5 Rules For Finding Your Secrets To Success
Do you agree with Mr. Powell?
Personally, I agree and disagree.
He’s got it right with the latter part of his quote: success requires preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
But he’s wrong about there being no secrets to success.
I believe there are secrets. In a way, that is.
This makes me think of Socrates. You know what Socrates would say about now?
He would ask, “What are secrets?”
Then I would have to define the word “secret” to support my statement about there being secrets to success.
I would answer his question with: “A secret is something not known to others.” Then I would have to defend my point of view, to which Socrates may or may not agree (or leave me with another question).
Sorry, getting caught up with the visual of debating with Socrates…
So, how are there secrets to success while achieving success is not a secret?
Let me explain…
I believe that there are secrets to success but it is not a secret for discovering these secrets to success. By following the known ways to success—like preparation, hard work and learning from failure—you will discover the “secrets” to success for you, the individual.
A bit of paradox this may seem to some, other’s will get it.
See, you and I, and everyone else, posses the “secrets” to achieving success. Like Mr. Powell, most of us know that we must work hard and keep going to reach success. The thing is, not all of us truly understand what this looks like, or we might not be using this information to reach success, or maybe we don’t realize that these secrets, that are in plain sight, must be combined in a way that will produce success and that each require a bit of finagling to figure out what the secret to our success will be.
Yes I know, I’m getting a bit esoteric on this, but that’s (partly) been on purpose. I’m setting you up for what’s coming.
Mr. Powell was right: preparation, hard work and failure are integral to success. But the “how” of applying for you is the big secret that lingers over us all.
So basically, the secret to success is different in what it looks like but the same in how to reveal it.
Paradox or not, what it comes down to is you must figure out your secrets to success.
So how do you figure out your secrets to success?
You start preparing, working hard, and learning from your failures!
Cheeky you are, you might think right now. But don’t fret, I’m not finished. So please, bear with me, I’m gonna bring this home with some concrete examples of what this looks like.
But first, I need to share the fundaments of reaching success. These are universal to all and to neglect them is to handicap your results. While it might be possible to reach success by foregoing some of these fundamentals, you will only be making it harder than it needs to be.
The Fundamentals of Becoming
Successful In Life As A Human Being
1. Health must come first.
You will never become the best version of yourself, or reach the greatest results you are capable of reaching, if you neglect your health.
It’s as simple as that.
When you are healthy, you can focus and your work is more productive. You get more done in less time. Then, and this is what people fail to realize, once you reach success… you get to freaking enjoy it!
Why, please tell me, would you want to be a millionaire but sick, feeble, overweight and unable to enjoy your wealth?
Make health your first priority and success will come easier and more abundant: avoid processed foods, exercise regularly, get sunlight, utilize rest, and invest in your relationships.
This is first and foremost. If you don’t have health, you have nothing.
“So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.” -A. J. Reb Materi
2. You must constantly read and pursue knowledge.
Reading is the habit of the successful. There is no substitute for it. To be successful, you must develop a curious mind that is always absorbing information.
It’s like Will said in Good Will Hunting, “You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library.”
After dropping out of college, I soon learned the power of this quote. Reading is the reason I’ve reached any level of success in my life. I attribute it to every single thing I’ve ever done that has brought me money, joy and happiness. Reading was alway the epicenter of these efforts. Always.
(I’m not suggesting college is bad—it can be bad for some people, good for others. I’m just highlighting the power of reading.)
3. You must start and finish.
To be successful, you must not just know how to take action and finish what you start, but you have to be doing it all the time. While there are times you should quit a project, the majority you should finish even if the prospect of financial reward or acclaim isn’t there. The act of finishing is reward itself.
The more you start and finish, the easier it becomes to do both. And let me tell you something about success in life: it’s all about starting and finishing things.
If you cannot finish what you start, you will never get rich or become the best you can be.
Taking action is integral to figuring out the “secret” that is your path to success. It’s how you learn from our failures so you can iterate and get better. How can you learn from you mistakes if you never make any?! (That was rhetorical.)
Act, fail, act, succeed. What real life actually looks like: act, fail, act, fail, act, fail, act, fail, act, fail, act, fail, succeed, fail, act, fail, succeed, act, fail, succeed, succeed.
