The hot and cold approach doesn’t work long-term, but it’s familiar. Someone has a revelation and gets committed to changing their life — they commit to working hard. After a few months, the shine and excitement wear off, and the real growth work begins. It’s at this point that a lot of success-seekers stop doing the work.

If you’re going to experience exponential growth in your life, you’ll need a sustainable path to success. There is no finish line, and becoming an elite leader means you set goals that feel impossible. If you’re hitting every one of your goals, you’re not swinging hard enough. Becoming an elite 1% action-taking leader means employing and implementing optimization strategies that lead to growth and success. Here are three techniques elite leaders use to do the work and develop lasting success.

1. They make their personal growth a primary priority

The call of the world and the things on your to-do list can easily dominate your time. It’s not uncommon to go throughout your entire day and realize you haven’t worked on any of your goals. You’ve spent a whole day doing things for others. Elite leaders understand that to have enough energy and capacity to help others, they must first be complete. They become elite by making their goals, desires, and ambitions the primary priority each day. 

Elite leaders start their days working on the personal habits that help them get closer to their goals. They start each day focused on themselves so that they can fill up their self-care gas tank. It’s from this whole place that they can be better for others in their life. 

Stop letting clients, family, friends, and strangers on the Internet drain you. If it’s been weeks since you spent any time working on what lights you up, it’s time to make a shift. The journey to creating success should be filled with many fun YOU moments. Other people’s priorities and demands of your time and energy don’t have to be something you follow if you don’t want to. Be sure to take care of your needs and goals first, and then think about helping others.

“The swiftest way to triple your success is to double your investment in personal development.” – Robin Sharma

2. They cultivate self-motivation and use it to do the work consistently. 

Life would be fantastic if things magically worked out as planned as soon as we started pursuing our goals. Often, challenging circumstances arise, and it’s at that point, we need the motivation to stay focused on the path to success.

Elite leaders understand that motivation has to come from within. While there can be a catalyst of motivation in your life — the long-term driving motivation comes from a commitment to doing the work no matter what. Don’t put your motivation in the hands of other people or external circumstances. Success requires that you stay hungry, you do the work even when you don’t feel like it, and you use each experience along the way to fuel your fire. 

If you can’t learn how to tap into your internal sources of self-motivation, you’ll get stuck when your eternal motivation sources aren’t available. Become an elite leader by being your motivation source and consistently doing the work even when you’re not feeling one hundred percent. 

3. They use progress as a measuring stick of success and confirmation of their path.

When you think about what success means, your mind defaults to the end result. You think about the weight loss, better relationships, more sales, a better job, and all of the fun accomplishments you can achieve. However, if you measure success simply by the end result, you’ll end up frustrated because major goals take time to accomplish. As you do the work and don’t get to the results soon enough, you’ll get tempted to quit. 

You should consider measuring success by the progress you make as you put in the work. Have you lost ten pounds of your forty-pound goal? Celebrate! Have you gotten three new clients in your business? Cheer. Progress is what our subconscious craves more than the result. It shows us that we’re getting closer to those significant goals. Elite leaders celebrate the process and use it to build up their self-motivation. 

“Failure is success in progress.” – Albert Einstein

It’s a great time to pursue success and become an elite leader at what you do and want to accomplish. The path to success starts with your mindset. Optimizing your mind gives you all the fuel you’ll need to take action. Don’t settle for a good enough life. Shatter the barriers in your mind and claim the wonderful life that you deserve.