9 SUCCESS FACTORS FOR PERSONAL GROWTH: MOVING FORWARD TO ACHIEVE YOUR BEST LIFE

There are nine success factors that you must know in order to start moving forward in life. Each one of these success factors has been proven to be critical to the achievement of the best life possible for any given person. By systematically implementing one or more of these success factors into your life, you can put your foot on the accelerator of your own career and achieve the best life for yourself.

1. EDUCATION

The first of the nine success factors is education. In our society, the highest paid people are those who know more than the average. They know more of the critical facts, ideas and information than the average person in their field. As a result, they can make a more valuable contribution to a knowledge-based society and live the best life possible. They are valued more, respected more and ultimately paid more money and promoted more often.

The rule is that, “to earn more, you must learn more.” If you want to increase your level of income and achieve the best life for yourself, you must increase your level of intellectual capital and thereby the value of the knowledge component of what you are doing.

2. SKILL

The second of the nine success factors that you can use to achieve the best life possible is simply “Skill.” Your level of ability in your field will determine the quality and quantity of your results. The better you get at what you do, the easier it is for you to start moving forward to get a particular level of results.

As you increase your skill, through study and experience, you get better and better at doing the small things that increase the speed and predictability of your results.

3. CONTACTS

The third success factor for moving forward and achieving the best life is by developing an ever-widening circle of contacts. You will find that every major change in your life is accompanied by a person or persons who either opens or closes doors for you. The possibility of the best life for you will be determined by the number of people who know you and like you and who are willing to help you.

In order to broaden your network of contacts, you must network continually, at every opportunity. There seems to be a direct relationship between the number of people you know and how successful you are.

4. MONEY

One of the most important of the success factors is “money.” Having money in the bank gives you greater freedom and the ability to take advantage of opportunities when they come along. If you are broke, or in debt, you have very few options open to you.

One of the most important things I ever learned in life is that you are only as free as your options. If you have no options, you have no freedom. If you are stuck in a dead-end job that you cannot leave because you have no money set aside, you have put a brake on your potential. You are locked in place and have no option for moving forward. You can end up spinning your wheels and losing months and years of your time by the very fact that you have no choice but to accept whatever is being handed to you.

5. GOOD WORK HABITS

The fifth of the success factors that enables you to get far more done in a shorter period of time is simply “good work habits.” Your ability to increase your ROTI, or “Return on Time Invested” can enable you to accomplish vastly more in a shorter period of time than another person who is disorganized and sloppy.

Developing good work habits requires that you think before acting. You make a list and set priorities on the list before you begin. Good work habits require that you consider the likely consequences, positive or negative of what you are doing.

6. POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE

The sixth success factor for your career and life is to reduce the amount of time that it takes you to achieve your goals is by developing a “positive mental attitude.” A positive mental attitude is very much a decision that you make. Remember, you become what you do. If you engage in the same activities that positive, confident, optimistic people engage in, you will eventually become one of them and live your best life possible.

Anyone can remain positive when things are going well. It is your ability to look for the good in every situation that you see positive and start moving forward in life.

7. POSITIVE IMAGE

The seventh of the success factors you can incorporate into your lifestyle, and one that can help you achieve the best life for yourself, is the development of a positive image. People judge you by the way you look on the outside, by the way you appear. The fact is that you judge everyone else by the way they look on the outside, as well. Taking time to present an attractive image in your person, your clothing, your grooming and your accessories can have an inordinate impact on the doors that open for you and the people who are willing to help you start moving forward in your life.

8. CREATIVITY

Creativity is another wonderful way to start moving forward in life and to increase the speed at which you achieve your goals. Creativity is something that requires that you continually look for better, faster, easier, cheaper ways to get the job done. Remember, one good idea is all you need to start a fortune.

