Note: This is a guest post from Vincent of Health Money Success
Successful people and winners fascinate me. I always wonder what makes them so different from others. Therefore, I read books about successful people and try to observe what are the winning habits that they have. Here are the five of them that I had discovered.
1. They have an end in mind
You feel lost when you do not have a destination to move towards. People who achieved great success have an end in mind. They know what they want and they commit themselves to achieve it.
When you have a goal, you have something to focus on. If you do not have a goal, you will be wandering around feeling lost. Having an end in mind can help guide you towards your destination.
2. Have a reason
Having an end in mind is only one part of the story. Winners have a reason behind their goals. They know their purpose behind achieving their goals.
The journey towards your goals is full of obstacles. Most people gave up half way because they lack reasons behind their goals. However, those who have strong reasons behind their goals have higher chances to move past those obstacles.
The likelihood of giving up is drastically higher if you do not have reasons behind your goals. If you have a goal to lose 20 lbs but lack reasons behind it, you will find it hard to achieve this goal. However, if you have a strong reason such as you want to lose 20 lbs in 3 months time because you want to look your best during your wedding ceremony, the likelihood of losing weight is much higher.
When you have a compelling reason to support your goals, you drastically increase the possibility of achieving it.
3. Have a support group
It is easy to give up when you are alone on this journey. Form a support or mastermind group to help you along the way.
To form your own support group, find like-minded people who want to achieve similar goals. Keep your group small with only two to six people. You need to choose your members carefully. Choose members who are positive, goal oriented and are pursuing similar goals to yours.
If you do not know where you can find your own support group, try out MeetUp.com or related forums to what you are doing (fitness forums, personal development forums etc).
4. They are particular about how they spend their time
If you do not know how you spend your time, you will waste most of your time away. Time is one of our most precious resources. You can waste your money and still manage to earn it back but there isn’t any way for you to get back your time if you waste it away.
You have to be aware of how you spent your time. If you want to achieve your goals but you are spending 70 percent of your time watching TV and hanging out with friends, most likely you will not reach your goals.
Keep a time log. There are many mobile and web-based applications that can help you track where you are spending your time. Rescue Time is a great web-based app that can help you track what you are doing on the computer and how much time you spent on each different site.
Use your preferred time log to get a clear picture of how you are spending your time and make the necessary adjustments. If you are serious about changing your life and achieving your goals, spend more time on the essential tasks instead of time wasters.
5. Try fast, fail fast, keep trying and never give up
It is hard to hit the target with your first try. This is why winners try fast, fail fast, keep trying and never give up. There are many things that you don’t know how to do it and trial and error is one of the ways to help you pick up new stuff.
You can learn faster by trying faster and failing more times in a shorter period. You learn at a slower pace when you are too slow to take action. When you take action to try fast, you will learn at a faster rate and know what things work and what don’t.
You can make the necessary adjustments along the way to make things right and move closer to your goals. If you are slow to take action, you jeopardize the whole process and slow down your progress.
You may face many frustrations during your learning process. However, don’t give up. Keep on trying out new ideas that you had picked up. Keep doing those that work and kick away ideas that don’t work.
There is a short cut to this process. Get yourself a mentor or a coach. Whether you want to lose weight or start your own online business, a mentor who has been there can help you move faster towards your goal.
Since they had already reached where you want to be, they will know about the challenges that you will face and what will work for you. Borrow their knowledge and you will achieve your goals in a much shorter amount of time.
If you decide to make a difference to your life, I challenge you to take action now. Start planning for your goals. Make this year your best year ever. Will you take up the challenge?
Vincent teaches you how to Unleash Your Maximum Potential and live life on your own terms. He blogs at HealthMoneysuccess.com and you can visit him and find out more information on how to wake sleeping genius within you.
Photo by Chovee
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I think one point here which I’ve been missing out is No.3, the support group. It’s very important to have a ‘safety net’ to fall back on, and to brainstorm with others to gain ideas that you wouldn’t have come with by yourself.
Great read 🙂
Hi Stuart,
A mastermind group does help a lot when you are pursuing your goals. I think bouncing ideas off each other and making each other accountable are some of the key benefits to having a mastermind group. You should try to get one too. 🙂
Cheers,
Vincent
Four excellent habits and one “almost”. About #5: Trying fast requires appropriate preparation, much of which comes through steps 1-4. …Keep Trying and Never Give Up is alright, except you do need to know when to “shake the dust off your sandles” and move on to something else. It’s the middle part, “fail fast”, that is over-sold and “past fresh date” baloney.
What is needed is a synonym that fits such red-herring mantras which would clearly indicate that the intent is to experiment, test, adjust and rework, try again. Too many people have misunderstood “fail fast” and now revel in their counting coup of failures.
Why not take the lead, as the “life optimizer” and straighten that out?
