Hard work is where it all begins. Without working hard achieving goals and making milestones don’t happen. Starting a business is hard and so is setting goals, plans, and staying on track. We often discuss this during our free webinar training when we are helping new online business owners start and make progress on their business. Although, we find comfort knowing that very few people have every failed by working hard. It may have taken some blood, sweat, and tears, but when they reached goals and pushed through the hard times, they came out better and wiser. Not to mention more successful!
So are you wondering what you need to succeed? The word is simple, but the work it takes to make it happen is not. The word is “determination.” Are you up for the task?! Forbes author Liz Ryan weighs in on how to develop a successful business through determination.
You're not going to get paid more just because you have great ideas. None of those investments on your part translate into tangible career success. You could donate every waking hour to your job and still get a one percent pay bump at the end of the year, or get laid off when the company realizes that you've solved all of their biggest problems and they don't need you anymore.
We can see that there's more to career success than just hard work — so what's the magic ingredient?
The magic ingredient to success is not the good fortune to come from a wealthy family, and it isn't a great education, either, as plenty of underemployed but highly-educated people can attest. The magic ingredient for career success and satisfaction is self-determination. When you are the captain of the ship, you get to decide which way to sail. That's the only way to be successful in your career.
Medium give some examples of a few people throughout our history who have worked hard and have come out on top. These are people we should look up to and try to follow in their footsteps.
“Don’t ever, ever, believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by, by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there’s always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you’re doing. And they’re going to work harder than you if you’re not working hard.” — Maria Bartiromo
Greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to their crafts.
Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it.
Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. The all-time-great football receiver Jerry Rice — passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow — practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.
Bill Gates saw the dawn of the PC and worked hard to put a computer on every desk. John D. Rockefeller, too, saw ahead when the world-changing new industry was oil and took advantage.
Hard work is challenging, painful and uncomfortable. But it’s the only way to the top. In fact, a major key to success is to learn to enjoy challenging work and to enjoy working hard at it.
For most people, work is hard enough without pushing even harder. Those extra steps are so difficult and painful they almost never get done.
So how you do you become successful? Lifehack provides some advice below:
Believe fully in your ability to achieve your goal. Visualize yourself having completed your goal in the exact time-frame you have chosen, although finishing early is also acceptable. You don’t need to consider the failures that will happen along the way. Success is inevitable. Others may think you will fail, don’t let yourself be one of them! (If you have trouble visualizing success, perhaps a fear of success is limiting you)
Break down goals by week and by day, setting up a plan to reach your overall objective. Keep the number of tasks per day as low as you can, and focus on completing only your planned tasks for each day. If you find yourself done, pick the next thing from your weekly list. Do the hardest things during your peak energy level, which usually means doing them first!
Push yourself. Go out of your comfort zone. This is the best way to learn, and the best way to make progress quickly. If you’re looking for new ideas, being risk averse will not help. This takes a lot of self-awareness. Try and be conscious of when you are holding yourself back out of fear. Push yourself to be courageous, and take that next step.
James Clear discusses how luck does play a part in some people’s success, but it’s best to take action. He quotes computer engineer Richard Hamming saying that good luck happens, but it increases with more effort. In other words, don’t get lazy and don’t be afraid to work hard!
By definition, luck is out of your control. Even so, it is useful to understand the role it plays and how it works so you can prepare for when fortune (or misfortune) comes your way.
In his fantastic talk, You and Your Research, the mathematician and computer engineer Richard Hamming summarized what it takes to do great work by saying, “There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.”
You can increase your surface area for good luck by taking action. The forager who explores widely will find lots of useless terrain, but is also more likely to stumble across a bountiful berry patch than the person who stays home. Similarly, the person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits. Gary Player, the famous golfer and winner of nine major championships, has said, “The harder I practice, the luckier I get.”
In the end, we cannot control our luck—good or bad—but we can control our effort and preparation. Luck smiles on us all from time to time. And when it does, the way to honor your good fortune is to work hard and make the most of it.
Success author Debra DiePietro advises how to make a business successful. She recommends finding what you’re passionate about, knowing your “why,” and making it a daily habit. Combine all of these tips, and you’ll get closer to creating a successful business!
Find the passion
Embark on this project only if you are passionate about it, because it’s passion that energizes you for the long-haul. If not, you will inevitably tire of it and probably will not stay with it.
Know your “why.”
Why are you doing this? For me, writing in my journal helps clarify why it is important to me. Ask yourself, how will your idea impact your life? Your career? How will it help others? Your family?
Make it a daily habit
Sometimes to make our big plans and dreams come true, we have to fit them into whatever else we have going on in our lives. You have to find a way to incorporate this plan into your daily life so that it becomes as routine as brushing your teeth.
I did this with my blogging. I got up early in the morning and wrote during my coffee time instead of reading the newspaper. I gave myself just enough time to write a post and get ready to go to work. And I did this for years. Now my routine is to write and blog in the early evening when I get home from my day job and before it is time to make dinner (and thankfully I have an understanding husband, for often we eat dinner pretty late due to my writing projects).
As you begin persevering and doing everything in your power to make your online business succeed, you need to keep in mind that hard work is what is going to keep you going. Don’t give up and stay determined to make your business succeed as My Star Job recommends.
What can you always control? How hard you work.
Again, everyone defines success differently, as well everyone should. Before you go virtual-postal and say your personal definition of success has everything to do with balance and personal relationships and nothing to do with mastering the business world, I’m totally with you.
But if you happen to define success by traditional measures like professional achievement and fortune and fame, hard work is the great equaliser.
You may not be smarter than everyone else. You may not be as talented. You may not have the same great connections, the same great environment, or the same great education.
If you’re on the downside of advantage, you may have none of those things.
But you can always rely on your courage, your effort, and your perseverance. You can always substitute effort for skill and experience, secure in the knowledge that, over time, incredible effort will absolutely breed skill and experience.
You can always, always, always work harder than everyone else.
Want to be different? Hard work can be your immediate difference.
Make hard work your favourite words, whether at work or at home or in your marriage or wherever your definition of success takes you.
That way you’ll never have to look back and wonder what you might have accomplished if only you had tried harder.
Are you ready to get going on your online business and work hard? Success may not come overnight, but if you work hard it should happen! Learn how to work better and smarter during our free webinar training. We often discuss how to improve a new online business and increase your paycheck!
Sources: Medium, Lifehack, James Clear, Forbes, Success, My Star Job
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