You already possess everything you need to succeed. The secret to your success comes from within. The thoughts you think, the beliefs you hold, have extraordinary power to make or break your chances for success. Sometimes it might seem that no matter how hard you try to succeed there’s always something pulling you down, getting in the way, or holding you back from achieving your dreams. This is because many self-sabotaging patterns reside in the subconscious and are completely unconscious, yet they undermine your best intentions.
Peace Starter Meditation (free app) eliminates self-sabotage and negative thinking through by passing the conscious mind and imprinting new self-empowering beliefs—beliefs that will trigger remarkably higher levels of success and achievement. Through repeated listening, your subconscious will accept the messages on this program as true. In the days and weeks to come you can expect significant positive changes: You’ll feel more creative and self-assured, you’ll take an active role in creating your success, and you’ll probably take a few more risks. As your confidence grows, new possibilities appear and obstacles will dissolve. You might even notice an increase in opportunities knocking at your door. When you allow the unlimited power of your subconscious to work for you, anything is possible.
Also I want to talk about science-based ways to achieve success and things you should quit doing to be more successful in your life.
7 Scientifically Proven Ways to Achieve Better Success in Life
Know this:
Hard work alone won't get you there.
Success is a subjective notion, if there ever was one. But
for simplicity's sake, let's assume the higher you are on Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, the better you're doing. In case you don't
remember the levels from Psych 101, essentially, people can't be their best
possible selves (self-actualization) until lower-level needs are met first. In
other words, you can't be an ideal version of yourself if you don't have enough
food and money to
pay the bills, or enough love and esteem to feel
good about
your value as a human being. So, what can you do to move yourself up the
pyramid?
Check
out the findings from several studies, which shine a light on what it takes to
achieve more in life.
Increase
your confidence by taking action.
Katty
Kay and Claire Shipman, authors of The Confidence Code,
wrote a stellar article for The Atlantic on
this subject. Highlighting scads of studies that have found that a wide
confidence gap exists between the sexes, they point out that success is just as
dependent on confidence as it is on competence. Their conclusion? Low
confidence results in inaction. "[T]aking action bolsters one's belief in
one's ability to succeed," they write. "So confidence
accumulates--through hard work, through success, and even through
failure."
Broaden
your definition of authenticity.
Authenticity
is a much sought-after leadership trait, with the prevailing idea being that
the best leaders are those who self-disclose, are true to themselves, and who
make decisions based on their values. Yet in a recent Harvard
Business Review article titled "The Authenticity Paradox," Insead professor
Herminia Ibarra discusses interesting research on the subject and tells the cautionary
tale of a newly promoted general manager who admitted to subordinates that she
felt scared in her expanded role, asking them to help her succeed. "Her
candor backfired," Ibarra writes. "She lost credibility with people
who wanted and needed a confident leader to take charge." So know
this: Play-acting to emulate the qualities of successful leaders doesn't make
you a fake. It merely means you're a work in progress.
Improve
your social skills.
According
to research conducted by University of California
Santa Barbara economist Catherine Weinberger, the most successful business
people excel in both cognitive ability and social skills, something that hasn't
always been true. She crunched data linking adolescent skills in 1972 and 1992
with adult outcomes, and found that in 1980, having both skills didn't
correlate with better success, whereas today the combination does. "The
people who are both smart and socially adept earn more in today's work force
than similarly endowed workers in 1980," she says.
Train
yourself to delay gratification.
The
classic Marshmallow
Experiment of
1972 involved placing a marshmallow in front of a young child, with the promise
of a second marshmallow if he or she could refrain from eating the squishy blob
while a researcher stepped out of the room for 15 minutes. Follow-up studies
over the next 40 years found that the children who were able to resist the
temptation to eat the marshmallow grew up to be people with better social
skills, higher test scores, and lower incidence of substance abuse. They also
turned out to be less obese and better able to deal with stress. But how to
improve your ability to delay things like eating junk food when healthy
alternatives aren't available, or to remain on the treadmill when you'd rather
just stop?
Writer
James Clear suggests starting small, choosing one thing to improve
incrementally every day, and committing to not pushing off things that take
less than two minutes to do, such as washing the dishes after a meal or eating
a piece of fruit to work toward the goal of eating healthier. Committing to
doing something every single day works too. "Top performers in every
field--athletes, musicians, CEOs, artists--they are all more consistent than
their peers," he writes. "They show up and deliver day after day
while everyone else gets bogged down with the urgencies of daily life and
fights a constant battle between procrastination and motivation."
Demonstrate
passion and perseverance for long-term goals.
Psychologist
Angela Duckworth has spent years studying kids and adults, and found that one
characteristic is a significant predictor of success: grit. "Grit is
having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just
for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to
make that future a reality," she said in a TED talk on the subject. "Grit is living
life like it's a marathon, not a sprint."
Embrace
a "growth mindset."
According
to research conducted by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, how people view
their personality affects their capacity for happiness and success. Those with
a "fixed mindset" believe things like character, intelligence, and
creativity are unchangeable, and avoiding failure is a way of proving skill and
smarts. People with a "growth mindset," however, see failure as a way
to grow and therefore embrace challenges,
persevere against setbacks, learn from criticism, and reach higher levels of
achievement. "Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be
anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein
or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown
(and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with
years of passion, toil, and training," she writes.
Invest in your relationships.
