Good habits are vital for success. To have a good and successful life, we must create good habits. It’s that simple, you won’t be able to have an enviable lifestyle; with good health, stable relationships, and a good personal economy, but you only need to choose consciously what you do every day.
Many people dream of leading a good life, who does not want to live well?
Yet few truly wonder how they can make it happen, and fewer still do what it takes to do so.
So, how can we make those dream lives come true?
Surprisingly, it’s very simple, building good habits that allow you to transform your days, and consequently, your life.
The importance of choosing good habits for Success:
In this article, we will share with you fifteen good habits that will help you improve your life in some way. Personal growth is a necessary condition to achieve your life goals, and this growth is the product of what you do in your everyday life.
Surely, if you are reading this article, it is because you want to stand out in your personal life, in your professional field, or because you want to build healthy habits that improve your life.
However, it is important to clarify that big changes are not the result of hours of work or effort, or in other words, success does not happen overnight. Success needs constant efforts, consistent goals, and more importantly ethics, passion, and hard work.
Success, regardless of its definition (better health, more money, a better quality of life, or stable relationships), is the product of small steps, small actions, and victories, which combined, lead you to good habits that will build your dream life.
Some of the habits you’ll find below are the response New York Times bestselling author Kevin Kruse received after interviewing more than 200 extremely successful people, including billionaires, Olympians, and several successful entrepreneurs.
Before sharing these good habits for success with you, we would like to make you an invitation: the actions and decisions that you see below may not lead you to live what you imagine quickly. The road to success is quite challenging because straight roads can’t make you a good driver.
However, if you want to change your life or take the first step that will take you to that destination that many people dream of, I suggest that you implement these choices in your life, and see how over time, the magic begins to occur.
So, here are the 15 highly appreciated habits for success that you will enjoy reading and would dare to follow.
1. Get up early:
The first part of your day very much matters a lot and I would like to suggest that you should spare it for yourself. Most people wake up and go straight to work; they do homework, eat lunch, go home and live like this routinely.
However, one of the good habits that you can create in the morning is to start your day consciously, and for this, you must learn to get up early and make time for yourself in the morning.
No matter what your routine is in the morning; Reading, meditating, exercising, or having a good breakfast. So, spend the first part of your day taking care of yourself and working on those areas of your life that are pillars.
2. Shower with cold water:
Taking a cold shower in the morning proves your ability to face challenges and expose yourself to “physical stress” which strengthens you physically and mentally.
If you are able to get into a shower, knowing that the water is cold and that it will make you uncomfortable, and you still do, it speaks to your ability to execute, your mental toughness, and your willingness to do what it takes to achieve your goals.
3. Read for at least one hour:
Read is considered one of the highly appreciated habits for success. When you take a book you are learning new things; Not only will you improve as a person, but you will be hearing first-hand from wise people who put their ideas into books.
You must always have a book in your hands whenever get free. When you read, you show that personal growth is important to you. When you have excuses like you don’t have time to read, that you don’t like it, or that it’s boring, you simply reflect your lack of interest in your training.
4. Complete a task each day:
Smart goals are essential in the way to success. Before doing any task, you must first define what your most important goal is in a specific area of your life.
When you are clear about dreams and vision, you will know what to do, and how to do it and it is easy for you to focus on this task.
Here are the two techniques, to develop these types of good habits:
i. Focus on minutes, not hours:
Unlike most people who divide their calendars into blocks of an hour or half an hour, assume that your day is made up of 1,440 minutes. Remember that the money that is lost can be recovered, but the time that passes never returns to your life.
ii. Focus on one thing only:
One of the tips to be more productive is to know what the most important activity of the day is, and spend the first hours of the day doing it.
To define this task, ask yourself the following questions:
What is the activity of the day that will bring you closer to achieving your goals?
What would be the best job that will make you earn more money, get that promotion or get closer to your life project?
5. Eat healthily:
Believe it or not, one of the key good habits for your personal growth is the way you eat. The food you put into your body affects your performance in the short term and your health in the long term.
For this, you must understand which foods provide energy, which ones affect your productivity, and know when to eat them, so that you can focus on your quest to be the best at what you do.
What you eat is a habit. What you eat for lunch, dinner, and breakfast is a habit that will last for many years in your life and that has an immense effect.
So much so, that a good eating habit can give you excellent quality of life, as well as a bad one if you don’t do it in a balanced way. Therefore, treat these foods as medicine and define the way you want your body to feel.
