When you see the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of self-help and business books sold every year, it is pretty clear that millions of people want to know what it takes to be successful in business and in life. I know I do. I probably own a large proportion of these books.
However, you define success – whether fame, fortune, love , or anything else – it seems to me that these books (at least the ones that I’ve read) all have similar themes which can bedistilled into what I call about six success strategies:
1.Write down your short, medium and long term goals
Remember the Harvard Study? Although there is a lot of debate about whether or not it is a true study, the morale of the story is that if you set clear, measurable, time-bound goals, you are much likely to succeed.
2.Monitor Your Progress
Although the jury seems to be out on whether or not you should tell people what your goals are, you should measure how close you are getting to your goals, otherwise how are you going to know how close or far away you are from achieving success?.
3.Develop new Skills
It’s all about getting out of your comfort zone. Why? Because if you are too comfortable with where you are and what you are doing you will not take the action needed to achieve your goals.
4.Take Action
This is really a no brainer- without taking action you are not going to achieve your goals. You should also be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them. Taking action doesn’t mean you have to be perfect or right first time.
5.Surround Yourself with Like-Minded People
It makes sense if you think about it. If your circle of friends likes to bounce business ideas off each other, you’ll probably get closer to your goals than if you spend time seeing how many Ferrero Rocher you can fit into your mouth.
6.Exercise
When you work out you release endorphins and increases your energy. You can focus that energy on your list of goals and achieve more than you ever thought you could before.
7.Be More Productive
Watch less television. I love TV so I have to be disciplined about what I watch. Having it on in the background while on Twitter is a good way of multi-tasking. But music or radio is less distracting if you must have background noise.
Just checking if you’re reading this – yes there are seven strategies!
I know that you’ll also be adding your success strategies to this list (which is by no means exhaustive), but focusing on these seven is a great start to the year.