What makes untalented people successful, and talented people fail in life? It is not uncommon to see the kids who were smart in class ending up no where, and yet those who were bone heads end up living luxuriously. Why is this the case? In short, how can you be successful in your life?
In order to be successful in life you need to find something that makes you feel fulfilled in life, turn it into a career, then breakdown the qualifications of what it would take to reach that career. Finally, turn those qualifications into habits that you can tie into your everyday life.
Of course, I have a few studies that I’d like to discuss that goes into detail on just how to achieve this.
So, let’s get started
What Makes You Truly Successful In Life?
What makes you truly successful is fusing productive activities that draw you closer to your life goals with your everyday habits. This will mean that just by living your days as usual, you will always be walking closer to your goals.
So basically, habits. Habits is what makes you truly successful in life.
There are things that people find fulfilling. Yes, many people want money. Others want an attractive body. Others want to travel. Meanwhile, we even have people who want to meet a special someone, and just grow a small farm with them.
However, what people want are experiences that they find fulfilling.
The reason why they want the money, the body, and the travel is so they can get what they really want. Fulfillment.
I am not about to conclude that you must ignore those “small things” and focus on the fulfillment. Instead, I am here to teach you the trick to getting those things.
Habits.
The first step is to discover what makes you fulfilled. People, solitude, experiences, etc. Just go online, or Instagram, and look at what you gravitate to. Travel stuff, family channels, or could it be that you only ever watch writing tutorials?
The second step is breaking this down into actions. When you find what makes you fulfilled, you should find the career, or jobs that will allow you to live those lives. Then, do research on how to get those careers and jobs.
The third step is to turn into habits the qualifications that are necessary. It’s that simple. Take the qualifications that you will need to have that job, and turn them into daily habits that you do. Soon, you will find you have reached your goals without trying too much.
However, what does this have to do with talented students not making it in life, and average students making it?
What Are The 7 Steps To Success?
1. Find What Fulfills You
The first step to being truly successful is to discover what makes you feel fulfilled and content with your life, thus what you would like more of in your life.
The first thing that you need to know before you can be successful is that you do not discover or stumble upon the perfect life.
You create it.
There are many proposed differences between talented, and untalented people. The biggest difference between talented people, and untalented people is that talented people are those who created their skills because of a factor in their early life.
For example, you may meet a guy who is a great swimmer. He is the best in the whole class. But then it turns out that his parents worked at a gym. Also, ever day after school, he had to go to their gym and wait for them for hours. He spent this time in the pool. So, that’s why he is so good at swimming.
Most of the time, you will discover that is how it is with most talented people.
They have been doing the specific task since they were kids. If they are a math genius, they’ve been doing Math since they were 4. And on, and on it goes.
However, some of them did not do that thing because they found it fulfilling. They did it because they were told they were talented at it so they stuck with it.
When they leave school, they find that they have no direction, nor any motivation to try anything else. Especially when they discover that their talent is something they do not find fulfilling.
To be successful, you need to find what fulfills you.
You can look at your search history on your phone to find what you would like to try.
However, what’s always better is personal experiences.
Go out and experience what most people say they love. Try the most popular hobbies, then slowly narrow down to the things that you genuinely enjoyed.
Then you will discover the things that you can do over and over again without fail.
However, there is another way you can discover what makes you fulfilling
2. Use The 4 Spheres
You could use the 4 spheres assessment to assess your life, and find what fulfills you.
There are 4 action spheres that all humans have which can allow us to fulfill our hierarchy of needs as defined by Maslow. These spheres are; out financial sphere, our social sphere, our physical sphere, and our intellectual sphere.
Financial sphere
This is your means of making money. How do you make your income? DO you get it from a job? Or a student allowance? Or do you get it from your mother? And what promise do you have of making money in the future (this is psychopath speech for “are you a student, apprentice, or have you just started a business”)?
Social sphere
This means how much do you interact with people platonically, or romantically. Who do you walk to when you want to relax? Or when you feel lonely? Or when you want to start something new, who do you call? What about when you are horny, who do you call?
Physical sphere
This refers to the physical athletic ability that you have, and also your general kinetic ability that you have. Can your body sufficiently serve you in meeting your social needs? Meaning that do you get tired or sleepy when out. Can you go out with friends, and not be exhausted? And can you go to improve your financial life and stay awake, and energized? Can you keep up with your romantic partner, and do you have nothing to worry about?
It should also be noted that physical exercises can help you improve your mood, and get you motivated to work harder, as studies have shown.
Intellectual sphere
This refers to your mental ability to gather, and use the information you need to improve your other spheres of life. Do you know any ways of improving your financial life? Or you know any way of improving your social life? Do you know how to improve your physical life? And do you know which books to read? Do you even know how to read and finish a book? Do you know how to read more books on the topic to compare to the one you have read, and tell which has good advice, and which is rubbish.
3. Check Your Contentment Levels
The next following steps is that you need to see what makes you happy, and what makes you content in your life.