6. Track your goals:
Something that is measured is something that improves. This means that you must not only define what you want to achieve but also have indicators that measure your progress against your goals.
A good way to implement this habit in your life is to create a business plan for you. For example, set the goals you want to achieve within a period of three months; define how you will measure your progress, what key activities you have to accomplish, who the stakeholders are, as well as the limitations and threats.
When you have a dedicated plan for your goals, you know what you have to do and the time frame you have to finish it within. In the same way, it shows you the number of things that you promise yourself and that you easily forget, so it becomes a challenge for your personal development to fulfill these projects that end up improving your life. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals so that you can track your progress.
Productivity tip:
According to survey results by author Kevin Kruse, 41% of the tasks on your to-do list never end up being completed; which produces stress, emotional burdens, and anxiety among other negative effects.
A more practical alternative is to stop using a to-do list and instead put everything on your calendar.
7. Show your abilities:
It is not about thinking about what you want to achieve, or the scope of your dreams, if you really want to have a good life, you will have to do something about it.
These good habits that we are sharing with you are useless if you do not apply them daily in your life. Even when you are going through difficulties, have failed, or things have not turned out as you expect, this is not an excuse not to give your best version.
If you are going through a difficult time, then be inspired by some encouraging phrases. Evaluate what did not work and continue in your personal growth process.
To prove your capabilities there is no ideal time, nor will the conditions be perfect. Every time is good and you only have the present to challenge yourself. So, expand your comfort zone and do something worthwhile.
8. Get home for lunch:
“There’s always more to do, more that should be done, and more that can be done,” says Andy Grove, one of Intel’s early employees.
To be successful in life you must first be clear about what is important to you. Although there is no correct answer to this question, one thing is clear and it is that work is not the only thing in life.
If you have 1,440 minutes each day, take advantage of them to spend time with your friends and family, your exercise, your hobbies, and other activities just as important as your job. Ask yourself:
When was the last time you went to the beach?
And:
When was the last time you did something without thinking about money, about the result, just to have fun, laugh and enjoy?
9. Use a notebook to take notes:
The study has shown that successful entrepreneurs always have a notebook where they can express their ideas and thoughts as they occur to them in their daily life activities.
An example of this is Richard Branson, who admits that he could not have built the Virgin if he had not had a simple notebook; or Aristotle Onassis, one of the richest magnates in Greece who raises the following:
« Always carry a notebook with you and write absolutely everything. This is the million-dollar advice you won’t learn in business schools. »
To apply Aristotle Onassis’s advice in your daily life you can get an agenda and in it write an update every day regarding your goals, as well as where you are and what is affecting you. In the long run, this will keep you focused on your dreams, vision, and your goals.
10. Learn to manage your time:
Time is the most expensive asset you have, so if you spend losing it, you will hardly achieve what you set out to do in your life.
Today with so many distractions, commitments, and responsibilities it has become a necessity to learn, how to manage your time effectively to increase your production. And this not only applies to what you do in your workday but to the way you spend your free time.
To achieve this, here we share several techniques or good habits to put your most important asset to use effectively:
11. Say no to most things:
The most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffett once said that “the difference between successful and very successful people is that the latter say no to almost everything.”
Remember that you only have 1,440 minutes a day and they won’t come back, so don’t give them that easy. To meet this challenge, here we leave you with 9 strategies to say No in an easier and more elegant way.
i. Follow the 80/20 rule:
The 80/20 rule also known as Pareto’s Law, is that 80% of the results come from 20% of your activities. Start your journey to fulfill your dreams by identifying which activities produce the most important results and focusing your energy on them.
ii. Delegate most activities:
After defining those activities that represent your most important 20%, find who can make the rest of the commitments that do not contribute greatly to your goals.
In the event that you cannot delegate, what you can do is that these tasks are carried out last in your day when you have already fulfilled the most important commitments.
iii. Just touch things once:
How many times do you open the same email over and over again until you force yourself to reply?
How many times do you put off something that takes less than two minutes simply because of the laziness of doing it?
When you touch something or give your attention, try to solve it immediately. In this way, you will reduce your stress since you will not have commitments or suffering that compromises your mental power.
iv. Spend just a few minutes a day checking emails:
Successful people don’t check their emails as they arrive, they don’t check their phones every time they vibrate or ring for new notifications.
As an alternative, successful people dedicate segments of their day to catching up on emails, calls, and messages. In the book, “The 4-Hour Workweek”, Tim Ferriss suggests that you don’t do it at the beginning of the day, but instead use the afternoon or midday.
v. Avoid meetings at all costs:
When Kevin Kruse asked Mark Cuban for his best productivity advice, he didn’t hesitate to reply that “He never takes meetings unless someone is writing a check.”
