How to be Successful?
I want to talk to you about one of the biggest lies that you have been told and that you probably believe about success.
And this is something that you hear all the time.
I mean, I’m talking about this as something that people say, and we don’t even think about it as we hear it so much.
We just go, “Oh, well, of course, that’s true.”
But it’s really not true.
What is it I’m going to tell you that you might be shocked?
You’ve never even thought about this because you hear this all the time.
And here’s the thing that you hear that’s not true.
Success Quote
People say hard work is the key to success.
Hard work is the key to success. We hear it, right? That is for sure. Hard work is the key to success.
But I have to tell you, I totally disagree with it.
I absolutely disagree with that statement.
It’s not that I don’t think hard work is important.
I don’t think it’s the key to success, though.
Because here’s the truth. And this is what people don’t say because we don’t want to hear it.
The truth is not that hard work is the key to success.
The truth is that hard work is simply the price of admission.
Hard work is not the key to success. Hard work is simply the price of admission.
There are lots of people that work hard but hard work is not going to be the thing that makes you successful.
You can’t be successful without hard work. That is true.
But just because you worked hard does not at all mean that you are going to be successful.
And this is important because a lot of us get frustrated, right?
A lot of us get mad because we’re working so hard and yet we’re not reaching the level of success that we want or that we think we deserve or that we think we’re capable of.
Or we’re not reaching our potential, even though we’re working really hard.
And that can be so frustrating, right?
That’s maddening to be working hard.
In fact, I am working as hard as I know how to work. I can’t work harder. I can’t work longer.
So how? If I don’t have the results that I am wanting, that I am expecting, that I think I should have for my life or my business and I’m already working as hard as I can.
That’s kind of a hopeless feeling.
Because this idea of, “Okay, I worked hard to get to where I am, but I don’t know how I can work harder to get to the next level.
Key to Success in Life
And that’s because hard work is not the key to success. Hard work is simply the price of admission.
Hard work is what gets you in the game.
Hard work is what takes to like to step on the field.
It’s not about winning.
Anyone in the NFL, or the NBA, or in any major sport, or any actor at the highest level, hard work just gets you there, but that’s not how you win the Super Bowl, the world championship, the Academy Award, or the Pulitzer Prize. That’s not how it happens.
It’s a part of it, but it’s not the key to success.
And this is really important because number one, if you don’t understand this, you’re probably going to get discouraged and then you’re going to not work as hard because you’re going to go, “Hey, I’ve been working hard. I can’t work any harder. There’s no way I can get to the next level.”
So, either we stop working hard or we kind of give up on achieving the next level because we just don’t see how it’s possible.
Now, in reality, it is you.
You also will hear people say this, “Well, it’s not about hard work. It’s about smart work.”
Well, that’s also not true in and of itself.
It’s about smart work, but smart work and working smart is also not the key to success because you can work smart without working hard.
The truth is it’s not about hard work, or about smart work, or working smart.
It’s not about working hard or working smart. It’s about both.
You have to do both. Working hard, doing things, doing what you have always done in the way you have always done.
It is going to basically produce more of what you have and possibly you will get the benefit of some incremental growth, but working smart is what creates the shift.
There is some new thing that we learn that takes it up a notch that multiplies, right?
If you’ve seen my Tedx talk or read my second book, Procrastinate on Purpose, it’s about how to multiply.
It’s about selecting the time, activities, processes, people, and the things that we should focus on to multiply, not to create linear growth but exponential growth.
So, working hard is not the key to success.
That’s the price of admission and working smart is not the key to success because working smart without working hard, won’t get you there either.
It’s not about working smart or about working hard.
It’s about both.
But if you’re willing to pay the price of hard work and you’re also willing to be disciplined and to take the time and to make the investment of learning how to think differently and think better and how to be more strategic and how to do more of the right things and then you combine those and you have working hard and working smart.
You’re going to have exponential results.
So stay on that course.
Don’t get distracted or misled by either one.
Work hard and work smart and you will multiply.
Has this shifted the way you view success and hard work? Leave me a comment below.
