Success Advice
7 Not-So-Typical Success Tips That Challenge The Status Quo
With the internet, it’s easy to get any kind of advice on success out there. Bloggers are sharing their life stories. Successful people are dishing out lessons and heck, newbies all around are eager to churn out anything to supposedly help others.But it begs to be asked, “Does it really work?” To put it straight, no it doesn’t work as easily as they read. It then begs to be asked too, “If it’s so easy, why aren’t all of us successful?”
There are many nuances when it comes to success. These may be quotes and structured advice too, but I’ve morphed them realistically to hopefully inspire you more.
Here are 7 not so typical tips for your success:
1. “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”
The quote is by Chuck Close and I love how it easily trumps all ideas surrounding inspiration.
I personally think that people rely too much on inspiration. We think that we need inspiration to get started on something, to overcome obstacles or even learn something about ourselves.
Inspiration is all good, but at the end of the day, it’s doing the work itself that makes you accomplish something!
So stop trying so hard to seek inspiration. Stop waiting around for some grand feeling that you think you need to do work. Just, do the work already.
“You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life”. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
2. Passion is not the golden ticket to solve all your problems.
Everybody is talking about the importance of passion today. Apparently, if you want success, you need to love what you do, follow your heart or however you want to call it.
Passion definitely helps to make sense out of your work. It can even make you feel happy more than usual, but it’s not going to solve all your problems.
You’re still going to feel tired. You’re going to worry from time to time. You’re also going to fail and fall hard.
Why? Because that’s just life. The world doesn’t deliver everything to you on a silver platter just because you have passion. If it was so easy, then everybody with passion would be in a thriving, successful business and leading a happy life everyday.
Yes, get passion, but remember that you need to go through the grind too. Everybody does. Toughen up and prepare yourself for the work, especially when things don’t go your way.
3. Don’t ask for help. Give it a try yourself because someone out there did it first.
With the internet today, finding the answer is so easy. Everything is a Google search away. If you want to ask for help, you can connect with anybody via social media. If you want a coach or mentor, there’s an entire field to it waiting to bestow its services on you.
But have you stopped to think that you can do it yourself first? Must we all really be held by the hand? Must we always go through some tutorial first?
Think about this, for every invention out there, somebody went out of his or her way to get it done first. They thought of it themselves. They held on to their vision even though nobody knew or cared about it. They literally couldn’t get help on it.
What is stopping you then? Give it a try yourself first. Go in blind. That is being resourceful and independent. You’ll grow from it as you realize how capable you truly are.
4. You absolutely must feel fearful, anxious and downright scared to get out of your comfort zone.
We all know we need to get out of our comfort zone. That’s where the magic happens apparently.
But there is a clash of ideas here because of passion. Think about it, we think we need to feel on top of the world in order to know that we can make the right decision. We want to feel inspired, feel like our heart is talking to us or feel like we’re aligned with the universe.
Are you really getting out of your comfort zone that way? Or are you just making excuses?
Popular blogger James Altucher says he only hits publish when he’s scared. He wrote before about how he chooses to be vulnerable in his posts and even wants to BLEED in them. I try to do the same myself, and I noticed I get a bigger reaction when I do.
If you want magic to happen, then start to embrace the fear. Feel scared. Get anxious. Be unsure too. Don’t cower from them. Break through them and just do it. You’ll be surprised what not-so-positive feelings can bring you.
5. Stop working. Drop it all and take a break.
Sometimes, you just need to take a break and spare some time for yourself. That is how you get the answers you’re looking for.
It may sound paradoxical, but it’s true. Working too hard and too much may make you feel too disillusioned from the bigger picture. Gordon Ramsay of Hells Kitchen even recommended this in his AMA.
So be willing to take a break. Don’t be scared to go travel, meet people and start asking yourself the some honest questions. The answer will come to you then.
“Taking time to do nothing often brings everything into perspective”. – Doe Zantamata
6. It’s okay to quit.
And hence that overrides the idea of never giving up in whatever it is you do in life. Sometimes, you just have to quit. You have to give up.
The key is to know when you have to stop. Seth Godin calls it “The Dip”.
This will save you a lot of time and effort. It can even save your entire future as you choose to opt out of a field and go into another.
Indeed, when everything is not going right, go left.
7. How you do anything is how you do everything.
Would you believe me if I said that the amount of effort you put in to getting a six-pack would also result in financial abundance in your business? Or how about clearing your inbox everyday would ensure less confusion in your relationships with others?
It may sound pretty out there… but it works that way. It’s a positive effect that snowballs all over your life.
It all starts in the mind though. If you would just put in that tiny little effort to give a crap about the tiny little things in all areas of your life, you’ll start to see a change and get the results you want. And it won’t stop as you gain more pride in the things you do.
That is how you create good habits in your life. So you want results? Start small. Take pride in yourself by taking care of every little thing in your life. Soon enough, you’d eventually create many amazing things.