Success is a moving target. So instead of chasing it, here are the 15 success mantras to be successful in whatever you do
Do you want to be successful in whatever you want to be doing? No one can guarantee it, but following these ten success mantras will help.
When I started my first job in 2004, my pay was ₹8000 per month, and after deducting professional tax, the amount that got credited in my bank account was ₹7950. I had a random thought of how about making ten times the same amount.
Fast forward to 2016, and I can invest ₹50,000 each month as capital towards my equity portfolio for educating my blog readers about investing in the equity market to build wealth.
My success target has moved a few notches higher.
For some ₹50k may be a success for others, 5 million may not be enough.
Success is a moving target, and so instead of trying to chase a moving target, here are the ten success mantra you can implement.
1. Don’t Compare with Others
If you want to be successful, you should stop comparing it to others and try to compare it to yourself.
It doesn’t matter how much and what others have achieved. What matters is what you have learned from what others have shared about their achievements? Moreover, how you put it in action.
The biggest competition for you today was you yesterday.
If you can improve your ability by 1% each day or each week or even each month, you will always be better at whatever you are doing, and you will still be successful.
Apart from that, when you compare with others, you will try to be someone else instead of being yourself.
2. Invest Time and Energy wisely
It’s not about investing your money. It’s about investing in…
- Your education
- Being more productive
- In the right tools
- Relationships (business as well as personal)
- Your family
You may or may not be able to become better than your yesterday every time. Still, if you invest in your education with the right attitude, you can always look to beat your yesterday, which is more important than anything else.
3. Being Average is not Enough
You may be working hard, but in the 21st century, you should be working smart over working hard. We have all the resources at our disposal and so working hard or even being an average is not enough.
If you are not good enough at something, outsource and get it done the way it should be done instead of you doing it all yourself to be an average.
You can be working hours to get an averagely good logo for your company, but it makes a lot more sense to hire a designer on sites like Upwork.com or 99Designs.com and get a professional logo designed for your blog.
4. Knows Less is More
Are you trying too many things?
Reduce your focus on a few great things overall good things.
As an entrepreneur, there can be so many social media websites where you can focus your marketing efforts, and it could be that none of them are working for you, or all of them are just working for you.
Drop all but one marketing channel and focus all your time, energy, and money on that one channel. Focus on being best at it and, once mastered, move over to the next one.
Take one step at a time and aim for less. Channelize all your time and effort in one direction, and it is the best success mantras of all time.
Source: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
5. Be Ahead of the Learning Curve
Always want to get things done slightly better than what they managed; it is one of the success mantras of highly successful people.
Working on getting better customer experience or trying to get a better ROI for a business is essential. However, the most important of all is feedback from real customers instead of the entrepreneur himself being the only customer. Being the first customer to your product always helps but not the only customer to the product.
As a B.Tech in IT and still able to learn to trade and invest in the stock market is because – I always like to remain ahead of the learning curve.
I like to learn things and trading, and investing in the market is something where I read that 90% of Indian retail investors get it wrong. It made me try it to see how everyone can get it wrong.
I will still consider myself a student and am still learning the process of investing. Again, I can generate returns on my investment that are better than many mutual funds’ fund manager who is considered to be financial experts.
6. Be Health Wiser
Imagine yourself as a jockey who has found a racehorse who will win you every race he runs.
What would you do for such a horse?
Provide him all the amenities he needs. Adequate rest time, best possible rest area or stable, proper time of practice, hire professionals to look after him, provide him the right food to eat, and everything that you can imagine?
So your body is that horse for you and you are the jockey of life. You need to take care of your health, everything that is required so you can win all the races that you run in your life.
7. Being not so Smart Student
If you are smart, intelligent, have secured good marks in college, doing reasonably well in a job means it will be tough for you to follow any success mantras.
It’s so true.
If you are consistently doing well from your school days and have shown your smartness and intelligence, people start praising you. It can make you unknowingly egoistic about your abilities, which means you can piss off people around you.
As an employee, you may do great even if you are pissing off your colleagues, as long as you are not pissing off your managers. However, as an entrepreneur, it is never an individual game, and pissing off your colleagues or partners may not take you very far.
College dropouts becoming top-notch entrepreneurs all over the world is not merely a coincidence.
8. Avoid Great Paying Job
If you are doing very well in the post, it means when you quit, your benchmark for success will be set that much higher.
A person with ₹25k as a monthly salary can consider being a freelancer, but a person with ₹100k as salary may need a complete business plan to quit his job.
We can be tempted to think that a person with ₹100k as salary can be financially more comfortable trying entrepreneurship, but that is more often not the case because of social pressure.
If your colleague and even juniors are buying cars and flats, you cannot remain aloof accumulating money for the business you want to be trying. You may want to drive that excellent car as well.
9. Manage Finance
The unit of measurement of success is money.
Every successful entrepreneur should be able to manage finance efficiently. Cut unwanted expenses and be able to foresee the right area to invest.
You cannot be penny wise and pound foolish and yet be a successful entrepreneur.
10. The Right Attitude
Last but the most critical success mantra is to have the right attitude. An entrepreneur works today to get paid later.
At times good writers don’t end up being great bloggers, and it could be because of the attitude. As a blogger, your approach should be to help your readers, but if you don’t have the mindset of serving your audience, your articles will get you readers and may not get you the community that your blog may need.
As an entrepreneur, you have to have an attitude to serve before you are being served.
There is a small test you can perform to know if you have the right attitude or not. If you have projects or ideas as half-finished, you may not have the right approach to be a successful entrepreneur because it’s not about what you have thought or has started, but it’s about those that have made it to the finish line.
11. Hate the Status Quo
“Chal try Karte Hain,” or let’s try it is something very common among entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs don’t opt for tried and tested formulae. So they are keen to experiment with new things rather than accept the status quo.
The best example is when everyone is looking to get ahead in the rat race to get a job, entrepreneurs look at it differently and try not to be part of it.
Hurdles and challenges should motivate even more. If an opinion is — it can’t be done, it drives them more towards getting it done.
12. Unwillingness to be Counter-Productive
Entrepreneurs cannot just sit idle or keep doing nothing or, at times, cannot keep doing unproductive things.
Don’t judge it wrong that they are dull and boring, or they only work and don’t party. What I meant is they cannot be kept idle and need to keep themselves busy at things they want to be doing.
They are, at times, workaholics or restless. Restlessness can also mean they may have achieved a lot, but then they are always thinking about what could be executed next and not rest and enjoy the current achievements
13. Passionate & Opportunist at the Same Time
Every calamity is an opportunity.
One of the success mantras is to look at calamities as an opportunity to make an impact on society more than making money out of it. Remember, it is more about the impact than the money-making opportunity.
It’s the passion that will keep you going for the opportunities as and when they come.
14. Be Open-Minded
If things can go wrong, they will go wrong. Entrepreneurship is all about failures and being open to it.
They want to take charge of everything or are a control freak. Most of the successful entrepreneurs of the world are often called a control freak.
Failure in entrepreneurship is inevitable. However, one can’t keep moaning about it. Learn from the mistakes and move forward and get passionate about the next opportunity coming your way.
15. Willing to Bounce Back
The world’s most successful entrepreneurs are college dropouts, and I am sure it is not just a mere coincidence. Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and the list can continue.
We may tend to think, and we need to be a dropout or fired from jobs to be a great entrepreneur. However, I like to read it a little differently. You may be a dropout or fired from a job, but you need to bounce back from that position as well.
