9 Keys to Success in Life

What is Success in Life?

Before we explore these 9 keys to success in life, it’s important to have clarity on your definition of success. To succeed means to accomplish a goal. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you’ll never know when you’ve succeeded.

Most people would define success in life as including some measure of happiness. So don’t overlook goals that will support a happier life. Prioritizing relationships, physical health, safety, contributing to others, and creative expression have been shown to improve feelings of happiness.

Whatever your goals, these keys are the tools, habits, or pathways that will help you to achieve success, however you define it.

1st Key: Make A Plan

The very first key is planning for success. This means having a clear picture of what a successful life looks like to you and putting together a well-defined plan to get you to that life.

Planning well starts with figuring out what you want and writing it down in detail.  This is the foundation for your plan. From there, set up the goals, step by step, that will get you to this life.

2nd Key: Prepare for the Unexpected

Many of the best laid plans have been derailed by a single misstep. It’s no accident we chose this as the 2nd of the 10 keys to success in life. Preparing for the unexpected can make the difference between your plans ending in failure or succeeding despite a bump in the road.

So how do you prepare for the unexpected? Start by making a list of things that could go wrong in your plan. Then create workarounds and back ups for each potential problem. Even when I’m driving a route I know well, I usually keep my GPS up and running to help me navigate traffic jams, construction, or missed turns.

3rd Key: Develop Good Habits  

You can have big dreams, great goals, and still fail. Success requires turning knowledge into action. It means repeatedly taking action towards your goals. Repeated actions become habits. And once you form the right habits, you create momentum.

Creating systems for your life as you are forming good habits can help you to stay on track. You can build systems by grouping good habits together. Having a system in place can keep you from having to make decisions on the fly or keep track of doing all your goal-oriented tasks one-by-one.

Instead, you follow an intentional daily pattern that moves you towards your goals with less stress.  This has the added benefits of reducing stress and freeing your attention to focus on the things that truly require more brain power.

4th Key: Prioritize Your Goals

As you create your systems and put your good habits into practice, you’ll probably find there isn’t enough time in each day to work towards every goal. Prioritizing goals will help you figure out which things on your to do first or spend more time on.  

If you’re not sure how to prioritize goals, it may help to apply some techniques like a numerical ranking system or the Eisenhower Matrix. Prioritizing your goals also means not letting things that never even made your list get in front of pursuing what did. In other words, don’t let talking to a telemarketer derail your plan to clean the house.  

5th Key: Learn from Your Mistakes

They say “the road to success is paved with failure.” What they don’t say, is that each piece of failure on that road probably looks different than the other. Success most likely came by way of trying (and failing) many different ways. Yes, you can fail your way to success, but almost never by making the same mistake over and over.

Failure is a part of the process of becoming successful, if you make it a teacher. Learning and growing after failure makes it useful.

For example, consider a runner. Every race a runner loses, they can may be moving forward. If they build up strength and try new running techniques, they will likely see progress. They may move up from 5th place to 3rd place to 2nd. Even though they aren’t first, each race is a part of the process of success, moving them closer to getting first place.

6th Key: Try Different Strategies

The road to success is not straight. There are stops and starts, turns and detours. Anyone who says they’ve got the exact path to success for you is probably lying. As the (creepy) saying goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Heck, there’s more than one way to get the meaning of that saying across. Let’s make up a newer more pet-friendly one – “There’s more than one way to peel a banana.”

Any way you put it, there’s more than one way to do – just about everything. So, if at first you don’t succeed, try another way.  Try a new strategy. Come at your goal from a new angle, at a different time, with a different person. There could in fact be many effective strategies. You just need to find the right one. The only way to find it is to keep changing and keep trying until you find one that works.

7th Key: Take Smart Risks

As you try out different strategies, you may find that you’re trying something entirely new. It might feel scary. Admittedly, taking risks is intimidating, but taking smart risks can have big payoffs. Taking a smart or calculated risk means researching potential outcomes and determining what your chances of success are and if the payoff is worth risking the harm that could be done.

It takes time to develop good risk-taking skills. You may have a few painful failures as you figure out how to take calculated risks in life. It’s best to start out taking small risks. As you get better at it, you’ll probably become more comfortable. But don’t let your comfort be the only deciding factor. Often, taking a risk is the only way to achieve success.

8th Key: Learn from the Experts

While it’s true that there is no one path to success, a lot can be learned from studying other successful people.  Even better is to be mentored or to study directly under someone. Recorded history doesn’t always catch all the details and nuances.

Start with doing some research and study successful people who did something in the same realm of what you are striving to achieve. Want to innovate? Study innovators. Want to be a great painter? Study Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso. Want to own a restaurant? Learn from someone who knows cooking and business. Watch what they do, take notes, and ask questions.

9th Key: Master How to Say No

I think our culture undervalues the importance of saying no. It can be uncomfortable. If you listen to interviews with successful people, you’ll probably hear them talk about turning down great opportunities they knew aren’t right for them.

Learning how to say no is an essential key to success in life. Successful people say no all the time. Saying no means knowing yourself, your boundaries, and being able to determine what is worth your time and energy. Saying no to the wrong thing leaves space to say yes to the right thing. It leaves room for the right opportunity.