9 Steps to Success that Will Help You Achieve Your Dreams
Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: there is no one-size-fits-all secret to success. Any book, person, or podcast that promises you their steps to success are the only way to achieve your goals is misleading you, plain and simple.
I don’t say that to discourage you. I’m aiming to do the exact opposite.
In this article, I’m going to share 9 tips that have helped me achieve success, and that I believe will help you too. These are not “steps” in the usual sense, and are not concrete actions or tasks you can cross off a to-do list. Instead, they are ways of thinking about yourself and the world that will help you find your unique path to success. And, they will help you stick to it when the going gets tough.
1. Define Success for Yourself
It is worth repeating that success is not one-size-fits-all. The reason why so many people struggle to find success (or feel empty when they achieve success) is that they are chasing after someone else’s dream. They’ve worked towards what they’ve been taught success looks like — a high-paying job, owning a house, having a family, etc. — and have never stopped to ask themselves what they actually want.
For example, my version of success involves spending as much time doing what I love to do, and as little time doing what I don’t like. This applies to all areas of my life, including work and family. I constantly evaluate if my goals will allow me to continue to spend as much time doing what I love, and will course-correct if I need to.
So take some time to think about what success looks like for you. Maybe a successful life involves traveling to as many countries as you can. Or being debt-free. Maybe it looks like becoming a force for positive change in your community. Or maybe it is as simple as spending as much time as possible with the people you love.
Once you have your version of success defined, you can then start to build a plan for how to achieve it.
2. Understand Where You Are Today
Any meaningful plan for success needs to begin with a realistic look at your current life. Where are you on your path to success right now?
Getting a clear picture of this will help you understand what your first step towards your goals should be. You can do this by asking yourself questions like…
- What are your current daily and weekly routines?
- How do your routines make you feel?
- What are you doing when you feel at your best?
- What are you doing when you feel at your worst?
- What have you been taught success looks like?
- How does that picture of success make you feel?
- What have you always wanted to do or try?
- Why haven’t you done or tried that thing?
Your answers to these questions will help you see how your current life lines up against the life you really want to live. It may be that you are much closer to your version of success than you think you are! (You can find some additional questions to help you define your version of success, and where you are on your path to it, in this article.)
3. Create Daily Goals
To figure out how to get from where you are now to where you want to be, start small. Think about what your life would look like if you achieved the success you dream of. Ask yourself…
- What would you do?
- What habits would you have?
- How would you approach challenges?
Use the answer to these questions to start forming daily goals. For example, imagine your version of success looks like owning a home. In this case, your daily goals may involve saving a certain amount of money each day, paying off debt consistently to improve your credit score, or working towards finding a new job with a higher salary.
Breaking down your dreams into daily goals helps you build a road map to success. It will allow you to build the habits you’ll need to become the best version of yourself and will give you small wins to celebrate along the way.
If you’re interested in learning more about daily goals, I’d recommend checking out this article on how to use them to transform your life.
4. Put Your Plan in Writing
I am a firm believer in the power of putting goals down in writing. It helps move us out of the mindset of dreaming and into a mindset that is focused on action. (It is also supported by a bunch of scientific research!) So take a few minutes to write down your version of success and the goals that you are going to start holding yourself accountable for.
A few things to keep in mind when writing down your success plan:
- Avoid the timeline trap. A lot of advice about setting and achieving goals is focused on giving yourself a deadline. I think that only sets you up for failure because it pushes you to try to achieve your goal on a timeline that is not attached to reality. Instead of setting a random deadline for your goal, your plan should encourage you to make steady, consistent progress towards what you want.
- Keep it simple. Your plan should feel straightforward and exciting. If it feels like adding chores to your list, you’ll never complete it. So avoid overcomplicating things or giving yourself too many daily goals at once.
- Make it visible. Keep your plan somewhere where you’ll see it to remind yourself as often as possible of your plan. Set it as the background to your phone or computer, put sticky notes on your desk, tape it to your fridge — whatever!
If you need a bit more structure when writing down your success plan, check out these goal planning templates.
It can also be very powerful to share this plan with someone else. Finding someone you trust to be your accountability partner will make staying on track much easier, and will make you more likely to actually do the things you intend to!
