I had always wanted to be rich and successful by running a big company growing up, but I was very confused; my sights were limited. The people around me were all securing themselves financially with a job; therefore, I didn’t know any better; I thought getting a job is the ultimate path to financial success.
Well, I was wrong. When I was 18 years old, I got into self-development and entrepreneurship, and I have learned that getting a job is not scalable, which means that your potential is limited within your organization.
You are also under the control of someone else, which means that you can’t entirely depend on yourself to reach your full potential, and that is also why more and more people today have started their side hustles.
I have read so many books with tons of step by step guides, but I had never seen a step by step guide on achieving success. “Is achieving success really a myth that only the lucky ones could find?” I thought to myself, and then I found this book called ‘Master Your Mind, Design Your Destiny’ by Adam Khoo. It is not a famous book, but it sure deserves to get more attention.
In this book, I have learned a universal formula for success, which consists of 6 major steps:
1. Be very specific about your goal.
The first step to success is to know exactly what you want. Sounds simple right? Sadly, most people never seem to get what they want, simply because they are not clear about what they want in the first place!
When you ask people what do they want in life, most of them will probably say something like this:
“I want to be rich.”“I want to be happy.”“I want to be attractive.”
Well, know this: unless you have a specific goal, there is nothing tangible you can focus your time and energy on. This is why most people find themselves going in all other directions, ending up nowhere.
Unless you have a specific target, you cannot develop an effective strategy (second step) to get there.
How rich do you want to be? The strategy of earning $200,000 is entirely different than the strategy of earning $20,000,000. The moment you clarify your goals, it will make you very focused, it will also become crystal clear to you what you must do to get there.
2. Develop a strategy
The second step in the Ultimate Success Formula is to develop a strategy that will move you towards your outcome. Again, the more specific your goal is, the easier it is to develop an appropriate strategy.
You can have all the drive and energy, but without the right strategy, you will never get what you want. Every outcome is possible, given an effective strategy.
A strategy is like a plan; it guides you to the place you want to be by taking one step at a time.
An excellent way to develop a strategy is to model the strategy of someone you admire, who is also in the place you want to be.
Modeling strategies is a brilliant way. Warren Buffet modeled Benjamin Graham and Philip Fisher, and Kobe Bryant modeled Michael Jordan. They are all very successful in their fields, and their way of achieving success is by modeling.
Modeling doesn’t mean copying someone’s strategy completely; it means to extract the good part that fits you personally from each of the individuals you admire and combine them into your own strategy to success.
3. Take consistent action
The third step is to get yourself to take consistent action, using the strategy you have crafted. This will move you, step by step, towards your goal. Consistent action is what separates thinkers or dreamers from doers.
Many highly educated people know what to do and how to do, but they just never do anything about it. That is why many of them end up as professionals and consultants, working for successful entrepreneurs who had mediocre grades in school. But there is nothing wrong with that if that is what they want to make them fulfilled.
Have you ever asked yourself, ‘I know I am better than they are, but why are they so much more successful?’ You may be smarter, but they take a lot more action, so they get a lot more results! One of the actions they take may well mean their learning rapport/social building skills, teamwork skills, and all necessary tools for any kind of success.
Many people I know seem to have many great ideas and they have the intelligence to be successful, but they lack the driving force to direct their emotions into getting themselves to take action.
They may have a great business idea, but their fear holds them back, they may set inspiring new goals, but they lack the motivation to do what it takes, and they may even get themselves to take action initially, but quit once they experience frustration or anxiety.
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” — Dwayne Johnson
4. Turn failure into feedback.
When you follow your strategy and take consistent action, there are only two possible things that can happen. The first possible outcome is that you experience success by moving towards or achieving your goal, and the second possible outcome, of course, is a failure.
The winners separate themselves from losers not by never experiencing failure, but by having the ability and mindset to turn failure into a learning opportunity. They never stopped trying and moving forward.
All of us will fail at one point in time or another. The more action you take in life, the more likely you are to experience failure. That is why people who experience a lot of success also experience a lot more failure than everyone else.
There are 3 ways people deal with failure:
- Give excuses, blame, and give up.
- Keep trying the same thing over and over again
- Get feedback, change strategy, and take action until you succeed
Which way do you want to choose?
5. An empowering belief system
Our beliefs act as the ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch to our brain and our inner resources. Without the right beliefs in place, none of the other steps in the success formula matter.
Our beliefs determine what we want and what we do when we don’t get what we want. If you have limiting beliefs like, ‘It’s too difficult’, ‘I’m too young’, ‘It’s not possible’ or ‘I am not a good speaker’, it is highly unlikely that you will set inspiring goals in the first place. If you don’t have empowering beliefs, you will not set goals for yourself. And nobody can set goals for you either.
If you believe that you don’t have what it takes to learn, the capability or that ‘it is too difficult,’ then you are more likely to quit than change your strategy and take action until you succeed. So an empowering set of beliefs is truly one of the keys you need to seal in, to set the rest of the formula in motion.
6. Values: The Driving Force
Values are like emotional hot buttons that drive our behavior. They are what we value as important in our lives.
All of us regard values like ‘success,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘security,’ ‘love,’ and ‘happiness’ very differently. It is the way we internally rank these values that determine the choices we make and the actions we take.
Some people are driven towards reaching their goals because of their need to feel secure. Others may be driven by a different value, like freedom.
“I want to earn enough money to be free.”“I want to help as many people as possible.”“I want to be famous and have a high status in society.”
The important thing is that whatever our values are, they must be aligned with our goals. The main reason why most people never feel driven towards their goals is that their values are not aligned, and their values may even be in conflict with their goals.
Six-step success formula:
- Be very specific about your goal
- Develop a strategy
- Take consistent action
- Turn failure into feedback
- An empowering belief system
- Value: The Driving Force
Many people have goals, some even take initial action, but again, what separates the losers, and the winners is the ability to keep going no matter how it might feel emotionally.
Just know what you want specifically, develop a strategy, take action, get feedback, and change your strategy until you succeed.
Carrying the winner’s mindset, we can achieve anything as long as we keep trying.