There are different paths to success and different theories about what the most important virtues of a successful person must be, but there is something that everybody agrees on:
Success starts from your mind.
I am not successful myself – you wish… Give me some time – but I read a lot about successful people and there is something about the way they think that always fascinated me. And if you think about it, everyone on the internet talks about what you have to do to get rich, to start a business and become an entrepreneur, but not so many people focus on what you need to become, in order to have success in life. And without that, you can try whatever business but you’ll never really make it.
If you don’t know me, my name is Rick and in my channel I talk about personal finance and self development. You can subscribe to my channel if you enjoy this content, but now let’s go through the list of what I believe are the 7 most valuable principles to become successful.
7. Create Value
Coming in at number 7, create value. Ok, I’m unhappy with my life. I need to find a way to make some money, so that I can buy myself that car and live the crazy lifestyle. But how? I like playing guitar, but damn that doesn’t bring money. Oh, I could open an insurance company! I don’t know anything about that, but I’m sure you can spill good money out of people. So how should I do it? I need to find the best way to sell expensive insurances…
So, that is not the way to approach the creation of your future. Many things were wrong with this approach, but one of them was not focusing on creating value.
If you want to start a business, what is the purpose of it? For some people, the purpose is profitability, cash flow, security, or freedom. Of course this is something you want to achieve, but your first purpose should be to create value for yourself, for your employees if you have them, and above all for your customers.
Always try to create something that helps people or something that makes life easier – like my channel, created to share everything about personal finance and self development! – Ok, it’s not the time for advertising now, but you can subscribe, and make an Italian smile! – Ok, jokes aside, in my personal opinion, don’t try to find something extraordinary. Just observe the world around you in your everyday life. Even a small complaint from a friend of yours may become the source of a great idea.
6. Focus on the future
Now don’t tell me that you don’t spend some time here and there thinking about mistakes you did in your past, and most of all, about the wonderful life you would have if you didn’t choose the path you chose. My suggestion is, always, always focus on the future. And I tell you because I am the one that focuses on the past, and I know it’s not fun at all. Now, if I think about my past I can only see mistakes and bad choices. And why is that? I actually had a great life if I focus on the good things: I became an engineer, I started working in one of the richest countries in Europe, I married a wonderful woman, but still everytime I reflect on me not being satisfied with what I achieved, I can only see dark and mistakes of my past. Does it help? Hell no. I lose motivation, I think I’m a failure and I start thinking it’s too late to make a change. These thoughts are poisonous and make me stop improving my future. And not only that, let’s just face it: the past is the past. It cannot be changed. So always focus on your future. Always look ahead. Never use your past experiences or your past choices as an excuse that you are not going to be able to achieve something in your future.
5. Take responsibility
Number 5 is take responsibility. Successful people take responsibility. When people fail to succeed they always make up excuses instead of taking responsibility for their actions. We basically tell ourselves and the others a lie to justify giving up on our goal or failing to succeed in our purpose. In most cases our lie is so good that we believe it ourselves.
- Amazon FBA is bullshit. 2 years wasted making Amazon rich and fighting with manufacturers and shipping companies. And for what? It’s a stupid business, I did everything right and I’m left with nothing. – That was me 2 years ago by the way. –
We blame the lack of resources as the reason for our failures in life. But think about this: every time you blame somebody else or the environment for your misfortunes, you are basically saying that you are not in control of your life. You are saying that, despite your efforts, the environment still won on you and did as it pleased. Saying so, you are sending a subliminal message to your subconscious, telling him that it’s futile to try again. You might not feel that you are saying it, but your subconscious is registering it.
So taking responsibility means acknowledging that your life is not going to depend on what happened to you, but instead on how you react to it. As the title of a book from Gloria Steinem, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
4. Be self-disciplined
Number 4 is be self-disciplined. Now, becoming successful is about hard and clever work, not about luck. So to be able to work motivated, unmotivated, with rain or sun, happy or sad, you need self-discipline. Self-discipline is what shields you from emotions and events and laser-focuses on the process. It’s important because it gives you the strength to stick with difficult tasks, and allows you to overcome obstacles and discomfort as you push yourself to new challenges. In my opinion, there are 4 main advantages of self-discipline:
- First of all, it creates a positive habit of using every day to get closer to your purpose, while negative habits, like watching television or your phone the whole day, develop laziness and prevent you from doing anything in life.
