Head’s up would be millionaires, you won’t build a fortune in fifteen minutes, so don’t expect to cruise through this treasure any more quickly.  This goldmine could easily fill a 300 page book, and a darn good one, so if you’re looking for a little ego tickling Buzzfeed list to whiz through in 3 minutes before forgetting it all the next time you see a half-dressed hottie, beat it!  Come back when you’re ready to succeed, and I’ll be in my penthouse writing up the next gem.  To the rest of you, be hungry, read slowly, and come back often to keep these rules crystal clear in your mind.  Next, bring them to life in your actions.  Success is right in front of you, so come and get it!

Here it is, World.  The secret to success decoded through 13 simple rules, and laid plain for all who can lead Engrish good. Umm…   right.  By the way, I’ve created links to some of the incredible books and resources that I used to help write this, but try your best not to click on any of them until you’ve read the whole thing once through.  Each one is incredible in its own right so definitely check them all out,  but the rabbit hole goes deep, so stay here on the first read for the best experience. Without further ado, 13 Lucky Rules to Guarantee Your Success:

1. UNDERSTAND SUCCESS: Before you move an inch, you’d better define exactly what success means to you. Skip this step and you could find yourself making swift progress toward a place you really don’t want to be. “Congratulations! You made it to misery in just one year!”

Let me offer you direction by dismissing some illusions first. Success is NOT a high paying job.  Success is not limousines, fancy cars, and mansions. Success isn’t expensive clothes or exotic vacations, and don’t tell my $100 an hour personal trainer I said this, but success isn’t chiseled 6-pack abs either.  See what I did there?

I know this is a strange pill to swallow, but I assure you that there are people who have everything I just listed above yet still aren’t happy, and that’s nothing to brag about. For others, these luxuries are definitely a part of their happiness and important symbols of their success, but they by no means define success for them, let alone for everybody.

So what is success?  Look, it’s this simple: Success IS satisfaction.  When you have stable satisfaction and a deep sense of contentment in your life, that’s when you’ve made it.  That’s the surest truth I can tell you that might inspire a vision of the life you want to create, and fulfilling THAT vision is the only success that’ll work for you.

A quick tip, success is usually far more about what you do than what you have, and more than anything it’s about enjoying them both because you’ve become the person that you want to be. No matter how or where you spend your days, or what it is you do or have, consistently waking up happy and enjoying your life IS success.  It’s the ONLY success.  

2.  BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND:  Now that you’ve defined what success means to you, you can use that vision as a map to clarify where you want to go.  You might find that your vision changes, but don’t worry, there’s a lot to be said for enjoying the journey.

Regardless, you still need a compass to make sure you’re heading in the direction you mean to go. “Begin with the end in mind” is a timeless gem and the 2nd habit from Stephen Covey’s bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  [a total aside, this book was one of the first personal development books I ever read, and one that’s been a top seller for over 30 years with good reason.  I highly recommend it). 

The essence of this habit is using your definition of success to guide your journey. It means that you always need to match your decisions and efforts to your vision of an ideal life, and then check in often. In your career, your relationships, and even in recreation, get in the habit of asking yourself “How does this commitment fit in with who I want to be or move me toward the life I want?”  What is it you really need out of a job?

Would you prefer to work 50 hour weeks for $100k a year knowing you can do anything you want in the remaining time, or would you be happier making $40k a year, but only working only 20 hours a week with 6 weeks off? You can always make more or do more, but time is limited and our lives are short.

Considering that, don’t waste your efforts!  Get clear on what it is you want out of your job, your business, your marriage, or your life, and take steps right from the start to make sure you’ll get it. Our decisions are our destiny, so choose wisely to manifest your dreams.  If you want to “make it” some day, then make sure you make a habit of making decisions based on what you want to make of your life in the BIG picture. Uhhhhhhhhh  … MAKE!  Sorry.  I was on a roll.