9. CHARACTER

Perhaps the most important of the success factors to accelerating your life is your character. Self-discipline combined with honesty will open countless doors for you. Trust is the foundation of all relationships. When people know you and believe in you and are convinced that they can trust you to keep your word and do what you say you will do, they will feel that they are far more likely to get the things they want through you, to get the things they want, faster, sooner, easier and with greater certainty.

Thank you for reading this article on moving forward and living the best life possible. Do you know of any other success factors that can help accelerate your life and career? Please share your thoughts and comment below!

Topics included in this article include

SUCCESS FACTORS

MOVING FORWARD

BEST LIFE

This article is from Brian Tracy, who is recognized as the top sales training and personal success authority in the world today. I really like his style and have read some of his work including the famous book "Eat That Frog!", still a few of his books are on my reading list. His work has proven to be extremely helpful for myself and many others. Hope you enjoy it too!

Source

How to Learn Any Skill Faster

Stop multitasking

“If only I could have learned Spanish three years ago…”

“If only I learned about investing when I was still in my early twenties…”

If only.

For many of us, there are more things we want to learn than we have time for. And as information becomes more readily accessible online, the number of things we want to learn has only increased. That means that the only variable we can actually control is the time we spend learning them.

Shortening the learning curve is a topic that’s been studied for many years, and this guide will cover the fundamental core principles of learning faster. Were these principles perfectly in place, you could leverage them to push yourself to learn faster and master any category of learning, including languages, business skills, musical instruments and more. To quote Tony Robbins: “One skill you want to master in this day and age we live in, if you want to have an extraordinary life, is the ability to learn rapidly.”

So, here are those principles:


1. Don’t reinvent the wheel
Why reinvent a wheel that’s already been created? The common tendency we all have when learning something new is trying to master it alone and underestimating the amount of time and effort that can be saved by getting help from someone who’s already learned it.

Think back to a time when you first learned how to speak a new language or obtain a new skill. You probably had a steep learning curve initially, but after a few years or even months of experimenting and making mistakes, you could design a short cut to help a friend avoid those same mistakes you made early on.

In order to achieve mastery faster, our first step should be to consult the top players in the field, and model the path they have already carved out for us. As Robbins puts it: “Many great leaders have proven that the fastest way to master any skill, strategy or goal in life is to model those who have already forged the path ahead. If you can find someone who is already getting the results that you want and take the same actions they are taking, you can get the same results.

“It doesn’t matter what your age, gender or background is,” Robbins continues. “Modelling gives you the capacity to fast track your dreams and achieve more in a much shorter period of time. In this day and age, it’s possible to retrieve almost any solution that’s out there in the form of books, blogs, training videos, consultants, someone in our network — the list goes on.”

To quote yet another wise individual, this time Pablo Picasso: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”

2. Deconstruct the skill
The next step to hacking the learning curve is to deconstruct the skill you see into its basic, fundamental components. Break down the parts and find the most important things to practice first. (See Pareto’s Principle, which describes a goal of generating 80 percent of results by putting in 20 percent of the effort.)

It turns out that this concept can apply to almost anything in life, including:

• Business (80 percent of sales comes from 20 percent of customers)
• Employee efficiency (80 percent of results comes from 20 percent of employees)
• Happiness (80 percent of happiness comes from 20 percent of relationships)
• Travel experiences (80 percent of our travels may be summed up from 20 percent of our highlight experiences)

Embracing this way of thinking only goes to show that very few things actually make a difference in any aspect of our lives, including learning. Our goal then, should be to separate the 20 percent of our learning materials that will give us 80 percent of the result.

As it turns out, fast-learning experts have already embraced this ideology, and have provided some concrete examples on how to do this effectively. In his TED talk, Josh Kaufman said he believed that you don’t need 10,000 hours in order to master a skill. Instead, the key is to embrace the first 20 hours, and learn the most important subset skills within that time frame to get the maximum amount of impact. Numerous studies in the fields of motor and cognitive skill acquisition have established that the first few hours of practicing a new skill always generate the most dramatic improvements in performance. (See Parkinson’s Law.)