So the first step that you need to do is 4 spheres assessment. After you have answered those questions, you will have a general idea of your life. A map really. After that, you can use these 4 spheres assessment to pick what you want to do with your life.
It starts simply enough. Are you satisfied with your financial sphere as it is? Basically, can you make more money if you wanted, or can you keep it as it is if you want? If it is then you are satisfied, and content. If not, then obviously, there is much you can do to climb the ladder.
So what about your social sphere? Are you satisfied with your social sphere? Observe your responses and come up with a decision.
On the physical sphere, you need to look at the answers you have given. Are they satisfactory to you? If not then there is a lot of stuff you can do to improve your life.
Finally, there is the intellectual sphere. Look at the answers you have given, and try to see if you are content with intellectual life. Can you improve your life and efficiently execute all the things you have learned?
Then, look at these answers you have given, What would you have to be in your financial life, social life, physical life, and intellectual life to be successful?
Whatever it is, just find what you need to be.
4. Choose An Identity That Will Allow You To Solve The Sphere You Have
Then you will need to find the identity that you need to adopt in order to be able to solve the problem you are dealing with in your specific sphere.
Identities are very important to establishing habits.
An example that was given on Atomic Habits is imagine you want to stop drinking. When given a beer, you can say, ‘no thank you, I am quitting’. This would be a bad thing to say, because it shows you still see yourself as an alcoholic.
Instead, what you need to say is, ‘no thank you, I am not a drinker’ or ‘I don’t drink’. This shows that you have taken the identity of what you want to become. You are someone who does not drink.
This allows it to be easier for you to not want to drink. Also, it allows the people around you to act as a further barrier between you and drinking. The next time someone arrives and offers you a beer, it is one of your friends who will step up like a shield, and say, ‘Nah, don’t give him one. He doesn’t drink. Do you have ginger beer instead?’
So, look at your 4 spheres assessments, and what you have discovered will make you fulfilled. Perhaps more financial control. Or more intimate relationships with your loved ones. Perhaps you could want to have stronger cardio. Or maybe you want to be someone who constantly improves by being a person who implements everything they learn.
You will need to adopt the identity of the desired effect.
- Financial sphere: If you want more financial control, you could take the identity of a small business owner, innovator, investor, or hard worker. Just start introducing yourself as one of these.
- Social sphere: If you want to have a more friends, you could take the identity of a party goer, or an adventurer. While if you want more intimacy, and quiet, you could take the identity of a person who stays indoors on Saturdays, or a quality time person. Then just tell the potential lovers you will meet that you are a sucker for quality time spent together.
- Physical sphere: If you are unsatisfied with your physical body, you could take the identity of an athlete, a jogger, or an active person. Buying clothes that reaffirm your identity helps a lot too, so you could get the gear for this. You could even start biking or walking around instead of driving.
- Intellectual sphere: If you find that you do not have an idea of how to start a business, how to speak to people, or how to improve your physical body, you could take the identity of someone who discovers, and applies things. Things like a reader, a planner, meticulous, diligent, or disciplined. Basically, just start introducing yourself as having these qualities.
5. Master The Habits Of What You Are
Then you will need to look at the identities that you have created, and start to create habits that will assist you in reaffirming those habits.
Now that you have a clearer identity of your goals, and the identities you’d need to take to reach those goals, it is helpful for you to begin working out the type of habits that would assist you in reaching said goals. Or the type of habits you need to create that will help you reaffirm your new found identities.
6. Break That Identity Down Into Habits
Look at the fulfilling things that you must do in order to be satisfied, and what identity those need to be done, and finally, break those into habits.
Now you need to look at your dream careers, and dream life, and then try to tie them to these things that you have discovered you find fulfilling. Then tie those into the identity you find fulfilling.
Let’s say you have always wanted to be an artist. You love drawing, and you would be fulfilled if you could create a financial sphere that accommodates your drawing. So you want a business that has something to do with art.
Therefore you create an identity of a small business owner, who has an art business. Finally, remember that research you did, where you looked online to see the channels you follow? Maybe one of your favorite channels is a guy who draws fan art. That is your most fulfilling dream life. Now, you can tie these elements – dream career (artist), dream life (drawing for a living), identity (small business owner), and fulfillment (drawing fanart as your favorite content creator), with the habits that are necessary to have these.
Habit 1- drawing a lot. Then the second habit could be – learning routes to distribute your art. Habit 3- speaking a bit about my art, and business when talking to people in everyday life. Finally, habit 4- staying active online to build a fanbase.
Go over your own financial sphere, social sphere, physical sphere, and intellectual sphere. Then, write these down-dream career, dream life, identity, and fulfillment.
7. Build Those Habits Into Your Life
The final steps is to integrate these habits into your everyday life.
I have already written a more detailed account on just how to improve your productivity.
The point though is that you need to have a proper daily planning, a technique to increase your motivation, and a plan that will allow you to execute it all efficiently. Succeeding in this will bring us that much closer to mastering mastery.