This is what the path to success looks like. It is an ugly mess of ups, downs and uncertainty. Only the persons that are devoted and numb to the stings of the harsh process will see it through.
Your path to success will be different from everyone else, and no matter what you do, you can never be fully prepared. The only thing to do is journey through it.
The journey is what prepares you, what unveils your secrets.
4. You must learn… then apply.
Failure is only useful if you learn from it and then apply what you learned to get better results the next time. (The same is true of any knowledge: you must use it.)
Never blame others, or the economy, or whatever. You must take full responsibility for the results you get in life by always asking yourself “why” you failed.
Never, ever, ever attribute blame.
This is a great policy to life that will have far-sweeping implications in your personal life, and as far as success goes, it’s absolutely necessary.
You cannot learn if you cannot accept the results of your actions (or inactions). You are the reason you have—or fail to have—what you have in life. Never, ever, ever forget that.
5. You must use money well.
To be successful, you must learn how to use money well. And this doesn’t mean just stuffing it under the mattress or in a low-yield savings account either.
It means you must invest it when necessary, spend it when necessary, and give it away when necessary.
Money is a tool that will work for you or against you. When it works for you, it will bring you wealth and prosperity. When it work against you, it will suck you dry of every last penny.
If you don’t learn the principles of money, and the Science of Getting Rich (book recommendation), then you will never be able to achieve lasting success.
Money is more important than people realize. Money can do great or terrible things, depending on who has it.
Never apologize for the getting of money. The greatest thing you can do as a human being is acquire as much wealth as possible so you can use it to make the world a better place.
I remember a quote but I forget who said it. It went something like this: “Having more money brings out more of who you are.”
If you are a miserable, selfish prick, you are going to be more of a miserable, selfish prick when you have more money.
If you are a caring, kind person who enjoys helping people, you are going to be able to care and help more people when you have more money.
And really, anyone that does not desire to attain resources for their family should be ashamed. To me, this is selfish and self-serving. To criticize money is to center the universe around you, the individual.
News flash: life is a group effort.
Your loved ones deserve your full effort in attaining as much money as possible so you can better protect and provide for them and so they all can benefit from the safety and opportunity that money provides.
Earn your money honestly and spend it honestly. Then never apologize or feel guilty for getting and having it.
Learn the principles of investing, business, and personal finance.
Invest and save as much of your money as possible. The richest men in the world got rich by buying and holding, not by buying and selling.
5. Consistency.
You must stay consist with the principles above, including this one. You must consistently stay consistent.
The thing about consistency is you can stay consistent with just about anything and success will almost always come in some form. This is why consistently is the most rewarding of all the attributes for success: because it’s the most difficult part of being successful and fewer people will do it.
The times you feel like giving up, when your motivation is waning, when the future is unclear, these are the times you must plow through.
In life and success, it’s the tortoise that wins the race.
I’ll tell you something about “overnight success.” The average overnight success is 10 years in the making. Very, very few people achieve success overnight the way people think (and like to glamorize).
Most people that have earned success have done so by working consistently for years. In short, they deserve to be exactly where they are.
Back to Socrates
Earlier, I claimed that Mr. Powell was wrong and that I believe there are secrets to success.
So where does that leave us?
Well, the principles above are not secrets or ground-breaking by any means. I’m sure you’ve “heard” them all and you probably agree with and see the practicability of each one.
So where does the “secret” of success come in? The secret you must discover is how the principles above—and the principles of getting rich—apply to your life. The only way you figure this out is by applying the principles of success and getting in the trenches and doing the work. From there, your secret to success will unveil itself in time as you work, learn, work, fail, work, iterate.
No one ever knows how they will get rich before they get rich. Even if they have an “idea,” it is never exactly they envisioned it. Most companies (and people) pivot their product multiple times before finding their breakthrough success.
The same holds true for you and I. We all have a “secret” to success that will only reveal itself by doing the work and applying the principles of success listed above.
To unlock our “secret,” we must go after it. Each time we take action and learn from the process, a little bit closer to our secret we get.
Apply the principles of health, knowledge, starting and finishing, learning and applying, using money well, and staying consistent with it all and you will discover the secret that is your path to success.
You don’t know what your path to success will look like, no one does, and that is why it’s “your secret” to success.
And that, Socrates, is my explanation to the secrets, and not secrets, to success.
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