Success and Freedom

34 Things You Need to Know About Becoming Successful - part 1

Benjamin P. Hardy

1. It’s never as good as you think it will be.

“One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation,” says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has studied the relationship between money and happiness for more than two decades.

He adds, “We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them.”

Actually, savoring the anticipation or idea of a desired outcome is generally more satisfying than the outcome itself. Once we get what we want—whether that’s wealth, health or excellent relationships—we adapt and the excitement fades. Often the experiences we’re seeking end up being underwhelming and even disappointing.

I love watching this phenomenon with our foster kids. They feel as if they need a certain toy or the universe will explode. Their whole world revolves around getting this one thing. Yet once we buy the toy for them, it’s not long before the joy fades and they want something else.

Until you appreciate what you currently have, more won’t make your life better.

2. It’s never as bad as you think it will be.

Just as we deceive ourselves into believing something will make us happier than it will, we also deceive ourselves into believing something will be harder than it will.

The longer you procrastinate or avoid doing something, the more painful (in your head) it becomes. But once you take action, the discomfort is far less severe than you imagined. Humans adapt to the most extremely difficult things. I recently sat on a plane with a lady who has 17 kids. Yes, you read that correctly. After having eight of her own, her and her husband felt inspired to foster four siblings whom they later adopted. A few years later, they took on another five foster siblings whom they also adopted.

Of course, the initial shock impacted her entire family. But they’re handling it. And believe it or not, you could handle it too, if you had to. The problem with dread and fear is that it holds people back from taking on big challenges. What you will find—no matter how big or small the challenge—is that you will adapt to it. When you consciously adapt to enormous stress, you evolve.

3. There is no way to happiness.

“There is no way to happiness;  happiness is the way.”  —Thich Nhat Hanh
Most people believe they must:

• First have something (e.g., money, time or love)
• Before they can do what they want to do (e.g., travel the world, write a book, start a business or have a romantic relationship)
• Which will ultimately allow them to be something (e.g., happy, peaceful, content, motivated or in love).
• Paradoxically, this have-do-be paradigm must actually be reversed to experience happiness, success or anything else you desire.
• First you be whatever it is you want to be (e.g., happy, compassionate, peaceful, wise or loving)
• Then you start doing things from this space of being.
• Almost immediately, what you are doing will bring about the things you want to have.

We attract into our lives what we are. This concept is confirmed by loads of psychological research. In his popular TED talk, Harvard psychologist and SUCCESS Happiness Guy Shawn Achor explains that most have happiness backwards. They believe they must first achieve or acquire something to be happy, when science shows that happiness facilities success.

For example, Scott Adams, the creator of the famous comic series “Dilbert,” attributes his success to the use of positive affirmations. Fifteen times each day, he wrote this sentence on a piece of paper: “I, Scott Adams, will become a syndicated cartoonist.” The process of writing this 15 times a day buried the positive idea deep into his subconscious—putting Adams’ conscious mind on a treasure hunt for what he sought. The more he wrote, the more he could see opportunities that were previously invisible to him. And shortly thereafter, he was a highly famous syndicated cartoonist. It couldn’t not happen.

I personally apply a similar principle but write my goal in the present tense. For example, rather than saying, “I will become a syndicated cartoonist,” I write, “I am a syndicated cartoonist.” Writing it in the present tense highlights the fact that you are being who you want to be, which will then inform what you do and ultimately who you become.

4. You already have enough.

In an interview at the annual Genius Network event in 2013, Tim Ferriss was asked, “With all of your various roles, do you ever get stressed out? Do you ever feel like you’ve taken on too much?”

Ferriss responded, “Of course I get stressed out. If anyone says they don’t get stressed out, they’re lying. But one thing that mitigates that is taking time each morning to declare and focus on the fact that I have enough. I have enough. I don’t need to worry about responding to every email each day. If they get mad, that’s their problem.”

He was later asked during the same interview, “After having read The 4-Hour Workweek, I got the impression that Tim Ferriss doesn’t care about money. You talked about how you travel the world without spending any money. Talk about the balance and ability to let go of caring about making money.” Ferriss responded, “It’s totally OK to have lots of nice things. If it is addiction to wealth, like in Fight Club, ‘The things you own end up owning you,’ and it becomes a surrogate for things like long-term health and happiness—connection—then it becomes a disease state. But if you can have nice things, and not fear having them taken away, then it’s a good thing. Because money is a really valuable tool.”

If you appreciate what you already have, than more will be a good thing in your life. If you feel the need to have more to compensate for something missing in your life, you’ll always be left wanting—no matter how much you acquire or achieve.

5. You have every advantage to succeed.

It’s easy to talk about how hard our lives are. It’s easy to talk about how unfair life is—that we got the short end of the stick. Does this kind of talking really help anyone? When we judge our situation as worse than someone else’s, we are ignorantly and incorrectly saying, “You’ve got it easy. You’re not like me. Success should come easy to you because you haven’t had to deal with what I’ve gone through.” This paradigm has formally become known as the victim mentality, and it generally leads to feelings of entitlement.

The world owes you nothing. Life isn’t meant to be fair. But the world has also given you everything you need. The truth is, you have every advantage in the world to succeed. And by believing this in your bones, you’ll feel an enormous weight of responsibility to yourself and the world. You’ve been put in the perfect position to succeed. Everything in the universe has brought you to this point so you can now shine and change the world. Your natural state is to thrive. All you have to do is show up.