5. Keep Track of Your Progress
One of the best ways to keep yourself on track with your new success plan is to find a regular time to evaluate your progress.
This is important for two reasons:
- It allows you to celebrate wins. I’ll talk more about this in the next section, but check-ins give you a chance to feel good about what you’ve already achieved. This is crucial for building momentum!
- It gives you the chance to course-correct. If you haven’t achieved the small goals you set for yourself that day or that week, don’t beat yourself up. Use this check-in time to figure out what went wrong and how you can better set yourself up for success going forward.
At a minimum, I recommend finding 15 to 30 minutes each week to do this check-in. As you get into the swing of things, you’ll ideally take a few minutes each day to keep track of the progress you made. Habit tracking apps are a great way to do this, or you could keep track of your progress with good old-fashioned pen and paper.
6. Celebrate Wins to Create Positive Momentum
It will be very hard to achieve the success you dream of if you have a negative mindset. Finding ways to build positivity is key if you want to keep moving towards your goals.
The easiest way to do that is to find time to celebrate wins both big and small. Doing this allows you to take the good that already exists in your life and allow it to grow bigger and bigger. It will create what is called a positive feedback loop, which allows change in the direction of your goals to spark even more change in that same direction.
So don’t be afraid to give yourself small rewards for sticking to your success road map. These can be as big or as small as you want, but make them meaningful enough to reinforce that good behavior.
7. Treat Failure as Detours in the Right Direction
One of the fastest ways to sabotage your steps to success is to get caught up in challenges and failures. If you spend too much time focusing on what you haven’t achieved, it can be hard to get yourself moving again.
This doesn’t mean you should ignore failures or challenges. Instead, use the hard times as a chance to gather more information about yourself.
For example, let’s say that you haven’t been able to get yourself to complete your daily goals. Here are a few questions you can ask to do turn failures and obstacles into a chance to learn:
- Think about your daily goals. Do you feel excited about them?
- What changes would you need to make to find the time or energy you need to complete your daily goals?
- Do you believe that you can complete your daily goals?
Your answers to these questions will help you find the why behind a failure or challenge. If you answered “no” to feeling excited about your daily goals, then you may need to take another look at why you chose them. It could be that you are still working on someone else’s image of success, and not your own! Or, if you can never find the time to complete your daily goal, you may need to reorganize your schedule to make them a bigger priority.
Use the information that you learn about these hard times to help you course-correct in both big and small ways whenever you need to.
8. Don’t Sacrifice What You Love for the Sake of Success
This probably feels pretty obvious to you, but it can come up in sneaky ways. For example, you may decide to work extra hours in the hope of receiving a promotion at work. But if those hours take you away from your bigger goal of spending as much time as possible with your family, is it really the right decision to make?
The problem with giving up things you enjoy to do something you think will bring you success is that it will not make you happy. This is how you end up with all of the material markers of success, but none of the joy that you thought would come with a successful life!
Wouldn’t it be better to achieve success by doing something you actually want to do?
9. Take Time to Rest
I’ve talked a lot about making daily progress towards your goals, but taking time to rest and recharge is just as important. Giving yourself down-time is key to avoiding burning out on your goals and maintaining any positive momentum you’ve been able to build.
It also is a great way to re-frame challenges that may come up on your path to success. If you find yourself failing to achieve something over and over again, take a step back and give yourself a break. Walking away from a problem for even a few hours can give you the chance you need to come up with a creative solution.
Make Success a Habit
All of the steps to success I’ve just given you really boil down to one thing: making success a habit. Being successful is something we can do every day.
This is something so many people never realize. Success isn’t something that just happens — it is a choice. Staying in your current routine and habits is also a choice. By doing nothing, you choose to keep your life the same as it is today and face those consequences.
You can choose to work towards the life you want to live steadily and consistently. When you make that choice, the steps to success you’ll need to take become clearer. It really is as simple as that.
Want to learn more about how to choose success? Check out my book, Life Hacks: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life to discover more ways to build healthy habits and achieve your goals.
If you liked this article, please consider giving it a clap and following @wellnessmadeeasy on Medium for more simple ways to improve your life.