3. BEGIN NOW:

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” ~Emelia Earhart

“Just do it.”     ~Nike  

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”       ~Nerdy People Everywhere                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Get the point?  Most people put off their goals over and over, letting the daily grind take priority while they wait for the “right” time to start something meaningful. Well, let me be the one to tell you that tomorrow never comes and that the right time is always RIGHT now!

Getting started is so important because it’s the one thing guaranteed to be in your way until you do.  Who knows what obstacles will pop up along the way, but simply put, this is the first one and you’ll meet the rest along the way.  Until then, just starting is the big hairy monster of a challenge, so get it out of the way already!

If you want to meet the perfect partner, define what you’re looking for and START DATING!  Prince(ss) Charming isn’t waiting for you under the couch cushions or in the drawer beside your bed.

If you want to start a business, do a bit of research… and then start a business!

Nothing will give you more motivation, insight, improvement, or straight-up skill than being in the game. Our missions in both business and life are rarely like bullets that just race forward in a straight line until hitting their mark.  Big goals are far more like an airplane that just needs a steady direction and good momentum to get off the ground, and then you can steer and correct course once you’re flying.

To master the art of the start, consider doing a respectably short preparation, bracing yourself, and then just getting at it.  There’s a pretty decent read that explains it well – the brilliantly counterintuitive  Ready.  Fire!  Aim. 

4. DON’T BE A PERFECTIONITS:  Perfectionism is a popular form of procrastination.  I’m guilty.  It’s taken me twenty tries to finally get this article perfect, and hear it is.  Not won mistake!

Very seriously though, perfection is an illusion, and a dangerous one! The idea that everything has to be just right is foolish in and of itself, but the bigger mistake is believing that we even know what “just right” looks like. We’re all human, which means we all change our minds.  This is true of ourselves, our audience, and our customers, so learn to recognize good enough and keep an open mind.  Get something good up and running, then work on making it great.

Remember that a decent plan you’ll stick with is better than a “perfect” plan you won’t. “Perfection” without participation is just a cool story bro, but action is the key ingredient in any change you might be cooking up.  Do it!

5. FAIL HARDER! :  You’ve got to embrace this philosophy if you want to be truly free to pursue your goals with power.

It’s completely normal to be afraid of failing, but so many of us suffer from an absolutely crippling fear of failure that stops us from giving things our best shot or ever trying them at all. Soak this up.  Everybody has failed!  The people you admire for being the biggest success stories are those that have failed the most and have lost their fear of the inevitable.  Yes, they were scared too, and they did it anyway.  Heck, many of them still get scared but have learned to channel it without hesitation.

Many billionaires have been bankrupt, and even olympic athletes fall down during their performances.  Most world class public speakers blew it their first time out, and many of them knew they would!  Tough! There’s no other way to get it done except to do it, so get it out of the way and take for granted that ANY great quest will come with a few failures.

Do whatever you can to plan for success, but do it quickly and get in the game. As Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player who ever lived, once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  Take it from the great one, you need to take a shot!

Get started.  Get something out there, and keep improving until you nail it.  DO IT NOW!

6. FIND A MENTOR:  In fact, find several!  When you’re going after big goals its easy to feel overwhelmed. The path to success is often confusing, scary, and when hard times hit it can seem almost impossible to keep on going.

This is good news; most people just give up, so the competition is slim.  Still, the truth is that it’s not only possible to keep on going, but lots of people have done it already. You can find the stories of how they did it in autobiographies or documentaries, and some of them have even written out instructions for exactly how to do it yourself.

Better yet, there are people out there doing it all right now, and you can find them.  Spending time with people who are already your kind of successful is the fast track to your success.  We talked about your ideal life being a map of where you want to go.  I also suggested using the question “How does this commitment fit in with who I want to be or move me toward the life I want?” as a compass to check in and make sure you’re heading in the right direction.  

