Successful people who tell you that they are successful because they work hard, are telling you only half the story. And they’re telling you only half the story, frankly, because if they have developed their behavioral patterns unconsciously, then they probably only know half the story. It’s true that those ‘type a’ kind of characters – who in our weaker moments annoy us with their boundless energy – work hard, but the real question is why they’re able to work so unfailingly hard. The full answer is complex, and there is more than one ingredient in the success recipe, but perhaps there is no more important element to a person’s long-term success than their habits. You’ve probably heard before that you need ‘good habits’, but perhaps not enough about what a good habit even is, or maybe more importantly, how one goes about creating a good habit.

Merriam dictionary defines a habit as:  “an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary”. That last word says it all. ‘Involuntary’. Think about how powerful that is. What could be completely destructive in the form of some body destroying habit like smoking, conversely by itself could be the very reason you succeed. If a habit is a virtually involuntary action, imagine if you could identify actions that when repeated regularly would virtually guarantee your success. And then imagine you could install those actions like a piece of software in your brain and become someone who would repeat successful actions basically in an unconscious, relatively painless way? Well, that’s what the type of person that we identified at the outset possesses. It’s one of the main reasons it seems easy for them to work so hard. They possess imbedded within their nervous system a set of wiring that basically makes them perform beneficial actions on a regular basis. Now how did they get this way? It’s impossible to say for certain in each case what has created a person’s psychology but there’s a good chance that if they don’t think to tell you that they’re successful partly because of their habits then they probably were raised in an environment that fostered those habits without them being aware of it. But what about those of us that weren’t lucky enough to be born to a family of positively reinforcing go getters? Are we doomed? Nope. Not even close. In fact, perhaps once you’ve installed your ‘software’ sufficiently you may have an edge. Because when you’re aware of this phenomenon not only can you create a robust psychology for success but there is virtually no limit to how much you can continuously hone and upgrade it.