8 Habits to Follow When Aiming For Success

Your habits can streamline your journey to success – or make the trek rougher than it ever needs to be.

What habits, you might ask? Well, here’s eight of them to get you started!

Habit 1: Choose Your Actions.

You have the capacity to take ownership of your actions. You aren’t stuck reacting to the world. You can plan your way forward. Sure, sometimes people feel that circumstances are beyond their control. And they’re partly right. We’re only ever really in control of ourselves. Which means that you can always choose how to respond. So rather than reacting to a situation instinctively, make a habit of taking a few seconds to think through your response.

Habit 2: Build A Lighthouse Vision.

The fastest path to success involves picking a landmark and moving towards it. This can require making detours, but the traveller always moves forward. The same can be said for the journey to success. If you’re feeling lost, you can look up, see success on the horizon, and pick your path forward.

Habit 3: Check Your Priorities.

How much time do you spend on activities that benefit you in the long term? Planning ahead, networking, following up on opportunities. These activities are vital to your success. But because they’re not urgent, we tend to put them off. Instead, we react to important, time-driven things, and things that feel urgent, but on close inspection are not all that important. Learn to make a habit of measuring these occurrences against their relevance to your success. If they measure up, take action. If not, then prioritise around them.

Habit 4: Aim for beneficial outcomes.

It’s rare for anyone to get anywhere on their own. Team efforts are often the keystones of long-term success. So always try to aim for outcomes that benefit both sides. Avoid using power and privilege to drive your own agenda. This can work in the short term, but may come to bite you later on. And of course, steer clear of situations where you give all only to receive little in return.

Habit 5: Think First, Act Second.

Good actions don’t form in a vacuum. It pays to know more about the circumstances surrounding an issue before taking action. So learn how to listen, and make sure you have all the facts before you offer any input. Think about what’s being said. Demonstrate that you are paying attention using body language and audio cues. Paraphrase details to make sure you have it right. And always ask for missing information before you respond.

Habit 6: Work to your strengths in different situations.

Success comes from acting on opportunities, and opportunities change depending on the scenario. On your way to success, will meet a range of people with different skills. Some skills will complement your own. knowing when to combine these skills will get you ahead faster than sticking to your known field. Together you will get more done, faster, and with less hassle.

Habit 7: Get Better.

On your journey to success, the aim is continual improvement every day. Gaining more knowledge, becoming healthier, and improving understanding with each other – that’s the way forward. Avoid the temptation to focus solely on increasing your strengths, as it’s also good to shore up areas where you feel less confident. And don’t forget to be open to previously unexplored opportunities. You don’t know what you’re good at until you give it a try.

Habit 8: Uncover potential in yourself and others.

Your success depends on finding the reasons you care enough to use your skills and talents. This gives you the drive you need to overcome obstacles as they arise. Success also involves inspiring others to look for their own reasons. Empowering those around you not only feels good, it gives you access to their newly realised potential as well. So make it a habit to find your reason to care in a given situation, and help other find theirs as well.