As I started the research for this article, I imagined I would be compiling a list of the common habits of some of the most successful people. Googling “habits of successful people” yielded the expected articles of the same nature: ’10 Habits of Successful People’, 33 Daily Habits Highly Successful People Have and even, 50 habits of Successful People.
I guess my expectation was to find those practices that most people have in common: Waking up at 4:30 every day, Meditation etc. – Emulate those habits and bam! I am on success street! Right? Well not quite.
The Trap I Fell In To
It’s not uncommon for us to copy the people we admire. People who have achieved great things, like: Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo Da Vinci. We want to know their secret ingredient. Their routines and their habits. After all Aristotle said:
You are what you do repeatedly – So your excellence isn’t an act, its habit’
Therefore, we get excited when we find out that Tim Cook gets up a 4:30am or that many famous people swear by daily mediation. Even that top CEOs read more than the average person. And of course, we should all be exercising and taking cold showers. That’s why videos with “I tried X’s routine for 30 days and It changed my life’ are so popular.
But as I read the lists of habits, I thought about my own successes and failures in trying to implement many of these into my life. I started to ask whether these were actually taking me in the direction I wanted?
The Deeper Reason We Fail
Whilst these practices can be important for living a better life and they can bring you positive results, oftentimes they don’t last. Importantly they don’t feel like they bring us closer to the success we were after in the first place – even when we maintain a good level of consistency. If we fall of the wagon, we tell ourselves that ” I need to work harder” or that “I need to be more consistent”. These are the reasons why I am not getting the success I wanted. ” I should stick at this for a least 2 years, even if it’s painful, I’ve got to have grit”.
The problem is we fail to look at the deeper reasons why things are not working.
The book that helped me identify this is ‘The 7 habits of Highly Successful People’ By Stephen Covey. As Covey may have put it, I had a ‘paradigm shift’ in the way I saw the value in these practices.
When I first looked up the summaries for this book, I thought it was just another 7 habits to add my every growing daily habits to follow. But in the interest of doing thorough research, I decided to actually read the book. What most interested me was Coveys importance on developing habits that improve our ‘Character Ethic’ rather than our ‘Personality Ethic’, in order to live a successful and happy life.
Character Ethic involves cultivating habits that practice Integrity, Humility, Courage, Justice etc – in other words the way we want to see ourselves. Think of the virtues that Greek philosophers or figures like Benjamin Franklin tried to live by.
Whereas, the Personality Ethic focuses on improving your public image, the way you deal with people, your skills and techniques to get out of people what you want – essentially the way we want others to see us.
So many times, I find myself trying to portray some image of success by embodying the habits of successful people. But I never dig deeper and question whether these habits were in line with who I want to be – with my values and what I find important.
It’s not that these habits may necessarily bad, or completely out of line with my values – some are probably ones we should all follow. But the driving force behind them is superficial and weak. I don’t do them because of who I want to be, but because it’s what I expect out of a ‘successful person’. Even if I spend years finding ways to persist – because I recognise the importance of grit and consistency – I might find that I have been working extremely hard to achieve something I never truly wanted.
As Covey puts it:
It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”
Stephen R. Covey – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Finding Your Values
If you are like me, you may be unsure exactly what your values you are. Or you may in the process of re-evaluating them. If so, here are couple practical tips from the book:
1. Write you own Eulogy.
Describe what each of these people would say about us at our funeral: a close family member, close friend, work colleague and someone who is part of an of some organisation we attend.
We can then reflect on what we hypothetically wanted them to have said and whether those things match up. It gives us some Idea of how we wish to be seen by those closest to us, which often better match how we wish to see ourselves.
2. Write a Mission Statement
After identifying those things that are truly important to us, we can then put together a mission statement that both clarifies to us our values and also acts as a reminder. It can include things such as: plan tomorrows work today, never compromise with honesty, sharing food for friends and family is one the greatest ways to spend time, learn something new each day and give yourself time to recognise it. Don’t get busy to avoid doing the hard work.
Final Thoughts
So next time you start some new habit that apparently ‘every successful is doing’ – ask yourself are these actions and the results I want in line with what I value in life.
Behind the Blog
“In this section I discuss my own thoughts on how I wrote this blog. What I did well and why, what didn’t go so well and where think I can improve. It is mostly for me but let me know if you get value from it“.
What I thought went well?
Well, I have written another post, so that is a win. I discovered a great book, which is changed how I approach self-development. Also, I worked on the post throughout the week, researching and writing some of my first draft by Friday in time to upload it on Sunday.
What didn’t go so well
This post took much more time than I anticipated. Mostly because I got sucked into the research of reading the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. Also, writing it took much more time because of I failed to organise my notes in an effective manner. I just highlighted text and then flicked through my highlights on my kindle. It was difficult to draw meaning from these and I had to back and re-read passages to gain some context. Lastly, I worked on it at random times.
What I will try to improve for next week?
- Plan my research better. If it involves a book figure out a schedule to have it finished in time for a draft by Friday
- Structure my book notes – Create an Evernote Notebook of book notes and give context to each note I write and how it applies to my post – it will save time later.
- Schedule more regular slots for working on this blog.