Well, much like with an actual map, you’ve still got to find the right roads! Sure, the map says Disneyland’s twenty miles West, and twenty miles west is just twenty miles west right?  Wrong!  Do you want to take the highway, or should you just cut through the swamp?  Later, alligator 😉  

Seriously, when you find a good mentor, you’ve not only found the highway, but you’ve got your own driver! Once you’ve got the guidance, inspiration, and accountability of a mentor, you’re gonna be hard to stop!  Until then, hit the books, browse the web -whatever works for you – but find a good write up or video from a role model that inspires you, and to have the roads on your map of success revealed.  

Another key action is reaching out to likeminded friends and any people who can advise you or keep you accountable. You know what they say, “Birds of a feather flock together”, so cheat the system and get around some high flying birds while leaving the dodos behind.

7. ALWAYS LEVERAGE:  Understanding this concept will change your life.  Applying leverage to your goals means using methods that allow relatively small efforts in the right place to produce maximum force and huge results. Mostly, this means learning how to utilize other people and other people’s money (OPM).  

No matter how capable and spectacular you are, there’s no overstating how much you’ll limit yourself by trying to do everything yourself.  Every single person you’ve heard of or that’s accomplished something you admire has used this concept whether they knew it or not. There’s no doubt that mastering the ability to pay cash for everything will get you far, but only so far.  

Busting your butt and putting in long days builds character, but it’ll also burn you out faster than you think and it’s just not as smart as building strong teams.   It’s almost impossible to become financially wealthy without having others working for you.  You build a chain of people whose efforts earn money for you, and that’s how you become rich.  

The same is true of investing.  You identify systems that earn a profit, and then you leverage other people’s time and money to compound their success into YOUR earnings – into a fortune well beyond what you could ever build with your own cash.  Think of it like getting a mortgage to buy an income property… or better yet, just go do that!

When it comes to hiring, the bonus is that most of us don’t want to, and shouldn’t, wear all of the hats.  Hiring out your weaknesses and outsourcing your pains makes great sense, big money, and easy days.  Why waste energy doing things you hate or spend your time doing things that you’re just not good at?  Eliminate your Superhero syndrome so you can focus on what you like most and what you do best.  Meanwhile, leverage the power of employees, collaboration, and other people’s money to make it pay! 

Simply put, hire people smarter than you and you’ll never fail.   Here’s a really amazing and free podcast to drive the point home, and to teach you all about building a fortune online. The Smart Passive Income Podcast isn’t mine, but rest assured the host is much smarter than I am which is also why I never miss an episode.  🙂

8.  HARNESS THE POWER OF HABITS:   The truth about will power is that none of us have that much of it.  We’re each blessed with a certain amount at birth, and if we’re lucky it becomes a little stronger as we grow up (which is not the same as growing older).  So what about all of these skinny, pretty, rich people, jogging around with a bottle of lemon water on their way to a salad party before their weekly budget meeting at the charity fitness club, right?  Well, the answer is that those people have mastered self control. 

Self control is the wise response to the reality that we’re all ruled by primal drives and deeply ingrained habits.  The art of this discipline is harnessing the power of repetition to deliberately create routines that lead to your desired outcomes.  Simply intending an outcome is usually a bad strategy.  Our will power is dependent on the state we’re engaged in when we commit to something. It’s like swearing you’ll give up eating cookies after weighing yourself and seeing that you’ve gained five pounds.  With that fresh frustration it’s easy to take a stand against the cookies in your cabinet that day, but the odds of experiencing that state every day is a lot slimmer than you are, and the odds of staying committed without it is even slimmer still.

Let me explain. The secret is to intend the habits that will lead to your desired outcome, rather than intending the outcome itself.  Focus on the habit formation and forget all about the “will power”.  Create routines that make it unbelievably easy to do what’s in line with your goal, and almost impossible to do something else that you might just want in the moment.

To go back to our weight loss example, the wrong approach was willing away your craving for cookies 5 minutes after realizing you’re overweight, only to find out before bed that you’re will power’s been totally drained and the Oreos are calling your name!  It’s terrifying!  I know!

The right approach is to take a stand at the grocery store.  When you realize your diet needs to change, pile all your junk-food  in a box for good will, and drop it off on your way to buying the foods you’ll soon learn to love.  Don’t fool yourself into buying half healthy and half junk food – you’ll end up with a belly full of fat and a drawer full of rotten vegetables… again. Next, take a stand with the calendar.  Cut the thought out and do your damnedest to keep doing what works the exact same way, at the same time, over and over again.  Before you know it, it’ll be even harder to break the great habit than it was to make it.

Just ask Johnny Muscles when you see him crying outside of the locked gym on Good Friday.

There you have it;  you’ve just leveraged millions of years of evolution!

9. EMBRACE CYCLES: Achieving balance feels incredible.  There’s a peace that’s impossible to describe which only comes from giving the right amount of attention to the right things at the right time.  Because of this, many of us sabotage our best chances for big wins by giving up as soon as we upset the balance.  This isn’t necessary though.  This is wrong, in fact.  

Eventually it proves best to work more when the wind’s at your back, and give yourself breaks when you’re running against it.  What I mean is that it’s important not to try forcing a creative process, and to keep your arse in gear when the juices are flowing.  For the general workflow, work your ass off for defined periods of time, and then enjoy frequent, guilt free, breaks, with some occasional time off in between (afternoons off, days off, weekends, or more).

No book I’ve ever seen describes this approach better than the 4 Hour Work Week.  It’s literally the best book I’ve ever read, and re-read, and read again, and I’ll share a teaser with you now.  Beyond the weekend and maybe two weeks off a year if we’re lucky, most of us just aren’t taking time to recharge, let alone to explore and inspire ourselves.  Slaving for 40 years in hopes of buying your freedom later is pretty much insane, so, instead, the author proposes mini-retirements.

What if you could work for 4 years and then take an entire year off in Thailand or Italy?

What if instead of working your fingers to the bone, you got smart with your savings, got great at your work, and took an entire month off to drive the coast of California, or see something you’ve always dreamed of?  What if you worked from home more, or set up shop for 6 weeks on the River Seine in Paris?

Don’t you think it would completely overhaul the way you feel?  Don’t you think you could come back to work on fire and doing the best work of your life?  It sounds hard, right? Well, try working your whole life to build someone else’s dream and waiting 40 years to live a minute of your own, and then reconsider trying.

Take a day to get things done, and then take a break. Take a risk, and then take a rest.  Take a year to do your best work ever, and then take a MONTH for a mini-retirement in Mauwi.  Embrace cycles to do your best work, and top of that you’ll never feel better.  Mahalo!

10. TAKE MASSIVE, FOCUSED, DAILY ACTION:  MJ DeMarco, author of the Millionaire Fast Lane, explains that one of the most common delusions of working class people is that success is an event rather than a process.

You have no idea how many failures every big-shot endured to finally arrive on the cover, the list, or the podium where you first saw them.  Moreover, in between every failure were hundreds of hours of investment and hard work that few of us care to watch or consider. Talent is a tickle, but tenacity – the ability to stick it out – always get’s the last laugh.

Don’t let other people’s success fool you, and don’t ever let it get you down.  If you want to achieve anything worth while, just get started now, and be ready to show up every day.   You build big muscles by lifting big weights over and over again.

Similarly, you get rich by leveraging other people and their money, and by doing it better every day.  You become skilled in anything by focusing on it, but most of all by doing it over and over again. Just like Jim Rohn always said, “You can’t hire someone else to do your pushups.”  You can be as smart as you want to, but there’s no path but focus, and no shortcut around working hard.  That’s how your heroes became your heroes.

Sweat dreams!

11. PAY ATTENTION TO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK: It’s too easy to call somebody a hater and automatically discredit whatever they say.   …     Don’t!

Listen to your haters!  People who already love us or love what we do are prone to being supportive as a priority, rather than being honest.  Not only that, but in the midst of the romance they can lose the critical eye that “haters” live to cast on anything that people who stand out try to do.       …    Good!

