Do you want to be ultra successful in your life? Do you want to rise above the average and stand out? Well if your answer is yes then you will have to know the ways how you can do that. This is because success does not come by just wishful thinking or by daydreaming. It requires consistent effort, focus, dedication and hard work over a long period of time. To become a legend, you will have to think like a legend. You will have to fortify the greatness that is already there within you.
No idea works unless you do the work. Remember that genius is not about genetics, genius is about mechanics. Anyone can become a genius if they work on their craft with full focus and dedication for at least 10,000 hours. Hard work and practice can make you a master in your field.
“All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous in the end”-Robin Sharma
Contents
Below are 11 laws which if followed and practiced regularly can turn anyone into a legend for life:
You can be a victim or you can be a Titan. You can’t be both
So many times we see people complaining about a variety of things around us. They make excuses almost about everything.
- I am not able to wake up early in the morning because of my job that forces me to work late nights
- I cannot spend time on my fitness and exercise because I don’t have the time
- I cannot invest because I don’t have any savings
- I will start my diet plan from 1st Jan for sure
- I am not lucky that’s why I am not able to be successful.
So on and so forth. If you repeat your excuses for long enough, you actually reprogram your subconscious mind to believe they are true. Legends don’t complain about the existing obstacles in their lives. They accept those challenges and rise above them to achieve success.
No idea works unless you do the work
Ideation without execution is nothing but hallucination. There are many people who would read more than a 100 books, go through several online courses and attend multiple seminars in a year. They accumulate a lot of learnings from all these. But at the end of the day if they don’t apply at least a couple of those learnings to their daily lives, they will be of no use. Remember that applied knowledge is power not accumulated unused knowledge.
“Consistency is the mother of mastery”
All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and is gorgeous at the end
According to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes 66 days on an average to form a new habit. Below are the 3 phases of habit installation:
- Destruction(Day 1-Day 20): This is the phase where you work on getting rid of your old habits. This is the hardest part as it involves acting against the wiring of your brain and retraining it for something new(which is uncomfortable)
- Installation(Day 21-Day 40): This is where the new habits slowly start sinking into your subconscious but not yet. You at times tend to go back to your old habits and feel like giving up. You will have to take a deep breath and stay on the course
- Optimization(Day 40-Day 66): This is the last phase in which the new habit starts to become a default behaviour. Once this happens, you automatically start doing this habit daily without much effort.
“You can’t get to world class with toxic people around you. Learn to let go of the people in your life who are energy vampires”
Every visionary was first ridiculed before they were revered
To have the results only 5% of the population has you have got to be willing to do what 95% of the world won’t do. Stop being addicted to distraction such as social media, online games, apps, Netflix, etc. Shift from scarcity to generosity in the value that you unlock in your marketplace. Get serious about your personal development and professional education. Get up early to practice your craft and to get fit. Be more interested in learning versus leisure.
Get up when you get hurt and discouraged. Do rituals-keeping a journal, scripting your days, etc. Be on time or early for meetings.
A job is only a job if you see it as a job
See your job as your craft and try to become the best at it. As the great comedian Steve Martin once said “Be so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you”. Instead of the usual 9-to-5 job which everyone does, do something extra. Put in some extra hours either by logging in early or by logging off late. Work on sharpening your skillset and keeping adding new skills to it every year.
An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production
According to a recently published report, the average employee is spending 50% of their workday in distraction. Don’t check your phone every time the new notification sound goes off. Don’t check your social feeds first thing in the morning. Also avoid going through emails in the morning. Once you get distracted, it takes 20 minutes on an average to regain the lost focus.
The job of a leader is to grow more leaders
Anyone can become a leader in their field. You don’t need to have a title to become a leader. Leadership is an approach. But one thing that is common with leaders is wherever they go they leave behind a trail of more leaders.
If the world sees you as a failure but you know you are growing, you’re not losing you’re winning
Always remember that happiness and fulfilment don’t come from leading easy lives. Hard times produce great human beings. There is a famous Chinese story about a bamboo tree and a fern tree which may you have heard of. A farmer once planted a fern seed and a bamboo seed in the soil. He took care of both with great devotion daily watering the soil and providing the necessary fertilizers. The fern seed started responding immediately to the care and the farmer could see the fern shoot spring up from the soil. Within a few days, it grew to a tall and bushy tree. The bamboo seed on the other hand showed no response. There was not even a slightest shoot coming out of the soil. Weeks, months and years passed by. The fern tree kept growing taller and taller while the bamboo tree showed no signs. Then suddenly the farmer saw a small shoot coming out of the bamboo seed one day. And within the next few days it shot up into the sky like a giant and even surpassed the fern tree in its height.
The same happens in our lives as well. Sometimes we put in efforts but don’t see immediate results. Most of us get disappointed and think of giving up. The secret is to keep trying consistently because although we may not be able to see the outcome right away, we may be just spreading our roots in the ground(just like the bamboo tree) and preparing ourselves to soar high into the sky.
“The person you are when you come out of a storm is not the same as the person you were when you went into the storm”
Small daily improvements when done consistently over time lead to stunning results
Target to improve 1% every day. At the end of the month, you will have improved by 30%. And at the end of the year by 365%! Legends don’t become great in one day. The Amazons and the Alibabas of the world didn’t become such giant organisations in only one day. They all started small and kept improving daily by a small margin. And then at the end of 10,15 and 20 years they are where they are today.
Nothing fails like success
Success can be dangerous if you are not careful. It can quickly get to your head and fill you up with arrogance and ego. There is a scientific term for this. It’s called “Hedonic adaptation” which basically means falling in love with your success. Once this happens, it’s very difficult to sustain the success. That’s why we see more cases of one-time wonders around us. This is because when they became successful for the first time they became so obsessed with it that they stopped doing the things that made them successful in the first place.
So as you become more successful be more humble, be more polite. Learn even more, work even harder and improve yourself more than ever.
To double your income and impact, triple your investment in 2 core areas: Your personal mastery and your professional capability
In order to achieve mastery over yourself, you need to work on the below 4 areas(which Robin Sharma calls as the 4 interior empires):
- Mindset(Have the right attitude)
- Heartset(Serve with an open heart and with love & joy)
- Healthset(Maintain your physical fitness)
- Soulset(Nourish your soul, remember that a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul).
Spend your free time on learning & improving your craft. Do online courses to sharpen your skills or learn new ones. Read good books on the subject or talk to experts in the field. Legends understand that greatness belongs to the learners.