
While in school and university, you often will hear people telling you to work hard in order to be successful. But what is really success? What does it really mean to be successful?
According to its definition, success is getting the desired outcome. But also, from the point of view of many people, success means being really wealthy, like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.
Ultimately, you’re the only one who can decide what success is for you, based on your dreams and aspirations, and how can it be measured. If your dream is pursuing a certain career path, you know you will be successful when you’ll get to that point in your career. If you want to come up with a new revolutionary device, you know you were successful when you get a good amount of money for it.
1) Steps to Success = Life Plan
That said, the first and most important step of the process to get success in your life is to be really clear in your goals and have a detailed, consistent and realistic life plan. And don’t forget to include each and any strategy you will need to achieve your goals. Because let’s be honest. Without a list of goals, how would you recognise success?
2) Steps to Success = Work Hard
But whether you want to achieve a dream job or be a millionaire, you need to know you’ll have to work really hard in order to get where you wish to be. The sooner you start working towards your future dream life, the faster you can get there.
No one really likes to work but everyone also knows that what really separates a successful person from a mediocre one is how they are willing to do to get the results. Are you willing to work more than your friends? Are you capable to go the extra mile and put yourself out of your comfort zone?
Check out the morning routine of the wealthiest people in the world, according to the Forbes list in live, to get some inspiration.
Jeff Bezos Morning Routine
Steps to Success: Bezos doesn’t like alarm clocks. He likes to wake up naturally because he believes the body should get as much sleep as possible. Then, he starts his morning by reading the newspaper while having a coffee. Afterwards, he gets a real breakfast and spends time at the table with his four kids and his wife. After his children are on their way to school, he can start with the meetings and the rest of his day. Jeff Bezos works around 40 hours per week.
Elon Musk Morning Routine
Steps to Success: Elon Musk gets seven hours of sleep every night and wakes up at 7 a.m. When he wakes up, the first thing he does is checking his emails for half an hour and then get a cup of coffee but he’s usually too busy for a complete breakfast. He then says goodbye to his five sons before they go to school. Musk takes a shower and drives to work, where he spends the rest of his morning having discussions in engineering and design. Elon Musk works over 80 hours per week.
Bill Gates Morning Routine
Steps to Success: Bill Gates makes sure he gets at least seven hours of sleep every night and also wakes up around 6.45 a.m. When he wakes up, he likes to have a chocolate cereal Cocoa Puffs for the morning, but Gates usually skips breakfast. He was known to work out on the treadmill after waking up while “watching DVDs from the Teaching Company’s “Great Coursers’ series” back in 2008. It’s not certain he still does that nowadays, but Gates still likes to read the headlines every morning, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. His schedule is broken up into five-minutes intervals and Bill Gates writes down all his plan for the day to keep track of everything.
Mark Zuckerberg Morning Routine
Steps to Success: Zuckerberg wakes up at 8 a.m. and then turn his phone to check Facebook, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. He then goes to the gym for daily weight training. Afterwards, Zuckerberg takes a shower and get ready for the day with a simple and casual breakfast. Mark Zuckerberg works for 50 to 60 hours per week.
Warren Buffett Morning Routine
Warren Buffett wakes up at 6.45 a.m. and he starts his day by reading The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Forbes. Buffett likes to get his breakfast from McDonald’s where he eats either two sausage patties, McMuffin with egg and cheese or bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. Alongside, Buffett gets a coke. After getting to his office, Buffett starts reading as he is not actually needed to work in Berkshire Hathaway.
3) Steps to Success = The Five Hour Rule
This rule was coined by Michael Simmons, founder of Empact. This rule basically means that, no matter how busy you are, you have to spend at least an hour a day – or five hours a workweek – learning or practising. Successful people do this throughout their entire career.
Simmons says that this phenomenon was inspired by Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin was constantly setting aside time to learn. And it’s said that he usually practised this in the morning, and he would wake up early to write and read. He also established personal goals and tracked his results.
This rule is divided into three buckets:
- Read – many billionaires, some of them mentioned above, love to read and always make time to do it. They know how important reading is to open your horizons and learn new things and live new lives.
- Reflect - the rule includes reflecting and thinking. You can do this by just staring at the wall or writing down your thoughts. Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, is known to be a long time journaler. By focusing on the past and writing about it, you get a chance to learn from your previous mistakes.
- Experiment – the final bucket is rapid experimentation. If you have an idea, experiment it. Remember that Gmail only exists because Google allowed employees to experiment with new ideas.
4) Steps to Success = Create a Strong Mindset
At this point, you have a life plan, you got inspiration from the wealthiest people’s morning routines and you’re ready to work really hard, you know that the steps to success, used by many billionaires, is to always keep learning and practising your ideas and you know the method.
But the fourth step is probably the one that can dictate if you’re going to do what it takes or just give up. Having a strong mindset is the key factor for you to get success.
You may feel confident about your idea or feel motivated to wake up in the morning, working out, eat a healthy breakfast and then completely focus on your work. But if you’re not persistent about your goals, none of that motivation will be worth it.
How to have a strong mindset:
- Wake up early but get at least seven hours of sleep per night.
- Don’t immediately check your social media. Instead, read or meditate and write in your journal about the day’s goals ahead of you.
- Workout, even if it’s only for 30m and get a healthy breakfast.
- Prepare for the day as it’s a special occasion, every single day.
In conclusion, do the things that appear to be harder now to get rewarded after. Never give up on your dreams and always write down all of your accomplishments so you can read them and remind yourself how far you’ve come.
All the billionaires we admire so much worked one hundred per cent harder than anyone else to get to the point where they are now. If they gave up when things got complicated, we wouldn’t have many fantastic products we do today.