Don’t take it personally, don’t give it more time than it deserves, and don’t get down over the harsh words of an idiot; but, DO give it a look! Why miss a golden opportunity to get some insights into your approach from someone who clearly doesn’t care to please you and might even be brutally honest.  Whether you’re an author, an artist, a parent, or an entrepreneur, don’t be afraid of criticism if you truly want to be your best.

Let your haters do your homework. While they dig up dirt to throw at you they might just uncover your weakest link, and thus your biggest opportunity to improve.  Best of all, they’ll do it all for free!  Thank them later.

12. PAY IT FORWARD:  Giving back is one of the most fulfilling things you’ll ever do, and one of the surest signs that you’ve already made it.  Study after study continue to show that our efforts to help others often satisfy us more than our attempts to please ourselves directly.

Once you’ve taken the lesson about mentorship to heart and have lived through the benefits of someone else’s support and guidance, nothing will please you more than stepping into the role of mentor yourself.  Whatever you achieve in life, can you really consider it a true success if you haven’t passed it on to someone else?

Participate in the cycle of success.  People will line up to pay you back, and even if they didn’t,  you’d never regret it anyway. When you help people, helpful people take notice of you.  There’s no way to explain how easy life gets once you’ve worked your way into a network of people who care about each other and work toward one another’s success.

Like I said, though, with all the perks that come along with sharing your advantages, the biggest perk by far is the way you’re gonna feel.  Find out for yourself!

13. REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE DYING:  Too many people have elaborate plans for retirement but nothing exiting planned for tomorrow!  They can picture a long life, and yet they rarely imagine a long vacation or even take a good, short, walk.

Well, who says you’ll live to be 90?  Shit, who says you’ll live to be 50?!  We are all terminally ill.  Every last person you’ve ever met will eventually die, and some so much sooner than you think.

No matter how hard it is to process, you’re going with ’em!  None of us knows how much time we have.  Even tomorrow isn’t a guarantee, and that reality’s the best reminder I know of to make every day really count.  Enjoy the day to day, but don’t get caught up in the later-on life plan.

If you’ve got big dreams, you need to couple them with big plans and bold actions, and you need to do it now.  You need to do it all the time.  Create the routines that lead to the outcomes you dream of, remember?  This goes for every area of your life.  Your work, your friends, your finance, your romantic life – heck, your body itself – all require you to get clear on what brings you the most fulfillment, and to foster the habits that bring it to life.

Does your body feel good, or can you improve your whole life by being more active and pampering yourself more often?  Are you cashing in on all the comfort you can gain from spending meaningful time with your friends and family, or should you be calling someone you miss right now to make dinner plans?

How is money influencing your freedom?  Do you need to make a scary change in your career and become someone who can attract more wealth, or is it time to recognize that a meaningful life costs far less than you’re already making and that you should buy back the time you need to enjoy life’s so many pleasures?

So what’s success to you?  What is it you dream of?  What are the big things you want to experience in this too short life. Who’s the person you fantasize about becoming?

Now the harder part, and everything that matters.  Are you going to let fear, distraction, and bad habits stop you from making your dream happen?  I’ll dare say that most people do, and unlike our inevitable deaths, a life of unrealized dreams truly is a tragedy every single time.

Please, PLEASE, don’t let it be you.  Keep these 13 rules fresh in your mind, and read one last thought.  Really put yourself into this one, and it’ll be a powerful start toward finding success in the life of your dreams.

Imagine you’re 90 years old.  You’re rocking in your chair with oxygen tubes running to your nostrils. Your slow, shallow, breath is rising in your weakened lungs, and cupped frailly in your wrinkly hands is a book – the story of your life.

What should it say?  What would really warm your heart to read in its pages?  What stories would make you laugh, smile, bite your lip with excitement, or cry with tears of joy?

Go live that story!

*Now that you know the rules and exactly how to achieve success, share this post with someone else you know that deserves to have their dreams come true.