The WHY?
When it comes to the psychology of success, the first thing you need to ask yourself is why you want to be successful. By success, I’m talking about having something in your life that you currently don’t have. What’s emotionally driving you towards it? You might say you want a pay rise, or more time however that’s an objective, not a reason why.
The ‘why ‘is the emotional driver behind the objective. For example, the real reason for wanting that pay rise might be because you have family living overseas and you’d like to be able to afford to visit them whenever. It’s the emotion-based reasons ‘why’ that point and push us forwards.
Spend some time emotionally getting in touch with the reasons you want what you want.
High-Level Goal Setting For Success
The second part I want to mention is high-level goal setting.
Sometimes we, as people, get too bogged down on writing goals we don’t really stick to. For example, New Year’s resolutions. When we spend all of our time writing down the things we want to achieve, not much actually changes.
This, in my view, is because the mind becomes overwhelmed and ends up dragging us down, especially if it’s not used to the practice of setting so many goals to be achieved.
Which is why I recommend only setting high-level goals. This means simply asking yourself ‘what are the most important things I really want to achieve?’ and only focusing on them. It’s that simple.
Right now I want you to ask yourself what it is you really want to have in your life within the next 6-12months that you don’t have right now. Write that down.
Now for whatever you’ve written down, I want you to come up with some action steps to carry you towards that goal. For example, if your goal is to go to the gym 3 times a week, an action step may be to surround yourself with healthy people so you will be more inspired and motivated to go.
Which brings us to my third point:
Self-Belief
You need to believe you can do things well, trust your positive characteristics, and know your self-worth. It’s about having this inner confidence that you deserve whatever you want.
You might desire that big dream house, car, family time, but what stops you from attaining it is your lack of self-belief. It’s like there’s an inner voice that says you don’t deserve it, or what I call fear of success, “I am not good enough.”
There is a reason why the majority of people don’t become successful, and that’s because they fear one of two things:
- They won’t become successful and will let themselves down.
- They won’t know what to do with themselves if they do become successful.
Your Environment
The way you overcome these fears is by surrounding yourself with people you aspire to be like. In some way, I feel this is the most important part of the psychology of success.
Looking at the people someone spend most of their time with is usually a good way to measure that person is at. For example, if a person’s hanging around smokers all the time the chances of them being a smoker are very high. You are who you are and you become who you are by the people you hang around. So simply change your environment.
Summary
If you know why you want something and have set the goals to achieve it; find the self-belief to do it you by surrounding yourself with people who are already living or moving towards the life you want, and allow yourself to be guided and mentored by them.