Hi Randy,
I do agree that there are many people who misunderstood the meaning of failing fast. The key to failing fast is to make sure that you learn from the mistakes you made and make sure that you progress further the next time.
One common mistake is trying to do the same thing over again. As what Albert Einstein says best, “Insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”
Cheers,
Vincent
I think a support group is key! Its easy to give up when you’re all alone.
Hey Amanda are you involved in any support groups? We could mastermind mind..who knows what we can create.
It really is. Who knows how many times I would have give up my project if I do not have a mastermind group to support me.
Cheers,
Vincent
Locally, I don’t have a support group. I would love to be able to meet people face to face and discuss problems and issues we’re facing. In fact it may be time I try to form a local mastermind group.
Being able to meet others face to face would be a good option as it make things seem real. Go for it Gordie and I bet the local mastermind group idea would be cool.
I resonate with the paragraph about time. Even though time is an illusion, it is the most precious commodity that we have. Most people give it away for free by spending too much time doing low level activities.
I think time give us a feeling that it is in abundance and we will not exhaust time. It will be a different story if we treat time as a scarce resource.
Number 4 is such a big one. Time management is a focus to every successful executive. I actually have a guest post on Tim Brownson’s blog on this topic.
He shared it today
http://www.adaringadventure.com/guest-posts/time-management-secrets-of-mormons-and-executives/
Hi Bryce,
I read your post and it is a great one. Thanks for sharing.
Time logging is definitely helping. I’ve just started with it, and it’s been great. It really helps you understand and be aware of your patterns/triggers for wasting time, so you can eliminate them.
I think I’m ready to try my hand in creating/joining a support group now. Many times I just skip over that advice, but I can see how it could really accelerate results.
It does and don’t be surprised by how good the results are. 🙂
Excellent advice! When I read this it made me think about how much wasted time I spend browsing on the internet. It is so easy to get distracted. Thanks for the reminders to stay focused.
You’re welcome. 🙂
I think having a goal in mind is really important. How are you going to know if you’re succeeding if you don’t know what your end goal is?
Keeping a time log is a great idea too. Before I started one, I never realized how much time I was wasting. It opened my eyes on the time I was using on wasteful activities.
I am surprised when I saw where I was spending my time. The time log gave me kick in the butt and it makes me stay close to reality.
I would like to add the idea to make an “Intention/Goals Board”. You can use many materials, such as cardboard or posterboard. Cut out any relevant pictures you can find, in magazines, papers etc. Glue your pictures to the surface or use post-it glue so you can change or move the pictures. Also, a good project for partners or a support group. Keep on the fridge or in a prominent place, to remind you of your goals. Mindy
Thank you for the 5 tips. Very useful indeed. One of my objectives is combining activities in my life so I am ‘always on’, by balancing them carefully (moving from physical to intellectual, from intellectual to receptiveness through senses, etc…). I’m convinced it can be done and try to do it because time wasted feels worse every day.
Getting myself into some support group is something I must for sure work more. I have always been kind of a loner.
Excellently put! The happy, contented and positive people are those who have a clear purpose in life and an ultimate goal, surrounded by meaningful people and have a winning attitude even when failures are experienced. Equally important, and yet often overlooked, the way we spend our time and manage it speaks a lot for achieving success. Having explained all five points here so well, I need not philosophize some more, right Donald? Suffice it to say, I really find this post helpful and hugely relevant to goal-setting. I’d like to see more of your creative wisdom in here.
Arina, your comment summarizes the post very well 🙂
having a gola is a must .. but the most interesting thing is having a reason for the goal. the second point in this article has touched a new direction that i have never seen somewhere before . we all setting goals in our life but think of it how many of us have a reason for our goals !!!!!!
Know what you want, know why you want it, and know how to get there. So simple but so true!
you guys have really challenged me. i need to wake up and face this reality your discussing about.i don’t have any winning habit. thanks for the challenge. God bless you abundantly.
Last point: “Try fast, fail fast, keep trying and never give up” is so important if you want to get ahead of everyone. The first one who try is the first to win or you can wait and never make mistake.
No offence but the last point Try Fast Fail Fast,i can’t agree with that.Try fast ,why do you want to try fast.We have to try slowly with careful planning and organising.Why try fast and fail fast.Its better to Try slowly and Win.After all slow and steady win the Race.
Great one you have here. Every soul should read this.
inspiring words!! Thank you for such a beautiful article 🙂
Its a great Article .All 5 points is really important if u want to reach ur Goals . After reading this article people With broken focus can get a reason behind their goals .
Thanks For Such Amazing points ^_^
This is one of the finest post I have read so far. Brilliant!
Thank you!
Winners Circle: Successful creators always think differently from other people. This is what keeps them going where they want. In fact, if you want success for an unsuccessful experience, you do not have to repeat it over and over again on the basis of expecting different results. You must certainly be different to realize what others have been unable to do.