Patterns of Success | Steve Pavlina

People usually succeed in the long run.

This is the pattern I see in my long-term readers. They may take a while to get moving on their goals at first. They may endure some false starts and setbacks. They may procrastinate now and then. But if a goal is important to them, such as creating passive income streams or finding a fulfilling relationship, they do eventually succeed.

Not all of them succeed of course. Some give up. Some get sucked back into social groups that influence them to fall off track. Some drift aimlessly without finding their focus.
But by and large, the people who persist do eventually succeed. If they keep working towards their goals, keep learning and growing, and stay conscious, they do make progress, and they do achieve their goals.

Here are some of the patterns I see in readers who succeed in achieving their long-term goals.

Take Goals Seriously

People who succeed take their goals seriously. They move their goals out of the realm of fantasy and turn them into practical objectives to be achieved.

One of the simplest ways to take your goals seriously is to turn them into mental pictures and movies that you can describe visually. If you can’t tell me what you’re seeing on the movie screen, it’s a safe bet that your goal is just a fuzzy fantasy.

Usually when people tell me about their goals the first time, it’s a fuzzy fantasy. They list things like: make more money, have more friends, and travel more. Does this tell you what you’re seeing on the movie screen? Nope. Is it clear if you’ve accomplished these goals or not? Nope. Do these pseudo-goals let you off the hook and pretend you’re making progress? 
Yup.

It’s okay to begin with a fuzzy fantasy, but don’t get stuck there. Move your goal out of the realm of fantasy, and turn it into a real-world experience. Frame your future experiences the same way you frame your past memories. Memories are events that happened. So turn your goals into similar events that can and will happen.

A real goal will eventually be achieved, and then it will become a memory. Memories involve sense perceptions, and they’re mostly visual. So if you want to set a clear goal, then describe the future memory. Traveling more or making more money isn’t a memory.

If I asked you what you did yesterday, would you say, “I made more money, had more friends, and traveled more”? If you said something like that, I’d wonder that you might have some brain damage. Don’t describe your goals like that either. State your goals and intentions like you’re describing a future memory. What are the actual events that you’d like to experience?

A memory is something like going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, enjoying the view of Paris, and taking a bunch of photos while you’re up there. That’s a goal that can be accomplished or not. It’s a goal that encourages real-world planning and action steps. It’s achievable.

Start Modestly

People who succeed tend to begin with modest goals and build up to larger goals when they get some success going. Those who fail often bite off more than they can chew.

For instance, instead of trying to earn $10,000 per month immediately, successful people usually start with a modest goal like creating a passive income stream of $100 per month. They work on that goal first and do what it takes to achieve it. Then they can apply what they learned to parlay that small success into a bigger success.

The failure stories often inject neediness into their goals. I get emails from such people frantically telling me how they need to make an extra $1000 to $3000 this month in order to pay their rent or bills. In 12+ years of blogging, I can’t recall a single case of one of these people ever emailing me back to say that they succeeded.

Neediness will only get in your way, create extra stress, and delay real progress. If you need to let the old world collapse while you work on your long-term goals at a realistic and intelligent pace, so be it.

Bite off a modest piece of your goal, work on it, and achieve it. This will do more to move you towards a long-term pattern of success than frantic scrambling.

Have Compassion for Your Future Self

Have some compassion for your future self. At some point you’re going to be 5, 10, or 20 years older, and that future you will have to endure the consequences of what you’re creating now. If you’re wallowing in neediness or drifting aimlessly, you’re sentencing your future self to a crappy outcome, and that future you may blame you for it.

Instead of screwing over your future self, take a more sensible and compassionate approach. Work to create a better reality for your future self. That future self is going to be you 
someday.

People who succeed look to give their future selves an edge. They seek to put themselves in a more advantaged position down the road. They make small sacrifices today to alleviate stress and enjoy more fulfillment tomorrow.

Don’t Go Dark

Almost everyone goes dark at some point, sinking into aimless drifting for a while and losing sight of their goals. Those who succeed tend to bounce back quickly though. They recognize when they’re going dark and even give themselves permission to temporarily wallow in this state if they need a break. They know they’ll get back to working on their goals soon enough.
Those who don’t succeed tend to spend a lot of time drifting unconsciously. For such people the experience of setting and working on goal is just a temporary blip against a background of aimlessness. The lights go on occasionally when they get a burst of inspiration (usually from an external source), but most of the time, the lights stay off.

Those who succeed keep the lights on most of the time. They do their best to stay conscious. They keep moving the needle forward, little by little, tackling one small milestone at a time. They aren’t so easily discouraged by setbacks.

Be Flexible

People who get sidetracked often have a very rigid approach to success. When their initial plans don’t work in the real world, they keep repeating the same ineffective strategies, stubbornly expecting that something new will happen each time.

Those who succeed understand and accept that their initial plans may not work. Each failure becomes a learning experience. Successful people surrender their ineffective approaches, so they can pivot towards new possible solutions.

Those who fail usually explore very little of the solution space. They hide out in a comfortable corner where there are few results to be had. Those who succeed almost invariably explore more of the solution space. Even after they get some success going, they keep exploring to further optimize their approaches, especially to improve overall lifestyle balance.

Embrace the Growth Journey

It usually takes people longer than they expect to achieve their goals, regardless of what types of goals they set. When we set a goal, we can’t accurately envision all the micro-steps it will take to achieve it. We oversimplify the journey. We overlook many details, and those details will take time.

People who give up often succumb to impatience. They go dark when the path becomes longer than expected, even if they were making modest progress. Sometimes they pressure themselves to meet unreasonable deadlines and then burn out after a while.

Those who succeed may succumb to the previous pattern too, but eventually they get past it. These people progress to a more mature, more balanced, and less frantic approach to growth and achievement. Short-term scrambling gives way to long-term patience.

The key is to embrace the overall growth journey. See the benefits not just in the goal to be achieved but in the person you’re becoming along the way. The inner benefits are more secure anyway. You can strip a growth-oriented person of their external accomplishments and resources, and their well-developed inner resources will help them bounce back to their previous position and beyond.

Discover What Works and Repeat

Successful people sometimes find just one or two patterns that work, and then they repeat. For instance, they may create a $100 passive income stream and then repeat the process dozens or hundreds of times. They also refine the process as they go along, so each stream may be 10x more effective after a few years of refinement.

Earlier this year I met a guy who keeps renting more apartments in different cities and turning them into AirBnB properties for a profit. He reinvests the profits in securing more properties to create more revenue streams. I believe he expects to make seven figures from his operation this year, and he gains the added bonus of being able to stay in any of his properties for free when he travels.

* * *

Every month I meet new readers in person and hear their stories, especially with respect to the goals they’ve set, the lessons they’ve learned, and the pivots they’ve made. One thing is clear: In the long run, people usually do achieve their goals if they persist, stay flexible, and don’t give up. The biggest challenge for most people is persisting long enough to win the mental game.

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How to Motivate Yourself: 3 Steps Backed By Science | Eric Barker

You make goals… but then you procrastinate.

You write a to-do list… but then you don’t follow through.

And this happens again and again and again. Seriously, what’s the problem?

Why are we so good at thinking of what to do but so terrible at actually doing those things?

The problem is you’re skipping an essential step. Here’s what it is…

The Mistake Every Productivity System Makes

Productivity systems rarely take emotions into account. And feelings are a fundamental and unavoidable part of why humans do what they do.

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We can’t ignore our emotions. Because of the way our brains are structured, when thought and feelings compete, feelings almost always win.

And we can’t fight our feelings. Research shows this just makes them stronger.

"…when experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event, but then instructed to try not to feel sad about it, they end up feeling worse than people who are informed of the event, but given no instructions about how to feel. In another study, when patients who were suffering from panic disorders listened to relaxation tapes, their hearts beat faster than patients who listened to audiobooks with no explicitly ‘relaxing’ content. Bereaved people who make the most effort to avoid feeling grief, research suggests, take the longest to recover from their loss. Our efforts at mental suppression fail in the sexual arena, too: people instructed not to think about sex exhibit greater arousal, as measured by the electrical conductivity of their skin, than those not instructed to suppress such thoughts.

So what does the unavoidable power of feelings mean for motivation?

In their book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath say that emotions are an essential part of executing any plan:

"Focus on emotions. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people (or yourself) feel something.

We need to think to plan but we need to feel to act.

So if you’ve got the thinking part out of the way – how do you rile up those emotions and get things done? Here are three steps:

1) Get Positive

When do we procrastinate the most? When we’re in a bad mood.

So procrastination is a mood-management technique, albeit (like eating or taking drugs) a shortsighted one. But we’re most prone to it when we think it will actually help… Well, far and away the most procrastination occurred among the bad-mood students who believed their mood could be changed and who had access to fun distractions.

Meanwhile, research shows happiness increases productivity and makes you more successful.

What does the military teach recruits in order to mentally toughen them up? No, it’s not hand-to-hand combat.

It’s optimism. So how do you get optimistic if you’re not feeling it?

Monitor the progress you’re making and celebrate it. Harvard’s Teresa Amabile‘s research found that nothing is more motivating than progress.

"This pattern is what we call the progress principle: of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work; of all the negative events, the single most powerful is the opposite of progress—setbacks in the work. We consider this to be a fundamental management principle: facilitating progress is the most effective way for managers to influence inner work life.

(More on how to get happier here.)

Okay, so negativity isn’t making you procrastinate and holding you back. But what’s going to drive you forward?

2) Get Rewarded

Rewards feel good. Penalties feel bad. And that’s why they both can work well for motivating you.

Research shows that rewards are responsible for three-quarters of why you do things.

Via The 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People:

"Researchers find that perceived self-interest, the rewards one believes are at stake, is the most significant factor in predicting dedication and satisfaction toward work. It accounts for about 75 percent of personal motivation toward accomplishment. – Dickinson 1999

So treat yourself whenever you complete something on your to-do list. (Yes, this is how you train a dog but it will work for you too.)

Having trouble finding a reward awesome enough to get you off your butt? Try a “commitment device” instead:

Give your friend $100. If you get a task done by 5PM, you get your $100 back. If you don’t complete it, you lose the $100.

Your to-do list just got very emotional.

So you’re feeling positive and there are rewards (or penalties) in place. What else do you need? How about nagging, compliments and guilt?

3) Get Peer Pressure

Research shows peer pressure helps kids more than it hurts them.

(And face it, you’re still a big kid, you just have to pretend to be an adult most of the time — and it’s exhausting.)

Surround yourself with people you want to be and it’s far less taxing to do what you should be doing.

Via Charles Duhigg’s excellent book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business:

"When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real.

The Longevity Project, which studied over 1000 people from youth to death had this to say:

"The groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become. For people who want improved health, association with other healthy people is usually the strongest and most direct path of change.

And the research on friendship confirms this. From my interview with Carlin Flora, author of Friendfluence:

"Research shows over time, you develop the eating habits, health habits and even career aspirations of those around you. If you’re in a group of people who have really high goals for themselves you’ll take on that same sense of seriousness.

(More on the science of friendship here.)

So we’ve got all three methods going for us. How do we wrap this all together and get started?

Sum Up

Got today’s to-do list? Great. That means the most rational thing to do now isstop being rational. Get those emotions going:

1. Get Positive
2. Get Rewarded
3. Get Peer Pressure

You can do this. In fact, believing you can do this is actually the first step.

What’s one of the main things that stops people from becoming happier? Happiness isn’t part of how they see themselves so it’s harder to change.

Think of yourself as a motivated, productive person. Research shows how people feel about themselves has a huge effect on success.

"For most people studied, the first step toward improving their job performance had nothing to do with the job itself but instead with improving how they felt about themselves. In fact, for eight in ten people, self-image matters more in how they rate their job performance than does their actual job performance. – Gribble 2000

Still unsure if you’ll be able to beat the procrastination demon? Then skip right to #3, peer pressure.

Forward this post to at least two friends and start holding each other accountable.

Now you’ve got something outside of yourself that’s watching and motivating you. And everything is easier — and more fun — with friends.

So what do you think?  Let me know below!

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