25 Habits Of Highly Successful People

Many of us struggle in finding a successful and at the same time happy and fulfilled life. Indeed, there is neither a magic formula nor a silver bullet to resolve this dilemma. What I can offer you are some proven principles to better navigate your life to lead a holistic and satisfied life. A life full of successes without personal regrets.

Below is a list of 25 habits which I′ve observed, collected, and applied over the past 20 years whilst having worked with and learned from some very inspirational and extremely successful people. You too can practice some or all of them. The more, the better as many of them are mutually dependent and stimulate each other. You should try applying them in a consistent and repetitive manner. Most of them can be easily learned and make a lot of fun. Don′t waste any time and start today!

Live And Breathe A Positive Attitude
Stay always open-minded and accept that change will happen. For the good or the bad. That′s life. Once you′ll have fully internalized this mental attitude you′ll become more generous, relaxed, and accepting. Try to look for the positive aspects in any situation.

Follow Your Heart And Pursue Your Dreams
Only what you really care about and what you deeply love can trigger the power and passion in you to go for your dreams and big ideas. If you can dream it, you can do it! To unleash your full potential requires you making a choice of going after those activities that you are sincerely passionate about. It′s up to you to give your life the sense and purpose it deserves.

Dare To Be Different And Bold
Explore, experiment, and try out new things. Don′t care too much about opinions of others. Trust in yourself and your judgement. Apply different perspectives and look at the world and various situations from different angles. The only sustainable path to personal growth is doing things that make you feel awkward. To grow as a person you need to walk outside of your comfort zone. You might start from now on doing a headstand before leaving home every day. Try it!

Set Specific Goals
Have specific and bold goals in place which assist you to realize your vision and dreams. Focus on the most important 3-4 of them at any given time (not more). Chase them with high intensity and ambition. Break them down into digestible smaller milestones. Once you′ll become consistent with achieving your milestones and goals, you will start to experience more success. Get out of your comfort zone. Success breeds success!

Admit Mistakes And Weaknesses. Don′t put too much pressure on yourself and others. When you don’t do the right thing, admit it. Be transparent, authentic and willing to talk about your mistakes in a constructive manner. When you are vulnerable and have nothing to hide you increase your self-esteem and radiate trust in yourself and others. Don′t forget that you learn best from having made mistakes.

Surround Yourself With Positive People
Avoid negative people. They are energy and joy suckers. You – like all of us - encounter multiple situations in life which can be pretty hard and painful. Therefore it′s key having supportive people at your side who encourage you, back you up, and push you to become the best version of yourself. These positive ?life managers“ know what it takes to achieve their dreams and they don′t let anyone or anything stop them from getting there. Join them!

Establish An Energizing Morning Routine
Get up early. Embracing the solitude and magic of the morning is energizing and liberating. It′s a high value time for yourself. You can be present before others are and before demands are made of you. You can define the agenda, the framework, and pace of the day. This will give you confidence and a strong feeling of control. How about running or meditating in the morning before going to the office, etc.?

Exercise Regularly
Exercising has physical, mental, and emotional benefits. The trick is to work out regularly rather than to punish yourself with hard training sessions now and then. It releases natural endorphines and proteines that help us with concentration and understanding as well as boosting our self-esteem and satisfaction level. Practicing team sports adds a beautiful social and inter-personal dimension which often triggers and/or influences some of the other elements which are described in this article. Try adding e.g. yoga into your exercise routine and learn to focus and meditate.

Work Out Your Brain
The more we train our brain, the faster we can think, learn, and memorize. It can be as easy as doing puzzles, solving riddles, playing any game, etc. Or it can be reading a book or articles and taking in new chunks of information. Reading helps with structuring an issue, collecting information, applying problem solving techniques, and accurately decoding complexity and responding to questions and concerns. Learning a new language (currently I′m studying Japanese by using Rosetta Stone) or a music instrument (piano together with my oldest daughter... it′s tough... for me) is another excellent brain work out technique.

Understand That Thoughts Are Real
Acknowledge that your own thinking process directly impacts your health, your life, your management style, and your state of being. It is your own thinking process that defines you and that – if it happened – has gotten you into trouble. Nothing and no one else is responsible for it, bar you and your thoughts which eventually have become your reality. To get out of it, you need to systematically examine your life. You need to convince yourself of the necessity to become inspired and diligent about wanting to change and/ or to better your life. It takes awareness, attention, and effort to break the cycle of a thinking process that has become unconscious. You need to step out of routines so you can look at your life.

Start Questioning Old Beliefs
To begin changing attitudes start to observe your habitual thoughts – especially the harmful ones – without responding to them, so that they no longer initiate the automatic chemical responses that produce habitual behavior. Within all of us, we possess a level of self-awareness, which can observe our thinking. To your surprise, you most likely will find out that most of your persistent, negative inner statements might not be true. In other words, just because you have thought does not necessarily mean that you have to believe it is true.

Explore Specific Creativity Skills
Masters of Creativity are masters of creativity because they know "how“ to think and not necessarily "what“ to think. If you really want to become more creative, you can do by following a specific creative thinking pattern as the basis for any sustainable improvements. In a second step you can improve your mental creativity skills by utilizing specific creativity-enhancing techniques and exercises.

Focus And Expand Your Awareness And Consciousness
Meditation is one very impactful technique. Its positive effects on body and mind have been proved. Meditation has become very popular as it helps release stress, let go of excess thoughts and expand one′s consciousness and awareness. It increases awareness, focus, and fuels your brain and soul power. A similar mind-enlarging technique is self-hypnosis of which I′m a great fan. Already famous Aldous Huxley stated many years ago: "Those who have experimented with hypnosis find that, at a certain depth of trance, it happens not too infrequently that subjects, if they are left alone and not distracted, will become aware of an immanent serenity and goodness that is often associated with a perception of light and of spaces vast but not solitary.“

Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
The only person you should compete with today is the person you were yesterday. Don′t compare yourself to others. It’s counterproductive, since it′s harmful to your self-esteem. Instead try to find out where your weak points are and what you can learn from other people who are successful at your weaknesses.

