The 10 Principles for Success in Anything

In this article, I cover the 10 principles for success in anything.

Tony Robbins says that 80% of success in anything is down to your mindset. The remaining 20% consists of the specific skills you use and the steps that you take. So this article focuses on the mindset principles for success.

As you learn about these principles for success, you may discover that you are doing some of these already. If that’s the case, give yourself a pat on the back and then work on the remaining ones to the best of your ability.

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1. Have Realistic Goals and Expectations

Everybody wants a quick fix. Advertisers and marketers reinforce the belief that there is a quick fix for everything. People begin to believe this and set unrealistic goals.

Product testimonials often provide evidence of a quick fix. However, these results are rarely typical and often come from people that have already gained experience and knowledge prior to embarking on this new product.

So it’s important that you set realistic goals, especially process goals. These are goals that are under your control. Focus on long-term goals, long-term results and really master the process. The results will then come.

Now, those crazy goals do have a place. They are part of your long-term vision. This could be where you want to be in 3, 5, 10 or even 20 years time.

2. Take Massive and Consistent Action

Success in anything requires hard work. Again advertisers and marketers will tell you otherwise, but the truth is that you have to work hard. If that wasn’t the case, everyone would be highly successful! However, you can enjoy this hard work and let it help you grow as a person. After working hard, reward yourself. What gets rewarded gets repeated.

Watch out for perfectionism. It’s okay to make mistakes and do a reasonable job initially and learn as you go along. Avoid waiting for the perfect time to start something. There will never be a perfect time!

Be consistent. Whether you want to lose weight, grow a business or get six-pack abs, you will need to put in consistent effort to make progress. You won’t get a six-pack by going to the gym once!

3. Have an Open Mind and Be Willing to Learn

The three most dangerous words in the English language are “I know that”

When you say “I know that”, you automatically block the chance to learn something new or a different and more effective way to do it. Be humble and put your ego aside. Whatever your level of success there will always be more to learn. Instead, have the belief and attitude that there is always something more to know and learn.

Create a good balance between competence and confidence. if you are highly confident with little skill, you will take massive action and make tons of mistakes. Some of your mistakes might negatively affect other people. However, if you are highly competent, but with low confidence in what you’re doing, then you are less likely to act and others won’t get the benefit of your skills and experience.

4. Learn from Failures, but Don’t Dwell on Them

Failures, setbacks, struggles, adversity and hard times are part of life. Every successful person has failed many many times. You have to fail to succeed! Learn from your failures and interpret failure as feedback and part of the process of learning. Failure tells you what not to do and you have to fail to make progress.

Ask any successful person how many times they’ve failed? They will have probably lost count, because they have failed lots, learnt from their failures and then forgotten about them.

5. Change Your Approach, but Don’t Give Up

If something doesn’t work then change your approach. Things will happen that are outside your control, things will happen that you didn’t expect. Be flexible when this happens and change your approach.

I once heard that the definition of insanity is when you keep doing the same things repeatedly whilst expecting a different result. So it’s important to change your approach as required, but don’t give up!

6. Have Patience

Focus on your actions rather than the results. You will make a lot of mistakes and learn from these. You might struggle at times and not fully understand or get things. That’s all part of the learning process.

With anything new, you’re going to spend time learning and trying out new things. This will seem like dead and non-productive time but it is so valuable.

Don’t compare yourself with others. Everyone has different skills and experience. Everyone is at a different starting place on their journey to success. Sometimes, the results can take a year or even five years to come to fruition.

So it’s important to focus on the long-term. Keep your eyes on the horizon and this will give you the motivation to keep going.

Now I don’t find it easy to be patient, but here is a great example of where patience and effort really paid off for me. When I first started my hypnotherapy practice, I wrote web pages covering all the different things that I could help people with. These included pages for Anxiety, Insomnia, Quitting Smoking, Weight Loss, Eating Disorders and many other issues. Each page was around 1000 words and many of them took between 3 and 5 hours to write. I often doubted whether the time and effort was worth it.

After about 6 months, these pages started to rank really well in Google and I started getting a steady stream of inquiries and clients as a result of this effort. These pages continue to generate more inquiries and probably will do well into the future.

So it didn’t seem like it was worth it at the time, but the results and benefits of this work are now clearly apparent. So it’s important to focus on the long term and trust that the actions you are taking now are going to help you achieve long-term success.

7. Be Honest, Help Others and Maintain Integrity

You can be successful without this, especially in business. However, you won’t be happy. In the back of your mind, perhaps unconsciously, you’ll have a fear that you’ll get found out. So it is always best to be honest with other people, especially people that are helping you such as friends, colleagues, a coach or business partner. Help others as well. For me, this always feels good and you tend to get back what you give.

Know the values and principles that you stand for and keep these at the forefront of your mind when taking action. This goes especially for values such as integrity, honesty, and trust.

8. Take Responsibility for Your Success

Success is up to you. Whatever happens, take responsibility, especially for how you react to situations. Taking responsibility gives you choice and control and makes you more open to learning and finding ways to improve things.

9. Focus on Getting Better and Better

This is all about improving yourself and your craft. It’s about investing in yourself to learn and grow. It’s ultimately about mastering the skill, the process and the activities required for success. Take the time to get better and better and focus on constant and never-ending improvement.

10. Listen to Your Intuition or Gut Instinct

Have you ever had the experience of doing something and knowing it’s not quite right? Or something making complete sense that it seemed exactly like the right thing to do.

It’s important in these cases to trust your gut instinct and your intuition. Here is a personal example.

When I started my hypnotherapy business, all the marketing experts and many of my colleagues told me that you have to be active on social media. This didn’t make sense to me, as people search on Google to find solutions to problems. They don’t use social media. I trusted my gut instinct, focussed on writing great content that would do well on Google and that worked for me.

So trust your gut instinct. If it feels right and you feel committed to doing that course of action then do it! However, monitor your progress along the way. Sometimes, what you feel is right may not be right in practice, so it’s important to look for real evidence.

So these are my 10 principles for success in anything. You can apply these principles for success to health goals, business or career goals, even hobbies, and sports. Once you start applying these principles to your life you really will start to notice success becoming easier for you.

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul