The Real Secret to Success
It can be tempting to believe you will become an overnight success.
That if you have a goal and wish for it hard enough, it will miraculously come true one day.
Or maybe you are waiting for inspiration to strike and — once that happens — you’ll be lifted to greatness from motivation alone.
But the reality is success doesn’t work this way.
Having a goal is not sufficient to actually achieve it. And motivation fades all too quickly.
The real secret to success is committing to the process. Every. Single. Day.
“Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations,” according to James Clear, New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits.
The reality is that your small daily choices will dictate your future 10 or 20 years down the line. If you want to get a picture of your future self, just imagine how your daily choices will compound over the next couple of decades.
The truth is that many people have the same goal. Those who ultimately achieve that objective are the ones who make small (sometimes tiny) progress every single day.
If you want to be a writer, you need to write a little bit every day. If you want to be fit, you need to be active every day. If you want to be financially secure, you need to spend less than you make every day. If you want a promotion at work, you need to produce results every day.
The point is not that you can’t take an off day — everyone needs to relax and recharge — but you must be committed to small daily progress if you want to achieve big success in the end.
You need to play the long game and just put in the reps every day.
Goals are helpful for setting a direction, but it is your commitment to incremental daily steps that will get you there.
As Clear says, “the only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over.”
Others will become bored and get derailed. You need to fall in love with the boredom.
Be patient. Commit to the process. Put in the daily work.
Even if progress is barely perceptible, just do one small thing every day to move yourself forward.
The one common habit among all world-class performers is a “commitment to tiny, sustainable, unrelenting improvements,” says Clear.
If you are not willing to make that same commitment, maybe your goal isn’t actually that important to you. Your actions truly reveal how badly you want something.
Act in a small way, every day, and trust that success will follow.
What’s the one thing you are doing today to get closer to your dream?
