The key to reaching your goals is primarily about character, habits and mindset.
In general, people aspire to more. More money, improved health and happiness. The ability to travel and build healthy relationships.
Success is a long-term process
It is said that there has never been a better time to be alive. There is more wealth than ever before, life is easier than ever before and there is more opportunity than ever before. Your biggest obstacle to success is YOU.
If you are serious about achieving great success in your life, follow these 7 practices:
1. Commit to regular exercises or sports
The benefit of regular exercise beyond the physical is that it requires self-discipline. It changes mindsets and encourages healthier habits.
Committing to what you have promised yourself is one of the best ways to train your mind to become focused on the end gopal. It is a test of determination and courage – all valuable tools beyond the sports field. It develops a winning mindset.
Watch successful people around you. They are up early, hit the gym or the streets and get some physical exercise before they get to the office. It clears their minds, energises them and focuses them. It also provides balance in their busy schedules and helps them to manage stress.
2. Start reading regularly
We’ve all heard how reading broadens our horizons and stimulates the imagination but few of us read a book anymore. Rather than mindlessly scrolling through Facebook posts and gaming, pick up a book and change your perspective.
Reading exposes you to different cultures, different ideas and new ways of seeing the world. More than anything else, reading can literally lift you out of a poverty mindset by transforming your beliefs.
Oprah Winfrey once said, “Books were my path to personal freedom,” and she continued, “I learned to read at age 3 and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”
Besides exercising, most successful people read books. Of course, they choose the right material to read so be selective and stretch yourself a bit.
3. Travel somewhere extraordinary
Do you know that you can improve yourself through traveling? This is because when you are traveling, especially to a country that you are not familiar with, you are getting out of your comfort zone.
The key is to explore new cultures and learn new things.
Try a longer trip to stretch yourself. It forces you to be away from home for longer than normal, to learn to tolerate and embrace differences and obstacles like foreign languages and currencies. It will also widen your culinary horizon. In the end, being well-traveled is good for business. It demonstrates your thirst for knowledge, willingness to learn new things and courage to step outside your comfort zone.
4. Learn a new skill
Another great way to prepare yourself for success is to learn a new skill. Stretch your mind and learn something new, like cooking, playing the piano, building websites or doing public speaking.
You want to constantly improve so each year, commit to learning a new skill. What you truly want to accomplish here is to satisfy and create balance in your brain.
We all know that our brains are built in two parts, the left, and the right hemisphere. And both sides have their own functionality and control our different activities throughout the day.
Studies found that the right side of our brain is creativity dominant. When we use our imagination and visualization involved in arts and expressing the abstract, we are using our right brain.
On the contrary, our left brain is logic dominant. The left brain is often connected to logical thinking, sequence, mathematics, and facts.
When you sit in front of your computer the whole morning writing an article, you are using more from one part of your brain. This leaves the other part of the brain wanting. hence the urge to do something else, leaving you distracted and less productive. The benefit then of acquiring a new skill is to balance both sides of your brain.
FUN FACTS:
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest artists who painted “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper”, was not only an artist? He had many skills and was also an inventor, a sculptor, a musician, an engineer, an astronomer, a writer, a botanist, and an anatomist.
Albert Einstein, the man who discovered the theory of relativity, was not just a scientist, he loved hiking, sailing, biking, and playing his violin.
Pablo Picasso was a painter but he also experimented with a number of different mediums such as sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics. It was said that Picasso even designed curtains, sets, and costumes for a handful of ballets.
Hence the reason to expand your repertoire.
5. Your environment can make or break you
The book, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, explains how environment plays an important role in shaping the world.
When you look at the world, you will see that the shape of America is north-south, thin and tall, rather than wide and fat. The same goes for Africa. On the other hand, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are totally opposite. The land stretches across east-west, and it is wide and fat.
So what does this have to do with building an environment for success? Everything!
When agriculture began to spread across the world, farmers had a much easier time expanding east-west rather than north-south. This is due to weather and climate constraints.
Meanwhile, the climate can vary wildly when you travel north-south. Many crops that grow well in warm weather do not grow well in cold weather.
The same can be said for your life and the environment you live in right now.
Are you living in an empowering environment or are you living in an environment that does not support and encourage your success? Think about the effect on your environment over the years.
You should be the one who controls your environment rather than letting your environment to control you.