Meetings most of the time, are a waste of time for many people; they tend to start late, with the wrong or incomplete people, with irrelevant topics, and take longer than expected.
If necessary, try to keep it as short as possible, get to the point, and finish it at the first chance you get.
vi. Develop a routine for the mornings:
During the interviews Kevin Kruse conducted, it was found that most of the interviewees had a set routine for their mornings. While they had different good habits, almost all of them had to do with healthy breakfasts, investing in their minds and bodies with exercise, and including good reading.
Here are some good habits to practice in the morning:
vii. Meditate and reflect:
As with the habit of journaling, you need to take time to reflect. You can’t always be in ready or “go, go, go” mode. Without reflection, you will not be able to properly assimilate the lessons you have learned along the way.
Don’t let the urgent come before the important. If you feel that you are not able to remove these moments of inner silence, here we explain how to learn to meditate.
viii. Practice your art:
Regardless of whether it’s a hobby like painting, reading a book, playing the guitar, or playing chess, makes sure you cultivate that creativity and intelligence.
It is important that these activities are not done for an economic purpose or that you have the responsibility to make deliveries. Do them just for the pleasure and inner satisfaction they give you.
ix. Do exercise:
Exercise is not only important to strengthen your mind or have hobbies that make you smarter; you must also find the space to strengthen your body.
Regardless of the activity, you do; whether it’s running, swimming, biking, or going to the gym, you should try to be physically active. Ask yourself:
If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live?
12. You need the energy to function:
If you are looking to have more energy, greater productivity, attention, and focus, you must build good habits that allow you to achieve it.
So if you are the type of person who skips his meals,
ho does not take time to rest and recharge his energy, sooner or later you will pay the consequences of these wrong decisions.
You need to rest and take care of your body, you need to eat healthily and make conscious decisions about what you do every day. You will never be successful by making decisions on autopilot.
13. Make time for the important people in your life:
You can have all the money in the world, but if you dealt with your friends to get there, you will never learn how to be happy in your successful life. It’s not about coming alone; it’s about having someone to share your success with.
Additionally, remember that the people you surround yourself with directly influence the results you get; if you are not happy where you are, or what you are doing, take a good look at the people around you because your company matters a lot in the journey to your success.
You’re the average of the five people you spend most of your time with, so choose who to surround yourself with wisely. Two practical tips that can become good habits in your life are:
a. Never eat alone:
Use your lunches and dinners to share a conversation with people you can connect with, collaborate with, and learn from.
b. Surround yourself with people of different ages:
Your perspective can be complemented by the unique vision that a child or an older adult gives you. Their experiences, points of view, and opinions can complement your criteria or teach you to see life in a different way. Personal development challenges growth
14. The image you project is important:
The first impression is decisive, whether you like it or not. So the way you dress, the words you use, and how you relate to others matter a lot.
As much as possible, when you dress for success, your self-confidence is increased, since you will be projecting security, success, and power. However, believe it or not, this influences human psychology.
On the other hand, build a life where there is no room for lies. Regardless of whether they are pious or afraid of telling the truth when lies become a habit, people lose trust in you.
It is possible that being sincere is uncomfortable. However, this creates trust in you. This shows that you are a person who has a word, which opens up new opportunities in life.
15. Create a life around your life purpose:
To finish this list of good habits for success, the invitation is that you ask yourself if you have defined your life purpose.
One of the best books you can read, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, raises the following:
«« Write down on paper what you want to become. Then every morning and night, read it out loud. Shout it. Hear it in your heart. Invite this vision into your world. »»
Why is it important to do it?
Your routine is designed to fulfill processes. You have meetings, commitments, reports, analyses, and appointments. Do, do, and don’t think. This is most likely not the best source of inspiration.
So constantly ask yourself what is your life purpose and find those activities that more than move your pocket, move your soul. Also, do those things that make you feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself.
To achieve this you can, for example, teach others what you know. Even before you feel that you are an “expert”, take the knowledge that you have acquired and communicate it. Not only is it good for humanity, but you will learn even more about what moves you.
In conclusion, if you want to build a good life, you should start working on your good habits today. There is no other way to achieve it. Success takes time and there are no magic tricks or recipes that will make you achieve success overnight. Just start doing it today, which accumulated for a long time, becomes a life full of triumphs.
Hope these habits for success will work in your journey to success!
You might also like: