Success Habits

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

(Part I)

Another set of pointers from self-development guru Brian Tracy are his twelve success habits that everyone should have to guarantee success in the future whether you start-off in life materially poor, or born with a silver spoon in your mouth (born rich).  His success principles are straight forward: study successful people and follow what they do and likewise study the habits of unsuccessful persons and never do what they do, so that you won’t be a failure in life.  Here are his success habits practiced by successful people based on 20 years of study.

(1)  Clarity

Clarity means the ability to determine exactly what you want to be or what you want to do in life.  It means you have a clear vision of what you will be in the future such as being a doctor with your own clinic, a manager of a bank, an inspirational speaker and writer, or a chief of police.  Unsuccessful and unhappy people on the other hand have a very limited sense of direction in life or sometimes no sense of direction at all.  They just decide what to do based on what they feel on that day.  They don’t have a plan for the week, a plan for next month or no plan at all for what to do with their lives.

(2) Decisiveness

According to Brian, he has never met a successful person who is indecisive or could not make up their minds when given options.  Likewise, he has never met a failure who is decisive.  Often times the reason for being indecisive is the fear of making mistakes.  But if you have a healthy attitude towards mistakes, they can be turned into a learning experience instead of just seeing them as failures.  Brian says, 80% of decisions should be decided right away when they come to you.  The remaining 20% should be studied and pondered well because it could affect much your life and regret it later on, such marrying a person, working and living abroad, or changing jobs.   But generally, most of your decisions should be arrived at immediately, so that the habit of decisiveness will be developed.  If you don’t, indecisiveness will take over your life.

(3)  Competence

You have to make a commitment to be excellent in whatever field you are in.  Brian Tracy never found a successful person who was never excellent at what they do.  It means being the best or one of the best in your field such as being the best doctor, lawyer, fireman, teacher, priest, etc.  If you think you are not one of the best in that field yet, then develop that strong desire and put it into action.  No one would hire a doctor for example who can only cure 50% of the sicknesses of his patients.

When you become excellent, many opportunities will open up for you because people would want to hire you since you offer something others don’t have.  When you do something well it gives you the feeling of self-esteem and pride.   You feel like a winner.  But if you do things in an average way, it does not inspire you at all.  Thus, excellent people don’t stop improving themselves because they are always after of that great feeling of achievement.

You don’t need to be way ahead of the competition.  You can just be a bit better in the skill that matters.  Companies for example who are committed to excellence are not way better than other companies but just 2% better in many different areas.   And the harder you work the better you become.  The average self-made millionaire in the U.S. works 12 to 13 hours a day or about 60 to 65 hours a week.  If you just work 8 hours a day, you are just working to survive.  But if you want to thrive and not just survive, anything over 8 hours is for excellence.  That work beyond eight hours can be studying, reading or enhancing a skill and it will pay off later once it’s done on a regular basis.

(4)  Concentration

In life there is never enough time to do everything, but there’s always enough time to do the important things.  Most people do the fun and easy work first instead of doing the tough ones ahead.  They are having it reversed that leaves them no more enthusiasm and energy to do the important things that helps their career or business.  This requires time management.  Remember that time management is more of life management because you can’t really manage or control time because it runs on its own. You can only manage your life with respect to how you use your time.  It goes without saying that you need discipline and persistence if you want to focus on something until it gets done.  Nothing great has ever been accomplished without the ability to concentrate single-mindedly one thing at a time.  More on this in the next article.