How to be Great At Anything: 3 Easy Habits to Start Today.
It seems like there is a success story around every corner these days, and I enjoy reading them. They infuse confidence in my own life, because I strive to become one of them myself. I really want to be successful, and I think most people do. There is a difference from wanting to become successful and actually becoming successful. It becomes easy to lay in bed at night and think/dream about future success, but what does it take to actually become successful? I have compiled a few ideas from people I know who are successful, as well as analyzing true success stories.
10% More
10% more to ride first class - This was a saying that echoes through my head everyday and it was told to me by a very intelligent man, my grandfather. He was a veracious speed reader who loved war novels and soaking up every ounce of knowledge there was on print. He also believe that if you can put 10% more into whatever you were doing, it would be first class. If you break it down, it simplifies to this: working 10% harder will allow you to be better exponentially over a course of time. So instead of only working on your side business for 10 hours a week, put in an extra hour and see how much better it becomes. Once that helps add 10 more percent, eventually you find that the harder you work and the more effort you put into your endeavors allows for a more fulfilling life and a super successful business. This can be applied to anything you want to be successful at i.e. learning a language, sport, reading, writing, ect.
Watch little to no TV
If you know anyone successful and you study their habits for about a week, you too will soon see that they are simply not watching too much TV. Why? TV is a lazy thing to do. People who become successful are too busy working towards their success, and simply don’t put their time into TV. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy some shows, and I make time to watch a few, but even if you can cut down on your TV intake your ability and time to put towards something you want to be successful in becomes much greater. I have my own rule for TV watching that helped me break my habits. I set a rule in my house that I wouldn’t watch TV until at least 8 at night. That meant I would get home from work and have about 3 hours or so to put towards what I really wanted to become successful at. It also helped me to realize that TV isn’t all that great and I can live without it. Now I work on whatever I want to, spend time with those I love, and watch the shows that I truly care about.
Self Educate
This is probably the most important thing I have noticed. People aren’t all the sudden great at building websites, or building houses. People learn to become great. To be successful, you should try to soak up as much as you can from anyone in the same area of expertise, who is very good at what they do. Also being able to teach yourself as you go is a great tool to have. The whole adage that practice makes perfect, does apply, but only if you know how to practice. I think most people, myself included see’s practice as a repetitive action. It is that but practice is more about learning basic skills, building upon those and being able to distinguish what you need to improve upon and fix it. Payton Manning is probably the best example of this. The reason he is so great is because he watches hours of video of himself, analyzing how he throws the ball, and breaks down his movements into chunks, which allows him to change minute details of his actions to increase his accuracy. Take in as much information as you can, repeat it, analyze it, and fix it. These steps will help you learn fast and faster over time.
These are only a few attributes that you can add to your life to become successful. What else can be added to increase your rate of success? Overall I believe that under it all lies hard work and determination. Those will always take you as far as you want.