The road to success is supposed to be paved by long, sleepless nights, paying your dues, and utter burnout, right? There’s nothing more cliché than overstressed corporate climbers and overwhelmed entrepreneurs.
Well, I’ve got news for you: Burnout isn’t just bad for your health; it’s bad for business, too.
How you live your lifestyle is one of the strongest indicators of future success. Everything from how you spend your leisure time to how you view your current state can impact your success. Change your lifestyle and you might just be on the fast track to success.
Here are five ways that your lifestyle can actually determine your success.
1. The way you daydream sets up your future.
Your future is an uncharted territory. If you’re going to be successful, you’re going to need to draw a map. Successful people have a clear vision of exactly what they want success to look like, taste like, feel like, including what kind of business they want to run, how often they want to work, who they want to associate with, where they vacation, how often exercise, and how much self-esteem they have. Start imagining the life you want to live, and you’ll have a step-by-step guide for how to get there.
2. You eat, sleep, and breathe your way to success.
Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If you’re not sleeping enough and living off Cheetos, you’re probably not going to have the energy to go after your dreams. Successful people incorporate success into every aspect of their lives, including nutrition, exercise, sleep, relationships, and self-care. If you start treating yourself like a successful person now, you’re setting yourself up for long-term success.
3. The boundaries you set are the blueprint for your life.
Boundaries are simply the way you teach people how to treat you. From the way you accept to be treated, to the amount you are paid, to the hours you’re willing to work, boundaries are the rules you define for your life. If you let people walk all over you today, that’s probably not going to change, no matter how “successful” you become.
4. You think of yourself as successful as you’re going to be.
The world will generally take you as seriously as you take yourself. Nobody batted an eye at Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs when they first start their companies. But, if take yourself seriously and consistently put in the actions necessary to keep moving forward, eventually you’ll become as successful as you decide to be.
5. At the end of the day, it’s about how much enjoyment you can stand.
Success isn’t really about how much you can achieve; it’s more about how much you can enjoy. If you allow yourself to cherish moments of success without constantly thinking, “What’s the next thing?” then you’re already more than halfway there. Success follows happiness. So, if you can hold on to the joy of all that you’ve accomplished, you’ll attract a lot more success into your life than the guy or gal who’s burnt out, striving to keep doing more.
Success is just as much an internal mindset as it is an external experience. When you get the internal stuff together and start treating yourself like a successful person, you welcome other people to treat you successfully as well.
When we get down to it, success isn’t just the number of people who know your name or the the amount in your bank account; success is consciously designing a life that meets your goals and vision. It’s about building the exact lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of, regardless of money or fame.
And, once you get there, the rest is just icing on the cake. Because success always follows success.
Featured photo credit: Pic Jumbo via picjumbo.com
