Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have it all while others are barely struggling to stay afloat in business and in life? While personal situations will surely be a big factor, there are still a lot of things at play that greatly contribute to your own success – things that you have a huge amount of control over.
These tips for success in business and life are a good starting point in creating positive changes that bring great results. Once you know what they are, you can move on to implementing them in life to see the positive changes they bring in. There are many proven advice from successful people around the world; some still alive and inspiring people and some passed away and left their success stories for us to learn. Check out this list of career and personal life advice that many others before you have followed and benefitted from:
- Simplify all of your routines. Bruce Lee once said, “Simplicity is the key to brilliance” – and he is absolutely right. The more non-essentials you do away with, the more time you will have for things that really matter. The whole notion of simplifying your life and business always starts with identifying the most important things that need your attention, and devoting all your time and energy to it. Learn how to do away with tasks that can be delegated to others and tasks that actually turn out to be time wasters. What you devote your time to should yield impactful, short- and long-term results for your personal and/or professional benefit.
- Don’t lose track of your big vision. Your big vision is the end point – the summation of all your efforts, both big and small. This is the result of all the tips for success in business and life. Perhaps your big vision in life is to have enough passive income coming in so that you can spend more time with your wife and children. Or you imagine that one day soon, your online store will become the ultimate example of a successful startup that employs handicapped artisans to deliver 100% sustainable and eco-friendly home textiles. Whatever big vision you have, it should be something that you constantly think of so it serves as a guide for each and every decision that you make.
- Have a detailed action plan. The best career and personal life advice you can get will always require action. Everyone has a dream, but not everyone will know the actual steps it takes to achieve it. Writing down a plan to get things done is essential in success for both business and life.
The keyword here is to make each item in your plan actionable – meaning there is an explicit, concrete action that tells you exactly what you need to do to become one step closer to your dream. For example, if your dream is to improve your physique by squeezing in a fitness regimen without interrupting your current routine too much, write down the actual steps you need to take to achieve it. It can be as simple as “Wake up twenty minutes earlier to do Pilates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday” and “Hire a babysitter every other Saturday so I can go to the gym for an hour”. Before you know it, you’d be putting in 6 hours of exercise every month when you once had zero time for it.
- Embrace delay of gratification. It’s so tempting to reward yourself every now and then – a weekend getaway to the beach, a new pair of shoes, the latest laptop or brand new carpeting for the office. However, these rewards are a whole lot nicer – and certainly more meaningful – if you put in a lot of work prior to getting them. You can promise yourself that if you beat your sales target for four consecutive months, then you can go ahead and replace your worn down carpet because you’ve made enough sales for that quarter. If you want a new laptop to replace your current model, commit to replacing it when it has generated at least $10,000 in revenues so you can truly say that it more than paid for itself. The only time you need to spend for something right away is if you know some aspect of your life or business won’t work properly without it. When it comes to tips for success in business, delay of gratification makes rewards so much sweeter -and can even make you wealthier.
- Invest in relationships. Your life, while it might seem like it’s your own, is actually a continuum of shared experiences with people. This is why it is important to invest in relationships with people that matter – in life, in the workplace, and in society in general. American film producer Jerry Weintraub, died on July 6, 2015, was quoted to have said “Relationships are the only thing that matter in business and in life”, which goes to show how your success becomes meaningful when you have others to share it with.
These relationships extend beyond your family to include all people with whom you interact with in business and in life: the delivery men who bring in today’s fresh catch for your restaurant, the receptionist at the investment firm you work in, etc. There is no one in life whose status is too far beneath you for you to connect with, celebrate with, and draw support from. Without others, all these tips will be less meaningful.
- Avoid getting burned out. Monitor yourself so closely that you will identify and stop a burn out from happening before it crushes you. Burn out is real and can creep up on you without you knowing it. If you see the warning signs, you will know when to stop and take a step back before things overpower you.
Remember: health is wealth, and if you expend it then there will be nothing from the well to draw water from. The best way to avoid getting burned out is to get some much needed rest. Decide to sleep one hour earlier every other night. Go on a quick beach retreat over the weekend. Forgo a working lunch and take a stroll around the park instead of being holed up in your cubicle. These efforts will do wonders for your soul and allow you to continue pursuing your goals with a refreshed mind.
- Have a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset know that there is much to learn from failures, that there is a wealth of knowledge to be had in setbacks, and challenges are meant to be embraced and not avoided. Training your mind to think “How can I benefit from this experience?” will empower you because everything will have a potential benefit, no matter how small. Fortunately, one does not have to be born with a growth mindset; it is something you can develop through time and with a lot of practice in your personal and professional life.
- Focus on your expertise, then farm out the rest. The skillset you possess is something that you should cultivate to become the very best at it – which oftentimes require having others to do the rest (i.e. things that you know you are not good at). If you are a bag designer who runs an online shop, have someone to attend to the business’ everyday operations so you can focus on product development without worrying about the orders that need to be processed. While not everyone will have the manpower or resources to do this in the beginning, you will certainly get there if you persist. Even the most hands-on business owner will find that delegating tasks will do wonders for his business, so grab that opportunity to do so when you first spot it.
- Have a sense of humor. You will get a lot of advice in your lifetime, and having a sense of humor is one tip that is as important as the rest. Being driven to succeed shouldn’t be at the expense of your ability to laugh at yourself or see the humor in things. Being serious about your work is important, of course – but not when you are too serious that you end up compounding the stress that comes with your career instead of diffusing it.
Keeping your sense of humor intact is a wonderful defense mechanism that does good things for your mental and emotional well-being. It prevents you from snapping at your wife when you get home, or chewing the head off your employee when something goes wrong. If you try to laugh a bit more and see the humor in things, you will find that only a few things will faze you, and others will see you as wonderful company.
- Invest in time management tools. There are so many tools out there to help you use your time wisely: alarms, habit trackers, online team task boards, etc. These are things that will help you get more things done if discipline is something that you still find some struggle with. Explore a few time management tips and see which ones work for you the best. Better yet, share it with your family or your team at work so they too can make better use out of their own personal and professional time!
Patience: The Key to Mastering Habits for Success
Crafting a successful business and living a life worth emulating is not something that happens overnight. It takes a lot of time to get yourself to the point where you are starting to see true results, and even more to get you to exactly where you want to be. But if you keep at it, you will experience firsthand how all your efforts will be so worth it.
