Do you remember the first time self development became important to you?
I do. I was 7 years old and I was in love with basketball. My mother had bought me a book called Rare Air, the autobiography of Michael Jordan.
Through this book, Michael Jordan brought me into his world. He shared stories of what inspired him, the emotions he felt, how he handled the failures and rejections and how he discovered his passion.
I was absolutely blown away and fired up after reading his book. It felt like my childhood hero was right there with me, teaching me about the importance of working on yourself and becoming the best you can possibly be.
I read this book every morning before school to be highly motivated for the day ahead.
Once that book was finished, I continued to read other books like 20 Ways to Make Pocket Money and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. As I made this motivation session part of my morning ritual, I noticed my belief, confidence and passion skyrocket.
I wanted to be just like these high achievers so I started waking up early, setting my goals and learning as much as I could about new skills and life each day. Little did I know that I was hard-wiring a series of positive unconscious actions that eventually led me to a life of multiple successes: Hosting radio shows, signing record deals, promotions to higher paying salaries, training with world-class experts, meetings with my idols, creating one of the top self-development websites in the world, being offered millions of dollars for my business and being featuring on the cover of magazines.
I became infatuated with the idea of growing and evolving as an individual so much so that over the past four years I’ve committed to interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs, authors, celebrities, coaches and multimillionaires to find out what separates the super achievers from your every day “Average Joe.”
What I’ve come to discover is that a good 90 percent of the interviewer’s credit their success to the persisting energy bolts of action that we call “habits.”
So being the curious cat that I am, I decided to go a little deeper and squeeze the juice out of this new discovery.
I started asking each high achiever what their daily habits are that keep them on top. I then averaged their answers out to break it down into these 7 million-dollar habits:
Habit 1: Write Your “To-Do List,” The Night Before
The high achievers would write their to-do’s every evening before dinner or bed so they were prepared for the following day.
Prioritizing your “To-Do” list is the key to productivity success.
Action step: The super-successful make it a habit of numbering their to-do lists and you can do this, too, by simply ordering the “Most Important” first, placing a BIG Number 1 or a Star next to the activity, marking the importance of getting the task done first thing in the morning.
They then follow with the rest of the numbers, based on importance as they work their way down the list.
Article written by Joel Brown – Entrepreneur, Speaker & Founder of Addicted2Success.com