6 Habits of Successful People

Habits are consistent behavioral patterns that occur in our everyday routine. Habits can either help you succeed in life or cause you to develop a life of mediocrity and failure. One thing for sure, habits have a tremendous effect on the trajectory of your life!

What are the habits that make people mediocre?

What are the habits that make people successful?

There are far more mediocre people in the world than there are successful people. As this is the case, why are there not more people emulating the habits of those who are successful? Is it secret information that is only known to a few?

No, it is not!

Habits are formed based upon needs, wants, and desires. Whatever you truly want out of life will shape the behavior that directs your everyday actions. This is how habits are formed.

Average people do not seem to understand that their life is a result of their habits. Therefore, they tend to blame others and circumstances, instead of recognizing the problems caused by their own actions.

Successful people understand that their lifestyle is dependent upon their actions. Therefore, they only implement habits that help them work towards bettering themselves. Anything that hurts their ability to acquire success or derails their ability to remain successful is swiftly cast away.

Knowing successful people are deliberate with their actions, let’s examine the habits that enable them to be successful.

1. Plan Ahead for the Day/ Week

When your life has no direction, you get random results. When your life is guided by a disciplined and focused mindset, you produce far better results.

Planning allows for you to become more effective with your time, leading to far better productivity. When you know that you are only allocating a certain amount of time to an activity, you work to ensure that you accomplish as much as you can in that given amount of time. It is a psychological motivator that pushes you to become more effective with your time.

Your organization skills become better. You work to ensure that your day flows as efficiently as possible so that you don’t waste time on unnecessary things that disrupt your productivity.

Always plan based on the importance of tasks that need to be done immediately. The most important task goes at the top of your list; work down your list as you finish each task. You might not accomplish everything on your list for the day, but as long as good progress is being accomplished, you are outworking the vast majority of people around you.

Related Article: What makes certain people successful

2. Read to Expand Their Knowledge

Your mind is a sponge for information. Feed it junk and it will produce junk. Feed it knowledge and it will produce knowledge.

Successful people understand this and choose books as their primary source of information, rather than the TV. TV is primarily used for entertainment, meaning it is a distraction. Books help to expand your mind, developing your ability to think critically – increasing your ability to understand far more than the average person.

You will notice that readers tend to have a far better imagination than those who don’t read. This is because their mind has been opened up to explore all possibilities and to think on a deeper level – which makes them far more ambitious than the average person.

Make it a habit to read for at least an hour a day, if you aren’t already an avid reader. Reading will help you increase your brain activity, leading you to not only think on a higher level, but also perform on a higher level.

3. Exercise Daily

What does exercise have to do with success?

Being healthy allows for you to perform at high levels for a longer period of time and it helps your mind operate more clearly. A body filled with toxic substances breaks down very easily and tends to be filled with a lot of negative thoughts. This severely limits your ability to produce success in your life.

Being healthy is not hard. Most people just choose an unhealthy lifestyle because it requires less work. Successful people understand that health is wealth. Without great health, their productivity is limited and their life is shortened.

Exercise and eating healthy must become a regular part of your daily routine. Even if you exercise for only 30 minutes a day, it is better than not exercising at all. If you are able to, walk to the nearby store or ride a bike. Instead of buying fast food because you don’t have time to cook, prepare your meals a day or days in advance. Doing small healthy things can lead to life-changing results happening.

4. Write Down Their Ideas

Your mind is constantly being filled with random ideas. Some of these ideas are worth jotting down and exploring further, but the average person does not do this. Successful people understand that when you have numerous ideas running through your head daily, it is good to record them in a thoughts journal.

Making this a habit pushes you to actually explore your ideas, increasing your ambition. When you find that you have a solid idea to work towards, you develop actions that will lead towards your idea coming into fruition.

Successful people want to at least test their ideas because they are not afraid to take risks. If they do not work, then they move on from that idea. If their idea does gain some foundation, then they have something worth investing their time and effort into. Knowing what works and what doesn’t only becomes known when you have ideas to experiment with.

5. Make Execution a Priority

Everyone has dreams and ideas, but only a few work hard to make their dreams and ideas a reality. The average person is a big dreamer. They always wish for success and imagine what success feels like, but they never experience success in their lives. This is because they never move beyond the dreaming phase.

Successful people know that their lifestyle will only improve when they put in the effort to improve the quality of their life. Hoping and wishing gets you nowhere. Only through consistent action and continual progression will your life change for the better.

Write out the lifestyle that you want for yourself. Then write out the course of actions you will implement in order to achieve your desired lifestyle. The actions you follow are what will lead you to actually executing on your ideas.

Related Article: 9 tips to turn your entrepreneur dreams into a reality

6. Recharge Their Mind

The mind is the greatest tool successful people have. They are constantly using their mind to learn and think. Their brains tend to work in overdrive. As this occurs, there are times when their brains need to rest for a while, so as not to operate below its maximum level.

You may notice that average people are always worrying. This is because their mind is not allowed the opportunity to rest. They have too many problems weighing them down.

When you are successful, you afford yourself the ability to take a little time off to relax and enjoy life. During this time, your brain not only gets to rest but it also sees things from a different perspective.

While working hard, you may be operating with tunnel vision, limiting your ability to see other options and properly weigh them. When outside of this tunnel vision, you are given the ability to operate with an improved focus.

Are You Ready to be Successful?

It is one thing to know the habits of successful people, and it is another thing to implement those habits into your own life. Average people are usually given wisdom but rarely act on the wisdom that could be beneficial towards changing their life.

The resistance to change is because humans are creatures of habit. It is hard to change what is ingrained in you unless you truly desire to for a change to occur.

Do you want to be like the average person or like those who are successful?

Successful people become successful because they choose to make successful thinking and successful behavior a daily part of their lives. Their daily habits are what reinforce their ability to continually live a successful lifestyle.

Examine your life as it currently exists. Would you say that you are successful? If not, are you willing to implement the listed habits from above to produce success in your own life?
The ability to be successful is an option afforded to anybody, no matter their starting position in life. If you truly desire to be successful, then you would have no problem stepping out of your average comfort zone. Developing a successful lifestyle is your choice to make. You have the choice to either emulate the habits of those who are successful and become so yourself, or you can choose to remain average – living an unfulfilled life.