Have The Courage To Say No
This is one key quality that separates highly successful people from successful ones. When you are not afraid to say no, you have already avoided the need to please everyone. It is impossible wanting to please everybody. Just say No when you don’t want to do something. And don′t apologize for it (you might only want to explain it. If at all).

Stay Humble And Help Others
Being humble and down-to-earth is a very peculiar sign of exceptional character. Highly successful people don′t brag and boast about their achievements. Instead they are eager to assist others in being successful. They prefer listening versus speaking and genuinely care for the needs of others. They walk their talk. They often support their community and society. They believe in giving back and in sharing. This is not only a very powerful act of kindness, but also very effective in fulfilling your own emotional needs. In other words, if you want to succeed in life, you should focus on how you can improve other people’s lives.

Be Tolerant, Grateful, And Empower Others
You can′t love everyone, but you can teach yourself to like others. Especially those who are different to you by being willing to open your mind up to different opinions and change. And by being generous and forgiving. Express thanks and gratitude as often as possible to friends, colleagues, business partners, clients, and customers. Show people that you trust them. Grant flexibility, stimulate initiative-taking, and ask for regular feedback. Have faith in others skills and capabilities. Be willing to let go and to share power.

Establish Long Term Relationships
Displaying warmth is stemming from deeper values, ethics, and fundamental principles. Take your time and don′t rush. The best trust fertilizer is to "give without any strings attached.“ Don′t expect always something in return.

Eat Healthy
It all starts with having a healthy breakfast to reduce hunger throughout the rest of the day. Drink plain water. Not juice, lemonade, soda, etc. It keeps your body functioning in homeostasis and aids key bodily functions. Eat small and frequent meals. Fit people tend to eat 80% of time mainly whole, unprocessed foods, including fruits, veggies and whole grains (what food researchers call low-density food). Don′t forget, however, to enjoy an occasional treat. That′s also part of a joyful, rewarding, and successful life.

Sleep Enough
A good night’s sleep is super critical to our health. Forget about all those superstars who pretend to need only 3 or 4 hours of sleep a day. Rubbish! Already the Dalai Lama said that sleep is the best meditation. During sleep, the brain restores the mind for the day ahead and the body can relieve stress, cool down, maintain healthy body fat levels, and ultimately live longer. As a rough guideline, the average adult needs 8 hours sleep.

Strengthen Your Resilience Level
Getting back on track again after difficult experiences and loses, not giving up, and instead bouncing back into the original, or even into a stronger position than before, is what we call Resilience. There are people who naturally possess certain personality traits that assist them coping with setbacks and bringing them quickly back on a good track. Today we know that many of these skills can be learned by anyone. As such they will help you to tackle past or upcoming problems head-on and to become more creative and more successful. Resilient people just would never give up until having found a solution.

Become A Realistic Optimist
Realistic optimists are vigorously optimistic, too. They strongly believe that they make things happen and that they will succeed. They have no doubt about it. Saying that, on the other hand, they perfectly know that in order of being successful they have to plan well, to access all necessary resources, to stay focused and persistent, to evaluate different options, and to execute in excellence. Being both optimistic and realistic, i.e. combining the two into one behavioral style of realistic optimism creates a special breed of very successful people. Realistic optimists stay positive and upbeat about the future, even – and especially - if and when they recognize the challenges ahead.

Make Happiness Your Priority
The way I′d like to define happiness has nothing to do with daydreaming, trying to escape reality, or seeing life through rose-colored glasses. In fact, I consider happiness and the well-being of people as a fundamental human right. The pursuit of happiness is a beautiful goal to strive for. And it should become one of our main objectives in life. Well aligned with, and not hiding behind, economic growth and social responsibility.

Final Thoughts

Conduct Regular Life Quality Checks
Make sure that once or twice a week you put 10 to 15 minutes aside to review whether your daily activities and your weekly schedule are consistently aligned with your overall goals. If not, change your agenda to reflect back to what you really want to achieve in life. In case of doubt, just look at your personal life vision and mission statement. It always will give you the reassurance you might need from time to time.

Managing Your Life is Your Responsibility
No one else will and should do it for you. At the end of the day it′s your life and your destiny. Work (career, wealth) is just one aspect of life. There are other crucial areas which need to get adequate and regular attention in order to lead a fulfilled life: social area (family, friends, recognition), health area (sports, relaxation, diet, well-being and fitness), and spiritual area (fulfillment, religion, love, philosophy).

Last, but not least, stop taking life and yourself too serious.

Sometimes a healthy sense of humor and a good laugh will push stress out and show you the right way.

What do you think? Please join the conversation by leaving a comment below.

Best regards,

Andreas von der Heydt

*****
Andreas von der Heydt is the Head and Director of Kindle Content at Amazon in Germany. Before that he held various senior management positions at Amazon and L'Oréal. He's a leadership expert and management coach. He also founded Consumer Goods Club. Andreas worked and lived in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Asia. Andreas enjoys blogging as a private person here on LinkedIn about various exciting topics. His latest book is about what makes a future leader. All statements made, opinions expressed, etc. in his articles only reflect his personal opinion.

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Other recent and popular posts by Andreas von der Heydt:
The 7 Qualities of Tomorrow′s Top Leaders
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The Magic To Think Big

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