Entreprenuer.com writer, coach, and entrepreneur enthusiast Dixie Gillapsie has to say about successful personal development skills that I thought was pretty good (with regard to my aforementioned spiel):
They spend time getting to know themselves.
If you know who they are, chances are they devote a lot of their daily practice to knowing themselves better than you can even imagine. Successful people are self-aware on multiple levels.
They know their energy patterns, so they know how much sleep is optimal. They know when they get their best rest they are at their best when they are awake. They know what fuel their body needs, and what kind of exercise it takes to feel the way they want to feel. They know what environments they need to be creative and productive, and they know the difference between those two states.
They know their priorities, too, and they know that all of their decisions must start with the highest level of their vision, mission or purpose. Benjamin Franklin’s documented daily schedule starts each day with a question; “What good shall I do this day?” Steve Jobs said in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005 that he spent 33 years asking the same question every morning; “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
Bottom line, no matter how many articles, interviews or opinions you read, you’ll find that successful people are always tuned in to the one most critical success factor in their business — themselves.
They spend time improving themselves.
Speaking of being tuned in to themselves, successful people know that to increase their net worth they must increase their personal worth. They’ve mastered the personal SWOTT analysis and they consistently invest in themselves.
It’s no secret that successful people read. They read story books, they read how-to books, they read news, they read industry articles. They read to improve their knowledge, their mind-set, even their mood.
But they do more than read. Successful people study. They study trends in their industry and outside of their industry, they study things that interest them and, most of all, they study people.
They spend time sharing themselves.
Many super successful people are generous with their money and time. I personally believe that trait builds both financial success and personal satisfaction, but it isn’t what I’m referencing here and I didn’t find it to be 100 percent consistent in all of the “daily habits” lists I read.
What I did find to be consistent is that every person referenced or interviewed had a personal message and a method for sharing it. Their audience might be primarily internal, but it’s not just, “Here’s what the company has to do to achieve success,” or it might be aimed at the general public, but it’s not just, “Here’s why you should buy what I’m selling.”
Successful people have a personal philosophy that permeates everything they say and do. They write, they speak, they mentor, they give interviews and in all of those circumstances they show up fully and completely, sharing not only their message, but the very essence of themselves.
If you want to be successful, I suggest you read those “daily habits” lists the way you’d look at a blueprint for a house you will live in. Make change orders where necessary. Your daily habits need to support your life and your success, don’t try to live by someone else’s blueprint. Just be sure you’re dedicating significant quality time to getting to truly know yourself, improving yourself and sharing yourself. Because you are the single most important (cont’d)