After
following the lives of 268 Harvard undergraduate males from the classes of 1938
to 1940 for decades, psychiatrist George Vaillant concluded something you
probably already know: Love is the key to happiness. Even if a man succeeded in
work, amassed piles of money,
and experienced good health, without loving relationships he wouldn't be happy,
Vaillant found. The longitudinal study showed happiness depends on two things: "One
is love," he wrote. "The other is finding a way of coping with life
that does not push love away."
6 Things You Should Quit Doing To
Be More Successful
Quit Stopping – I’ve completed six half marathons (13.1 miles) over the past few
years and each one has been an emotional experience for me. Here’s how it
usually goes…
The gun goes off: “This is great! Today is
gonna be a personal record, I just know it.”
Mile 5: “Am I sane?”
Mile 10: “You want this, ouch, you want this,
ouch.”
Mile 13: “Where’s the dang finish line!!!!”
Finish line: “That. Was. Awesome. When’s the
next one?”
They say that at the very moment you want to
quit, you’re actually almost there. It’s the stupid human in us…we go so far and then our brains take over and
tell us it’s too hard. When did we get the memo that life was supposed to be
easy all the time?
Think right now about something you keep
stopping. You committed to it, but then you suddenly quit because it started to
require a little extra elbow grease. A project at work, a relationship, a
fitness goal. Remember why you started it, then push onward. Because the more
you stop and think about quitting, the longer it’ll take to get to your desired
result. Or worse, you’ll never know what it feels like to reach the finish
line.
Quit Saying Tomorrow – You know the saying, “Yesterday you said tomorrow?” Seriously,
stop that! Delaying or procrastinating around something that you think is important
means one of two things. You’re either scared to start because it means your
life will change or you want it for the wrong reasons (i.e. someone else is
encouraging you to do it).
So yes, that new healthy eating thing you want
to do will be very difficult and possibly unpleasant. But every day you wait to
start is another day you’re not helping yourself. And you keep telling yourself
that you’ll wait until the kids are a certain age before you finish your
degree, but is that really the main reason you’re waiting? Or is it because
studying is not nearly as exciting as all the other options you have right now?
And while you’re at it, why are you donating free money to the gym? They
haven’t seen you in months.
Quit Being A Victim – When people tell me they’re doing something or making certain
choices because they have “no choice,” it makes me want to bang my head on the
table…and then put that on repeat. You have a choice in everything you do.
Barring a few really crazy exceptions, no one holds your hand to the fire on anything. And if
you’re choosing to remain in a place that isn’t positive, you’re victimizing
yourself.
You are not so worthless that you have to keep
dating that person. Obama and the economy are not forcing you to stay in that
career. There are other places you could live. And it’s not your schedule that
prevents you from being healthy.
Our social groups are great for complaining. We
all discuss our problems with our friends and that’s ok. But there are limits.
Everyone gets a few opportunities to complain about a particular hardship, but
if you seek advice and respond with “but I can’t” (said in whiny voice) too
many times, you officially become a victim. Eventually, you’ll have to ask
yourself whether you even want to fix the problem.
Quit Saying Yes – My yoga instructor reminded me recently
that anytime we say yes to something, we’re saying no to something else. So
when you say yes to a happy hour, you’re saying no to <insert your choice of
workout>. When you say yes to a crappy review from your boss, you’re saying
no to getting acknowledged for the great work that was overlooked. When you say
yes to watching pointless reality TV shows, you’re saying no to doing the
dishes. Or if you say yes to staying late at the office, you’re saying no to
your relationship.
It could be you don’t need to entirely quit
saying yes. You may just need to analyze when you’re saying yes and what you’re
trading for it. You might find yourself saying yes to things you don’t even
care about and no to things that could make your life better in some way.
Quit Expecting – He told me that he’s been working for the same company for
his entire career, rising through the ranks and loving it. But recently he
realized he’s hit a wall – he’s had many reviews and each time he meets with
management, they’re not giving him the promotion he knows he’s ready for. My
question to him was, “Have you asked for it?”
It’s very rare for a company to proactively
promote someone at a fast pace. Especially true in older organizations, if you
expect your company to promote you when they feel you’re ready for it, you’ll be
sitting around waiting for about 10 years to reach the next level.
Your boss is like your significant other. Don’t
expect them to read your mind. They’ll only know what you need when you tell
them. If you really have your heart set on something (like a promotion), you
must be vocal about it. If you don’t speak up, you’re leaving the translation
up to them. Expect at your own risk.
Quit Avoiding – Suck it up. We all have things
we don’t want to do, but we have to do them because we’re adults. (Should I
have started the paragraph with, “Dear Congress”?)
I once managed a team responsible for a
corporate-wide project with a lot of moving pieces. There were some majorly
miserable elements to that project and there were some really sexy parts (i.e.
things you put on your resume) too. As I sat with my boss reviewing progress
one day, she asked why I hadn’t finished one particular task (a task that
couldn’t be delegated). I responded with, “It’s boring me!” Her response was,
“Your point?”
Yeah, life doesn’t work that way. You can’t
pluck the fun parts out and leave the tough parts on the table. You take all or
none.
If we didn’t have to work hard to reach
success, we wouldn’t appreciate it. If there’s something you’re putting off
because it’s boring you, it’s hard, physically demanding or tiring…just get up
and get it done. Quit avoiding it. There will be rewards along the way and
there will be a great sense of accomplishment at the end.
