Why are some people more successful than the others?

You see, you don't decide your future.

You decide your habits, and your habits decide your future.

No one succeeds overnight, and no one fails overnight.

Success is nothing more than the sum of small efforts

repeated day in and day out.

Today I want to share with you the 10 successful habits

that I have learned and developed over the years.

Habit number one, successful people take 100% responsibility

for their own life.

You see, I was struggling, I was in my 20s.

I had just failed my 13th business.

I had started and failed at 13 businesses.

And back then I was lost.

And I was blaming, I was blaming everything else.

And when I met my first mentor, Alan,

when he sat down with me and he asked me the question,

"Dan, what's not working?"

I said, "Everything is not working!"

Right?

"I'm not making enough money", right?

"I'm in debt, I had all these failures, I don't understand.

"Customers are so cheap, the government, I don't know why."

Right?

"The tax is so high and everything, the economy's bad."

And I was just pointing fingers at everyone else.

I wasn't taking responsibility for my own life.

My mentor Alan said to me, "Unless and until you take

"100% responsibility for your own life, Dan,

"you're not going to be successful."

And I thought to myself, "Maybe he's right, maybe."

At the time, I thought,

"Maybe, not 100%, but maybe I'm at fault."

And he says, "Not maybe, because you chose

"to start those businesses.

"You chose those partners.

"You chose to spend you time on this.

"Every single decision you made on your own,

"to the best of your knowledge but still,

"you chose what happened.

"You chose and you act on it."

And from then on, I learned to take responsibility.

The buck stops with me.

If it's meant to be, it's up to me

and it's something that you need to think about

because lame people blame people.

You can make money or you can produce results.

You cannot do both, so that's habit number one.

Take 100% responsibility for your own life.

Habit number two, and that is you have to decide

exactly what you want.

Most people in life don't get what they want

because they don't know what they want,

and my mentor said to me,

"Well, Dan you need to set a goal."

Now up to that point, I haven't set any goals.

He said, "I want you to set a goal.

"What is it that you really want?"

Now at the time, as a young person, I thought my dream,

my dream was I wanted to buy the RX8 Mazda.

Red, rotary engine.

And I thought if I could get that car,

I have made it, right?

That was my dream, that was my only dream!

I thought it would be so cool if I could drive that car.

And he said, "Good, set that as a goal.

"Make that, that's what you want to do," right?

I said, "Okay great!"

So now from, kind of I'm doing all these things

and I'm starting all these businesses

and I wanted to provide for my mom,

but I needed something to motivate myself.

I needed something that I could see, that I could feel,

that I could just focus on, and the RX8, that was it for me

because at the time, I was driving the Mazda,

Hatchback Mazda 3, right?

And I wanted to upgrade, that was my dream.

So habit number two, you have to know exactly what you want.

Once you know exactly what you want, habit number three

is you have to believe it is possible.

That's it!

You just have to believe that it is possible,

not just for others but for yourself.

Now for me, back then, because I was already driving

the Mazda 3, so in my mind it wasn't like I was trying

to get a Lamborghini or Ferrari.

I was like, "Okay, it's an upgrade."

Right?

If I could focus, that maybe,

just maybe it's possible for me.

So it doesn't seem like so far-fetched.

It doesn't seem like you're not living in the basement

with your mom and now you want to buy

a 10 million dollar home.

It was like, "Hey, I'm driving a Hatchback

"and I could upgrade to a sports car."

That was it.

So you have to believe it's possible.

It's possible for you.

Napoleon Hill talks about this in "Think and Grow Rich".

"Whatever your mind can conceive and believe,

"you can achieve", and it's very very true.

You have to first believe that you can do it.

Habit number four, highly successful people,

they visualize success.

So here's what I did.

Once I know that this is my goal,

once I take 100% responsibility that I can make it happen

and I believe that I can make it happen,

I visualize success.

So I cut out a page from a magazine that had the RX8 on it

and I put it on my vision board.

I would look at it everyday and I would visualize

what it looks like, right?

I would close my eyes and I could see

the interior of the car, I could see my hands is right here, right?

I can see the stick, right?

I can see the whole car, I can see the interior.

I can feel the leather seat.

