How do some people become so successful and others not?

I’ve been hitting the self-improvement programs pretty hard over the past few years, reading and listening to all I can, taking seminars, and practicing the principles.

As engineers, we love to distill things down to the core ideas to keep things simple and completely understand how they work.

So what I’ve come to realize throughout my self-improvement journey is that many of the teachings originate from four core principles.

I’m convinced that understanding and practicing these principles is the overall recipe for success and advancement.

You WILL grow and become better. At everything.

Being an aerospace engineer, I love to visualize things using rocket launch metaphors, so I’ve boiled these principles down to what I call the fuel, the rocket, the destination, and navigation.

 

#1 – The Fuel: Your Mindset

Your mindset is the lens that you view the world through. It’s how you perceive life experiences that you have and then create a set of beliefs that you end up living by as a result.

Mindset is the most important principle because it is the origin of our thoughts, decisions, and resulting behaviors.

There will be times that you’re completely knocked down or have the carpet pulled out from under you, but having the right mindset will propel you forward through even the most difficult of times.

Mindset is a dense subject and many articles and self-improvement workshops talk about how to condition it, but here’s my cheat sheet on the most important concepts:

• • Growth Mindset: Believing that all experiences lead to constant learning, improving, and growing stronger. Knowing that your skills and behaviors are not limited and can be altered and enhanced.
  • Kaizen: Living a life of constant and never-ending improvement. Striving to always be the best you can be and recognizing that there is always room for improvement. Mastery takes time. 
  • Practicing Micro-adjustments: Growth can seem stagnant, but implementing small, micro-adjustments will add up over time. Even a 2mm shift within your thinking will put you in a completely different future destination.
  • All problems are gifts, or a call to adventure: When life is difficult, it is asking you to get stronger, smarter, or more resourceful. Be more, improve yourself, and serve others. Learn to lean into and embrace challenges and responsibilities as good things that are necessary for growth, purpose, and maturation. This is one of the essences of life.
  • Living with Passion: Finding something that you’re crazy about and letting that energy continually motivate and guide you. You’ll need to find something that gets you up in the morning each day – the real reason why you’re here. Your mission. Anything else is just a job, or work.
  • Positive Attitude: Welcoming the world with optimism creates better impressions with others, attracting more opportunity and sustaining your energy and capacity for stress.
  • Eliminating ANTS, automatic negative thoughts: The practice of becoming more aware of your thought patterns about yourself and actively killing negative thinking as it arises.
  • “You become what you think about.” An Earl Nightingale video that asserts our actions and the brain’s attention system is oriented based on our consistent thoughts. Thus if you think about nothing, you become nothing. Constantly believing in yourself and reaching for goals points us upward.

 

#2 – The Rocket Vessel: Fitness and Self-Care

In order to embark on a long, difficult mission, you’ll need to have a state-of-the-art, reliable vehicle operating at optimal levels.

When you are conditioned to the highest levels physically, mental performance follows. It’s inevitable.

It seems to make sense, but why?

When you exercise, the body gets flooded with more energy, positive hormones, and neurotransmitters. These chemicals boost clarity in your thinking and mindset for several hours after.

Consistency in your exercise builds a new baseline chemistry in your body, elevating steady state levels of dopamine and endorphins and also boosting your overall energy levels.

As a result of more energy and mental clarity, you’ll begin making better emotional decisions and taking action within your life. You’ll feel more satisfied and happy.

Your overall health is a temple of three pillars: diet, exercise, and sleep. You could also add spiritual or mental conditioning, such as meditation, or focus training.

Master all of these areas and you’ll be optimized for peak performance and resilience.

More energy and a clear, positive mindset, is the foundation of what you need to propel you through the most difficult times.

 

#3 – The Destination: Your Mission. Have Clear Goals

How can you expect to get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going? No one launches a rocket into space without having a mission.

If you don’t have a goal or destination, you’re like an aimless, lost ship that’s left the harbor, being pushed around by the weather and waves.

Setting goals and having some sort of vision for your career and life is absolutely essential for growth, success, and even happiness.

Jordan Peterson makes the point that if you are goalless and aimless, you’ll also have trouble eliciting any positive emotion.

Without progress toward something you desire, you don’t create any dopaminergic reward in your system. Thus, no motivation or momentum.

We all need checkpoints and guideposts in our career journey to assist in navigation, so you must work on developing these.

Not sure where you want to go?

This is normal for many, especially when you’re first starting out. Check out my guide on setting goals, or just pick something to aim at and adjust your trajectory along the way.

Things are going to change as life happens anyway.

There will be those times that you get blown of course, like when a plane makes a long overseas flight, it has to constantly adjust its course due to the wind, etc. but it eventually arrives at its destination.

 

#4 – Navigation: Having an Action Plan

Once you’re in flight, you need a pilot or some sort of navigation to keep you on course.

If you have goals and aspirations to get somewhere, you need some sort of plan or strategy on HOW to do it.

What are the steps you need to take? What is your approach?

Developing a plan of attack involves creating a task list and a sequence, just as with baking a cake, for example. You have ingredients and an order of steps for preparation. It’s a process for creating an end result.

Sequence matters just as much as the ingredients. If you do something out of sequence, you don’t get the right results.

If your plan is not working, change it. Find different tasks that work better, or change the order of them. Keep making adjustments as you see fit.

You may need help and that’s ok. Identify and gaps in your plan and find a way to fill them.

Learn from someone who’s been to where you want to go. Find a mentor. Take a class, become more educated.

The most important understanding here is that you need to take ACTION.

We must take some sort of action or we never will get anywhere.

 

Conclusion

That’s it. A short and simple interjection of these complex principles into your thinking. These are the foundations of advancement, success, and fulfillment:

#1 Establish your mindset, the lens you see the world through.

#2 Optimize your fitness and health. Create the most fit, durable, quality vehicle you can to attack the unknown and life performance will follow.

#3 Have goals and a vision. Know where you are and where you’re going. Have something to aim at to help guide you and build positive rewards and motivation.

#4 Take Action. Have a plan or strategy of attack. Refine it and identify what’s working and what’s not. Get help.

These are philosophies you’ll need to constantly study, cultivate, and live. They will take a while to truly understand and customize to your personal lifestyle, but just get started.

Without these, we are aimless drifters being blown by anything that temporarily amuses us.

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan.” – Jim Rohn.