All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.  And the way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Over the years, Angel and I have had the privilege of working with dozens of extremely successful people.  The key thing that separates them from the crowd is their unwavering self-discipline to actually get the right things done.

I’m betting you have stuff you want to do — stuff you know you should be doing.  But it doesn’t get done.  Why?  You need to go from dreaming to doing… but it’s difficult to get going.

You want to excel more at work, get better grades, learn a new skill, get those six-pack abs, or spend more quality time with your family… but it’s not happening.  Instead you just procrastinate.

So what can help get you going when you’re not motivated to achieve your longer-term goals?  What’s the secret?

Angel and I have observed a simple four-step process repeated consistently in the habits and routines of the most successful people we know.

The first step, believe it or not, is dreaming.  We’re all pretty good at that — but it’s only part of the process.  In fact, if you do it wrong it can actually make things worse.  Here’s how to do it right…

1.  Dream (But Don’t Stop There)

Everything starts with a dream.  But if that’s all you do, you’re in serious trouble. [Read more…]

Instead of complaining about your circumstances, get busy creating new ones.  You either suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

I used to call Joe a genius – everyone did.  At school we all thought of him as an incredibly “gifted” guitarist and he’s since gone on to travel the world making a very good living at what he loves to do.

Joe and I became good friends toward the end of high school, and that’s when I learned the truth.  I stayed over at his house one night and was awakened at 6am on a Sunday morning by the harmonious strum of his acoustic guitar.  “What are you doing up?” I yawned.  “It’s six in the morning.”

“I always start the day with two hours of practice and do two more hours in the afternoon or evening.  If I didn’t I’d be hopeless,” Joe said.

At that moment it hit me: Joe was gifted, but this was a gift that had started out very small, perhaps even invisible to most people, but then he had added, built upon, and massively extended it.  Joe had developed his gift through self-discipline.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate self-discipline as an invisible magic.  You can’t see, taste, or smell it, but its effects are unmistakable.  It can transform overweight into slim, uninformed into expert, poor into rich, and misery into happiness.  It’s the submerged part of the iceberg others don’t see when they see a person’s “genius.”

For example, celebrities have never been more visible in our culture.  Famous athletes, talented actors and actresses, and incredible musicians are all over the [Read more…]

May your actions speak louder than your words.  May your life preach louder than your lips.  May your success be your noise in the end.

The result of enormous success is often pretty noisy – lots of people talking, writing and sharing stories about it.  The actual process of achieving enormous success, on the other hand, is far more discreet.  But it’s this process that happens quietly, behind-the-scenes, that makes all the difference in the world.

Marc and I are fortunate enough to know a number of enormously successful human beings.  Regardless of lifestyle, industry or profession, they all share many of the same quiet rituals.  And that’s precisely what I want to discuss with you today.

Building upon our recent video blog post on success, here are twelve things the most successful people we know do quietly and diligently:

1.  They have calm, consistent morning routines.

Too many books and courses on personal success act like we’re robots, and completely overlook the enormous power of our emotions.  The less frenzied emotions we have at the start of the day, the less we will have all day.  Because when we start the day in a calm, mindful state, it’s easy to focus and get the right things done.

But when we wake up and stress is already upon us – phones ringing, emails and texts dinging, fire alarms going off – you spend the whole day reacting, instead of being proactive.  This means you’re not in the driver’s seat working on your priorities – the things that drive success – you’re simply responding to what gets thrown at you, whether it’s important or not.

Try to have the first hour of your day vary as little as possible.  A trusted routine can be extremely effective in helping you feel in control and non-reactive, which reduces anxiety and stress, and therefore makes you more mindful and competent.  The bottom line is that how you start the day has an enormous effect on your overall effectiveness. [Read more…]

We ultimately become what we repeatedly do.

Over the years Marc and I have studied the lives of numerous successful people.  We’ve read their books, watched their interviews, interviewed them ourselves, worked with them, and researched them extensively.  We’ve truly learned a lot from their stories.  But above all, we’ve learned that most of these people were not born into success.  They simply did, and continue to do, things that help them realize their full potential.  In other words, they follow a set of prolific rituals.

In today’s video blog post we’re going to take a look at six rituals you can steal from them and immediately implement in your own life.

Video Blog Post:

6 Easy-to-Steal Rituals (video transcript):

1.  Do the work… practice, practice, practice your craft!

Sure you can be good with a little effort.  You can be really good with a little more effort.  But you can’t be great, at anything, unless you put in an incredible amount of focused effort for a set amount of time every day.  It’s as simple as that.  Scratch the surface of any successful person with incredible skills and you’ll find someone who has put thousands of hours of effort into developing those skills.  There are no shortcuts in life.  There are no overnight successes.  Almost everyone has heard about the 10,000 hours principle, which states that it [Read more…]