3. Stop multitasking
Multitasking is a guilty pleasure we’ve all developed in the age of constant notifications and mobile applications. From checking our emails every ten minutes, to scrolling through our Instagram feed, to welcoming co-workers coming by our desk for a “five-minute break”: Multitasking can be one of the biggest hurdles preventing us from learning faster.

Think about your own computer. When you have 20-plus different tabs open on your browser, your computer begins to slow down and it takes longer to process every action afterwards. Studies have shown that when an individual gets distracted, it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the task at hand. What’s more important to note is that a study by the University of California Irvine found that a worker applies himself or herself only 11 minutes before becoming distracted.

The same thing applies to our long-term focus. Many of us aren’t able to dedicate the six-to-12-plus months it takes to learn a skill because of the countless new projects, ideas, or hobbies that come our way. And when we decide to shift our focus to a new distraction, it’s much more difficult to find the same passion and drive to focus on the previous skill.

Once you have deconstructed the subset skills that will give you the maximum amount of results, focus solely on improving those skills and avoid learning anything else until you’ve mastered them.

4. Repeat, repeat, repeat
This is the part where most of us struggle, and what many of us don’t want to hear is the rule that mastering anything faster requires practice. Learning requires frequency of and persistence in performing the same skill over and over again, until you can do it subconsciously, without having to think about it.

The best performers in the world understand this “secret” to learning faster and become the best, yet rarely talk about its importance because of how unsexy it sounds.

Expert-level performance is primarily the result of expert-level practice, not due to innate talent. As K. Anders. Ericsson, a scientific researcher from Florida State University, elaborated in a paper: “People believe that because expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance, the expert performer must be endowed with characteristics qualitatively different from those of normal adults. This view has discouraged scientists from systematically examining expert performers and accounting for their performance in terms of the laws and principles of general psychology.”

5. Seek immediate feedback
In 1960, while they were still an unknown high school rock band, the Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany, to play in the local clubs. The group was underpaid. The acoustics were terrible. The audiences were unappreciative. So what did the Beatles get out of the Hamburg experience? Nonstop hours of playing time, practice and immediate feedback that forced them to get better. That’s the key difference that elevated the Beatles to the top, according to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. The band didn’t just practice in a garage for the sake of practicing; they strived to get in front of a live audience that would provide them immediate criticism and constructive feedback.

As the Beatles grew in skill, audiences demanded more performances — giving them more playing time. By 1962 they were playing eight hours per night, seven nights per week. By 1964, the year they burst on the international scene, the Beatles had played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of comparison, most bands today don’t play 1,200 times in their entire career. This is why at Rype, we’re solely focused on connecting you with native speaking tutors, who can give you immediate feedback during your lessons.

6. Go Long
Unfortunately, many of us give up before or during what Seth Godin calls “The Dip.”

Godin says that although it’s important to know when to quit, many potential winners don’t reach success because they quit before the dip. According to Godin, five reasons you might fail to become the best in the world include:

• You run out of time (and quit)
• You run out of money (and quit)
• You get scared (and quit)
• You’re not serious about it (and quit)
• You lose interest (and quit)

Psychologists have also studied what’s known as the transition cycle. This is the cycle of progress we go through whenever we’re experiencing change or a novel event, such as a tragedy or the opportunity to learn something new. There’s a sense of euphoria we all experience when we begin something new. That’s why we’re so addicted to seeing notifications on social media, because dopamine gets released each time.

Once the honeymoon phase fades away, we experience the “dip” and our progress begins to plateau or diminish. This is when most of us quit. The reason why this is important is that if you can predict that a dip is coming, when you’re learning anything new, it’s easier to fight through it. More importantly, the dip is there because those persistent enough to stick it out can ride the upward wave that is at the end of the tunnel.


