Successful People Are Simply Those With Successful Habits

What's the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful one? I believe a quote by Brian Tracy says it all. He once said, “successful people are simply those with successful habits.”

What did he mean by this? What was he trying to tell us? Well, this quote, by itself, can completely turn your life around for the better. It can single-handedly make you successful if you apply the concept in it.

In fact, this has been one of my biggest breakthroughs since becoming an entrepreneur because it gives me something small, yet effective that I can focus on everyday.

What You Need To Learn From This Quote By Brian Tracy…

It's simple… Habits create the results you want. You may have also heard the famous quote by Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

That quote by Aristotle s one of my favorites of all time because it is so powerful, yet short and sweet. And it really is the truth. I can tell you from personal experience that when you try to hit a homerun every single day, it just doesn't workout.

What happens when you don't get the constant homeruns or big successes everyday?

• You get discouraged
• You start procrastinating
• You don't stay consistent with your work

These are all going to lead to your failure if you don't turn them around. Instead of trying to do things that really aren't even possible everyday, Try doing a few small, but productive things or habits every single day to take you one step closer to your goal.

If you take one step closer to your goal each workday, you can bet that you will see much better results with your business, relationships, life or whatever you apply this to.

But, the kicker is you won't keep getting overwhelmed or discouraged because you set the bar too high each day and didn't even come close to meeting it.

It's kind of like the tortoise and the hare story, where the slow and steady tortoise wins against a fast, but inconsistent hare.

Improve your habits to make you more consistent and productive everyday, instead of just every once in awhile, that is when you will really see progress.

Related: Discipline Is The Bridge Between Goals And Accomplishment

Action Steps To Apply This To Your Life:

1. Write down the current habits you have. To change habits, you must first be aware of the ones already have in place.

2. Second, identify which ones are the most destructive. Which habits are keeping you from taking a step forward towards your goals each day? Are you too tired? Tend to procrastinate? Watch TV instead of work?

Learn how to stop procrastination and why we do it in the first place here.

3. Once you've identified your destructive habits, figure out the triggers that set them in motion. Each habit has a trigger. When a smoker sees a cigarette pack, they get the urge to smoke.

When an overweight person sees a fast-food restaurant, they might start craving fast-food. The restaurant and pack are examples of triggers.

4. Now that you know your habits and triggers, it is important that you don't try to cut them out completely right away and completely replace them. It doesn't work and eventually backfires.

This is why completely changing someone's diet all at once doesn't help them lost weight. It's too hard to break habits that fast.

All you have to do is make small tweaks to what you do with the habit triggers already in place.

5. If you are already going to work at your desk, but always get bored or sleepy from sitting and staring at a screen all day, try taking periodic breaks every 90 minutes.

Also, try getting a standing desk. This is what I did and it gives me more energy and helps me burn more calories while I work on the computer. I feel much better than sitting and want to work longer.

6. If you tend to wake up late and have a hard time getting everything done during the day (I was guilty of this), try getting the same amount of sleep, but just going to bed earlier and waking up earlier.

The most productive people, you will find, tend to get up fairly early each day. For instance, John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur On Fire gets up at 5 or 5:30 AM and so do many of his podcast guests.

Many of them have more done by 9:00AM than most people do all day.

A Few Books I Recommend For Improving Habits:

• The Power Of Habits – Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business by Charles Duhigg
• Eat That Frog – 21 Great Ways To Stop Procrastinating And Get More Done In Less Time by Brian Tracy

Conclusion

The habits you need to tweak are all dependant on what you do. I can't go through and list every possible habit you should tweak (Or this article would be a novel).

The best thing I can do is just help you identify what you habits are, as well as their triggers and give you examples of how I've tweaked a few of my habits without trying to tear them down start all over (which never ends well).

When Brian Tracy said, “successful people are simply those with successful habits,” he was telling us that success comes from what we do on a daily basis, not from occasional homeruns.