How to Reprogram Your Mind For Success (Lessons From the World’s Top Entrepreneurs and Businessman)

I have always been obsessed with one question, “What does the world most successful people have in common?”.

Is it hard work, determination, or grit? Do they have a “special fuel” that drives them to their success?

What makes Steve Jobs an expert at building a Premium Brand that everyone owns at their home? What makes Jack Ma built the world most successful e-commerce company that everyone can’t live without?

After interviewing some of the industry experts that are thriving in their field and doing extensive research on the life of the world most successful people, I realized that it is not their attitude that determines their success in life. It is the way they are conditioned to act.

Let me explain.

We run programs in our mind every day — Emotional Programmes and Behavioral Programmes. We are all conditioned to act a certain way, because it lies within our comfort zone.

Some of us are conditioned to feel resourceful as we are challenged with problems, while some of us chose to blame and feel bad about it. We used to think that it is our circumstances that caused us to feel a certain way.

Not true.

It is our programmes that we run unconsciously in our mind that conditioned us to feel a certain way. In simpler terms, we called them “Habits”.

We may want to feel happy, confident and powerful in every situation, but we have the habits that we developed over time that make us feel lousy and fearful.

Now, you may think, “Aren’t we suppose to feel bad when “bad things” happened to us? We are all emotional creatures.”

Yes, we are indeed emotional creatures, and we are driven to act based on our emotion.

But here’s the difference that separates some of the world most successful human being from the average people.

Whenever they feel lousy about themselves, they have the ability to switch their emotional state in an instant to access into instant motivation, feeling confident and powerful. This process happened naturally to them, even without them noticing it, because they are conditioned to act this way.

They have formed a habit of accessing into instant motivation whenever they feel lousy.

And that brings us to our question today.

How are you too able to develop a powerful habit to help you achieve the same success?

I called it the 3R Formula for Creating Powerful Habits:

1. Reminder

One of our greatest enemy that stops us from creating the habit we desired is called “Forgetfulness”. That is not your fault. There is no need to blame yourself for that. The reason is that we are all conditioned to act within our comfort zone. Hence, when you are trying to impose a new habit, you are acting against your comfort zone. This is why you tend to be more forgetful.

Imagine you are a right-handed person trying to write with your left hand, will you be able to do that?

Of course you can. But it takes time for you to develop that skill until you master it.

Hence, one of the most powerful ways to create habits is by setting a reminder to yourself every day.

That reminder will serve as a trigger for you to do this habit consistently.

For example, if you want to create a habit of waking up early in the morning, set your alarm the night before. Once you are able to do that consistently, you may find that one day, you can wake up early in the morning even without the help of your alarm clock.

2. Routine

It takes 21 days to create a habit and 90 days to create a lifestyle. Most people gave up on the 20th day.

Why?

Because we don’t have a clear plan.

When we create habits, most of us get so pumped up that we perform that habit so intensely for the first few days.

However, when that fire runs out, we lose momentum. We lose our drive. Then we give up. We tell ourselves that we are not meant for this. The truth is, you need to be consistent by performing one small task a day. Never overwhelm yourself with trying something new with great intensity.

It is just like going to the gym and building your dream body. You don’t develop muscles by lifting heavy weights for a day. You develop muscles by going to the gym every single day and lifting weights consistently. Focus on progress over perfection.

As the famous Kung Fu fighter, Bruce Lee once said,

“I fear not for the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who practices one kick 10,000 times.”

3. Reward

The most important aspect in habit construction is to reward yourself every time you successfully perform your tasks well. As a human being, we are conditioned by the two major forces in life — Pain and Pleasure. In anything that we do, the ultimate purpose is to either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure.

Hence, every time you accomplish a task, reward yourself with something that you love, big or small. When you are doing that, you are linking pleasure subconsciously to the habits that you are constructing. Over time, you will be able to install that habit into your life.

I remember that I used to hate running. I hated going on the treadmill with the feeling of tiredness and fatigue. Whenever I go on the treadmill, I would download my favorite drama and watch it while I was running. By doing that, I was telling my mind that, if you want to watch the drama that you have been longing for, then you must RUN.

That is how I am able to develop the habit of running consistently over time. As you reward yourself, you begin to realize that it drives you to persist and push through your limitations for the longer term.

There’s a saying that goes,

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

What drives some of the world most successful businessman, celebrities, and athletes is not the attitude that they have, but the little things that they do every single day which eventually leads to great results.

Just like a computer with a powerful programme and system, it allows the computer to run its application with greater speed and efficiency.

As you program yourself in the right way, you are setting yourself up to perform at your very best and ensure that you are always at your peak performance. Wouldn’t that increase your chance to achieve your goals in life?

About me: Ong Shu Yi

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Over the years, I've helped entrepreneurs and corporate leaders to increase their performance to reach the next level of success in their lives. Feel free to drop me a message and let's connect.

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