So, to restate these points on how to hack the learning curve:

• Model an expert who’s been there, and don’t reinvent the wheel.
• Deconstruct the skills that will deliver 80 percent of results.
• Stop multitasking.
• Practice those reps, reps, reps! Then seek immediate feedback.
• Go long and don’t quit before or during the dip.

Source

5 Life Skills to Help You Focus on Success

When you first set a goal it’s pretty easy to stay on track. You've got a plan, you’re working the plan and your motivation is strong.

As time goes on, however, it’s not uncommon to start losing your motivation and getting off course. In order to develop the momentum and stamina required to achieve success, there are several life skills you’ll need to focus on.

5 of my favourite life skills to help you focus on success

1) Believe you will succeed. For success to become a reality, it is absolutely crucial that you believe in what you’re doing. This is easy at the beginning because you’re focused on what you stand to gain from achieving your goal.  As time goes on, you may gradually forget how excited you were and start to lose that inner fire.

To avoid this possibility, be sure to keep your vision strong and clear in your mind. Visualization, when done right, is among the most powerful of all life skills. Write it out in full detail, or create a visual reminder like a vision board with drawings, paintings or magazine photos that represent your goals. Revisit and focus on these reminders frequently.

2) Have confidence in your abilities. Your confidence may be strong at the start but it can quickly fade when you encounter obstacles or setbacks. If this happens, remember that you once believed that you had the ability to achieve success. Remind yourself why you felt that way.

In fact, you will find it helpful to write these reasons down when you first set a goal, and then keep reading them back to yourself when you feel your confidence starting to fade. Keep in mind that any obstacles or setbacks are temporary and part of the learning curve. Strong confidence in your abilities is enough to propel you through to success.

3) Determination. Believing in your eventual success and your ability to achieve it is a great start, but you also have to be determined to make it happen!

Keep your determination strong by refusing to be held back by obstacles, and reminding yourself daily why your goals are important to you.  Determination is like an ember that burns in your belly, refusing to let you give up no matter how rough the going gets. Sometimes determination end up being the key life skill leading to success.

4) Motivation. Staying motivated can also be a challenge, especially once the newness and excitement of your goals have worn off and it’s beginning to feel like “work.”

Nine times out of ten, motivation requires a simple decision to remain optimistic and inspired. Find ways to keep your motivation high if your goal is truly important. Read books by people who have achieved impressive results. Talk to other successful people who have demonstrated tenacity and gone on to achieve amazing results. The more you pump yourself up, the stronger your motivation will stay. Being your own cheerleader is a success life skill.

5) Awareness. Finally, stay on the lookout for any signs of self-sabotaging behaviour or vanishing interest. If you notice that you’re acting in ways that don’t further your goals or support your success, get to the root of the problem quickly so you can get back on track. Be alert to any tendency to undermine your resolve or give up, and deal with it swiftly.

Trust that you can accomplish amazing things
You are capable of success in every area of your life. It’s not about talent, circumstances, or luck. It’s about learning and applying certain life skills and then monitoring your results and making little adjustments in your approach.

Setting goals is something we do naturally. The trouble is, most of us tend to do it almost unconsciously without taking the time to perfect the process. Then, when things don’t turn out the way we had hoped we internalize our disappointment in a way that creates doubt in our own abilities.

Become an advanced student in the school of life
Many people think that qualities like confidence, communication, creativity, motivation, focus, courage, and determination are something you are born with. I believe those qualities are learned life skills that anyone can master if they are willing to apply themselves. These are advanced life skills and the better you become at them, the more successful your life will be.

When we were in school, much of what we learned was difficult to focus on because it had very little practical value. But the kind of life skills we are talking about here have enormous practical value because they can literally transform the quality of your life. Find Your TRUE SELF is a concise guide to learning and applying these specialized life skills.

If you really want to ramp up your level of success, ask yourself this question: Have I made up my mind to become an advanced student in the school of life? If you haven’t yet made that personal commitment then perhaps now would be a good time!

Source