Heidi Grant Halvorson is one of the world’s leading motivational psychologists.
She runs the Motivation Science Center at Columbia’s Business School and wrote a great book we’ve featured called Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals.
She ALSO wrote THE most popular blog post in Harvard Business Review’s history. It’s called “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.”
I highly recommend it and I encourage you to check it out.
Heidi ALSO wrote a great little book in which she expands on the ideas in that that blog post. Notes coming soon and, if you’re feeling it, get the book here.
Today I want to take a super-quick look at those NINE things successful people do differently.
Here’s how Heidi summarizes it: “Successful people set very specific goals and seize opportunities to act on them (using strategies like if-then planning). They always know how far they have to go and stay focused on what still needs to be done. They believe they will succeed, but embrace the fact that success will not come easily. They remember that it’s about making progress, rather than doing everything perfectly right out the gate. They believe that they can develop their abilities through effort, which makes them gritty in the face of setbacks and challenges. They build their willpower through frequent exercise, make plans for how to cope when willpower is low, and try not to put themselves in situations where temptations abound. They focus on what they will do, rather than what they won’t do.”
Then Heidi reminds us: “There is nothing they do that you can’t do, too.”
Those are literally the very last words of the book.
That’s a pretty concise description of the nine things successful people do differently.
Here’s the quick recap...
#1. Get Specific
#2. Seize the Moment to Act on Your Goals
#3. Know Exactly How Far You Have Left to Go
#4. Be a Realistic Optimist
#5. Focus on Getting Better, Rather Than Being Good
#6. Have Grit
#7. Build Your Willpower Muscle
#8. Don’t Tempt Fate
#9. Focus on What You Will Do, Not What You Won’t Do
Let’s do a quick check in via nine practical questions...
#1. What EXACTLY do you want to achieve?
#2. Is NOW a good time to go for it?
#3. How far do you have left to go?
#4. Have you WOOPed it?
#5. Do you have a growth mindset?
#6. How’s your grit?
#7. You training your willpower?
#8. Have you removed all the toxic trigger-prompt-cue triggers in your life?
#9. What’re you going to DO to achieve all you want to achieve?
That’s Today’s +1.
Nine things.
Where are you strong? Celebrate that. Do more of it.
Where are you weak? Needs work that. Do less of it.
Day 1. All in.
LET’S GO, HERO!
