Back to basics: Core fundamentals for Success

There is no magic bullet or magic pill or a secret formula to achieve success. There are no new fundamentals to be followed to achieve success. To simply put it, you cannot manufacture new antique, antique is antique so are the success fundamentals.

Success is not doing five thousand things really well, success is doing half a dozen things really well five thousand times. Earning success is hard, the process is laborious, requiring patient and persistent efforts consistently over-time. Slow and steady win the race, be world’s biggest believer of consistency. As the saying goes “small smart choices, plus consistency plus time equal radical difference.”

Nothing fails like success, success breeds complacency. Success is like a breath of air, although your last breath was important but the next one is more important. It is important that you keep success and not just get it, you have to maintain it. It is not about attaining one goal one time.

The belief that success should be as fast as fast food does not work, there are no quick fixes and silver bullets, do not fool around. Success takes hours and hours of relentless practice, faced with sheer agony and frustration of failures, set- backs until you become number one. The only path to success is continuum of mundane, unexciting, daily discipline which compounds over time to create a fairy tale ending.

Everything in our life exist because of the choice we have made. Each choice starts a behavior which eventually becomes habit i.e. we make our choices then our choices makes us. The biggest challenge is we are not even aware that we are making these choices. What we are today is because of the choices we made at some point in time. Our life is product of our moment to moment choices.

Difference between lucky and unlucky depends on the choices you make. Everyone has opportunity to be lucky. When luck comes your way you should take advantage of it. New definition for luck is
preparation plus personal growth plus attitude plus opportunity plus action equals luck.

Given below are few fundamentals for producing giant results and achieve success:

1.    Habit: Habit is formed by conditioning of our brain. Things regularly practiced day in day out gets transformed into a habit. A simple example is, as soon as we hit the car seat, we fasten the seat belt. Forming habits is difficult and does not happen instantaneously, but if regularly and consistently practiced would get a place in the subconscious mind thus forming a habit. Forming a habit requires a big motivation, our brain also works on a carrot. We have to link pleasures and pains to our particular act to form a habit of consistently doing or not doing an act. It's never too late to start a good discipline. Every great act start with small steps. Small daily actions over time will help transform the action into a habit. Find a motivation to choose one new habit, ripple effects of the same will improve other areas of life.

2.    Values: Your values should be congruent to your goals. Your goals should be 100% matching your values.  For e.g. your value can be “family”, but if your goals does not have anything about family, then you are off-track going to different direction hence impacting your success. It is essential that your deepest value should be congruent to your goals and your habits should speak about your value system.

3.     Goals: Unless you have clearly laid down goals you will not be able to execute the same. You need to first define your life goals, then your business and professional goals and go after the same. Goals should be strongly connected to your values. Your values determines your behavior. What stands between you and your goal is your behavior. Your daily behavior would indicate how serious you are about your goal. The goals you set should be sharp and measurable. As the saying goes “What gets measured gets improved”. An analogy for importance of sharp and focused target can be derived from this simple example, “ An aircraft is on the run way to go from Delhi to Mumbai, had the direction been 1% deviated from the direction required to travel from Delhi to Mumbai, the aircraft would have landed 150-200 kilometers off the desired course.” Hence it is important that we have focused goals with minutest details.

4.    Entertainment and Education Ratio (EE Ratio): Do keep measuring this ratio, do not waste too much time on entertainment, entertainment may be by way of watching TV, busy playing games in Play Station or xbox, facebook and other social media etc., all these will not add any value to you . Spend time getting more knowledgeable and educated, spend time on your personal development. Spend time on activities which help your own world, do not bother much about the world around you. Do not spend too much time reading new papers or keeping yourself updated on the news. Rather to be productive, subscribe to tweets/RSS feeds to get the news for your needs and business requirements.

5.      Tracking your actions: All winners are trackers. It brings moment to moment awareness in life.

Track every action of your life every day. If you want to lose your weight, track everything you eat and every exercise you do. Write on a little piece of paper or in your mobile. Process forces you to be conscious of your decisions. Tracking enables improvement.

6.     Morning and evening rituals: Get into a habit of using your morning and evening time well. Some part of your morning time can be used for fitness training, gratitude, day planning, inspirational reading and some part of your evening time can be used for reflection for the day, ideation and inspirational reading just before going to the bad.

7.     Do not over do anything: Overdoing is not a sustainable model, do what you can do consistently. Consistency always pay for. For e.g. If Mr. A and Mr. B are asked to travel/fly on the flight from Delhi to Mumbai, with Mr. A given instruction to fly directly while Mr. B is asked to hop down and up in between in 10 locations, for sure Mr. A would be much efficient and reach much before even if he had flew at half the speed of Mr. B. In stop over and start again you lose the momentum hence do it consistently. You will succeed better than over kill.

8.    Relation reflection: Family day should be defined and adhered to. Show the love to your family. Make your spouse feel important, respect her, treat her well, develop her and give time to her. She is one who would be always there with you.

9.    Circle of Influence: You are known by your circle of influence. The people you spend most time with would determine your behavior, your priorities in life, your habits, your thoughts etc. etc. You can select five people with whom you spend your time with, understand their priorities in life, their social strata and see if they match your thought process. You need to decide on the people with whom you can spend three minutes rather than three hours, three hours rather than three days, three days rather than an extended holiday. You should select the people you want to disassociate with, have limited association with and have extended association with. This would enable you to create a right circle of influence which would be congruent to your goals and value system.

10.  Do better than expected: Always be one up than what is expected. Steve Jobs: always delivered more than customer expectation. Shock it all philosophy of Richard Branson: known for always doing things differently, see all his new launches. It had wonderful impact. If you do better than expected, you build credibility with the other person which helps you succeed. Always prepare well to deliver beyond expectation. If you need to deliver a lecture for a group, do all the research on the group to understand the expectation, then go and deliver better than expectation, this would create an “awe”. If you are going for the best job/dream job, prepare well, be aggressive to demonstrate your passion. Go that extra step, do research about the company, search the employees in any one of your or your friends contact, have a greeting sent through him to the decision making authority, nine out of ten times, you will fare better than others and it is most likely that you will get the job. Do not do common things that others’ do, always do something different.

All the above fundamentals converge to something called taking personal responsibility of your life i.e. owning hundred percent of your actions and choices. It is like, what percentage of shared responsibility you have in making a relationship work 100/0. Always take 100% responsibility as you alone are responsible for what you do and don't do and what happens to you. No matter what happened own it, take full responsibility for your life. Eliminate all your excuses.

When you do smallest course corrections, it will make a great compounding effect over time
and the results will be nothing less than exceptional. Commit to one small insignificant step over a time.

Get the grit and passion of successful people who are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Always express the feeling of gracefulness to others. Attitude of gratitude is by being grateful for everything around you. What you appreciate appreciates!

Source : The Compounding Effect by Mr Darren Hardy