And I would visualize and visualize and visualize it

until it becomes so vivid in my mind that I could see it,

I could smell it, I could feel it, right?

I could feel this, I deserve this, this is what I could do.

And I do that everyday, visualize my success.

So that's habit number four,

you have to visualize your success.

Habit number five, successful people act as if,

so when I hang out with my friends at the time

and we would see an RX8 driving by, and I would tell them,

"Hey that's my car right there".

And they thought, "Again?

"You're crazy, what are you talking about?

"That's not your car."

And I said, "That's my car."

"No you drive the Hatchback."

"No no no, that is my car."

Every single time I see the RX8, I was acting as if.

I wasn't lying, I wasn't lying to anybody.

I was conditioning myself.

I was acting as if the result has already been accomplished.

So I act and talk in a way that hey, you know what?

It's mine, it's mine already.

It's done, it's a done deal.

So acting as if.

See, most people, they wait until that they see the result

and then they say, "Oh yeah, Dan",

they feel that they deserve it.

No, first you have to believe that you deserve it first

before the result would come along,

it's the other way around.

Habit number six, successful people

are willing to pay the price.

So it's one thing to dream, it's one thing to believe,

but at the end of the day, you have to do something, right?

You have to be willing to pay the price, and in this case,

because it's simply a car, it's quite easy to calculate.

So I found out exactly and precisely how much

it's going to cost, this car, right?

And I thought to myself, "Okay, it's going to cost me

"this much down payment, it's going to cost me this much

"in monthly payment."

Okay, so what I needed to do was I need to focus

on generate enough income to pay for that,

and I was willing to pay the price.

So when my friends, when they were going to pubs,

when they were partying, when they were just wasting time,

I was working.

I was just working, day in, day out,

long hours every single day.

No break, no time off.

I was just focused because I was willing to pay the price.

So one of the questions that you have to ask yourself

is what price are you willing to pay for success?

What are you willing to give up?

What are you willing to sacrifice?

Because there's always a trade off,

there's always a trade off.

Habit number seven, successful people feel the fear

and they do it anyway.

See, a lot of people, they think that successful people

have no fears.

Of course we have fears.

Of course we have doubts.

Of course we're afraid to make a decision sometimes.

We're human beings.

The difference is we don't let the fears stop us.

We don't let the feat dictate what we are

or what we're not going to do.

We feel the fear, you feel the fear, but we do it anyway.

I remember I had to pick up the phone,

I had to call business owners.

I had to cold call and get clients.

Was I afraid?

You bet.

Was I nervous?

You bet.

Do I like those rejections?

No, of course not.

Of course not, but I feel the fear and I do it anyway.

I do it anyway, I do it anyway.

Just keep at it, keep at it and you keep at it.

Habit number eight, successful people seek mentorship.

You see, unsuccessful people very often,

they have a big ego and please listen to me.

Your ego is not your amigo.

Your ego is not your friend.

Your ego will destroy you.

See, when I was doing it my way, right?

I let my pride, my ego stop me from seeking mentorship

until I found my first mentor.

Now, that may or may not be the answer for everybody,

I'm just telling you that was the answer for me.

Finding my mentor, finding that first mentor

changed my life, it turned my life around,

seeking mentorship.

I don't have all the answers.

I don't know everything.

There's no way someone knows everything,

and the more you learn, the more you realize

how little that you know.

So my mentor was giving me the mindset and the skill set

that I needed to achieve my goals, to buy that RX8.

Does that mean I don't have failures?

Of course I have failures.

But "Success is going from failure to failure

"without losing enthusiasm", Winston Churchill.

So habit number nine, successful people have enthusiasm.

You notice, high income people, they have high energy.

Low income people, they have low energy.

They can't get anything done.

They're not productive.

They cannot make it happen.

They lack the vitality, the energy, right?

The enthusiasm, the stamina to make things happen.

Then how are you going to accomplish anything

if you don't approach anything

with passion and enthusiasm, right?

You may not be the best at it right now,

but if you are enthusiastic and you believe

and you're passionate, incredibly passionate

about what you do, you're going to make it happen.

So that's a very very key habit

that kind of makes everything work,

and that leads to the last habit and that's habit number 10.

Successful people commit to constant improvement.

You see, after I did all these things, I act as if,