- Second, It helps you get things done and focus. If you have a goal, Self discipline is what protects you from distractions and helps you stick to the work.
- It boosts your self esteem, because whenever you complete a task you are going to feel proud of yourself and this becomes a positive loop of achievements.
- It helps you to achieve mastery in your field. You can only be successful if you master your field, and mastery comes from discipline, not from talent.
3. Be persistent
Number 3 is be persistent. I don’t know about you but a couple years back I watched the movie “The founder”. If you didn’t, go watch it now – I mean, after watching this video and subscribing to this channel… – I loved that movie and I think it’s an inspiration for persistent dreamers. Ray Croc, interpreted by Michael Keaton, made McDonald’s the empire we know today. I’m not going to go into details on the life of Ray Kroc, but there is an excellent quote about persistence in the movie, a quote by Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States:
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent won’t; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius won’t; unrewarded genius is practically a cliché. Education won’t; the world is full of educated fools. Persistence and determination alone are all-powerful.”
Calvin Coolidge
Oh… I just love that movie…
Persistence is probably the hardest virtue that a person can develop and the most important of all. It’s the hardest because it means keeping pushing for years and years even though the whole world screams that you can’t do it. And it’s the most important because it’s the one single quality that you can’t allow yourself not to have, if you want to be successful. You can be stupid, you can be irresponsible, you can be a cheat, you can never learn from mistakes, and still become successful, but you can never make it without persistence. Life is going to constantly throw the worst obstacles at you and make you feel like the effort is not worth it. So when we fail to become successful it’s not because we are not good enough, but because the problems become so discouraging that we think we can’t make it.
Persistence is the first key to success. Always keep going in front of any obstacle and you’ll see that, after a long, long night, a beautiful day will come.
2. Consider failures as experience
The second is consider failures as experience. If we are persistent, like my previous principle, then we are bound to fail at some point and here it’s way too important to protect our self confidence by interpreting failures in the right way.
I know it’s been said over and over again, but failures are necessary. Think about Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. He made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
That’s just brilliant, and it’s true. Edison understood that all the failed experiments he did weren’t a waste of time, but instead were necessary to collect experience that brought him to eventually succeed.
And I’m pretty sure, if you are as inexperienced as I am, that you also tried many things in your past like opening an online business, studying something that you eventually dropped, or whatever you tried and didn’t take you anywhere. Well, those were all valuable experiences that enriched you and are going to make you more effective and successful now. You must always learn from failures, which, by the way, are nothing more than setbacks. They really become failures only when you decide to stop after them. Life is a learning process that we can only experience with trial and error, and the number of failures we endure are just a measure of the experience we collected.
1. Faith (=Trust)
Now my number 1 is faith. – religious video – No, I don’t mean that. Actually, I’m an atheist, so it’s weird to use the word faith but this is a different kind of faith. You need to have faith in the path you are taking. You need to believe that you will succeed, at some point, if you keep working on your goal. And for me this is faith because you cannot have any proof that it’s going to work. In fact, everything on the way to success will make you think that it’s not possible. Always believe in yourself and in your cause, because this will be the pillar that will hold you up in all moments of uncertainty and difficulty.
Having faith that you’ll make it doesn’t mean feeding yourself false dreams and hopes. All of us have the possibility to be successful in life, and it’s just the amount of hard work that we put in, as well as our determination to overcome obstacles, that will get us there. But without faith that we can make it, we’ll give up at some point.
Faith is not encouraging yourself to do the impossible, faith is believing that your goal is reachable and that through hard work you can become the person you wish to be.
Conclusions
Improving yourself is, I believe, the first step to success. And there is so much we can learn from those who already got there. I decided to make this video and summarize these virtues not because I’m an expert on them, but because I’m the first that still needs to acquire them and I’m working on it every day. So if we share the same goal to become better persons, maybe also reach financial freedom and a certain level of achievement in life, well then join me on my journey, because I’d love to share with you everything I’ll learn on the way.
In my channel you’re going to find contents that are aimed at personal improvement with a strong emphasis on personal finance. So if you like this content, support me by clicking the like button and subscribing to my channel. It’s free and I’ll strive to make your life better.
I hope the conte nt of this video was valuable to you in some way and I could get you some insights that can help you improve your quality of life. I wish you a great evening and I’ll see you in the next video. Ciao!
