Where did you pick up most of your habits? I’ll bet you never gave it much thought. Your habits did not just manifest out of thin wire. They came from some source. That source, good or bad, inspired you to adopt certain habits. The habits we adopt in life primarily come through associations we make in life. Parents are the primary source for most of your habits but there are many sources:

• Our Parents
• Our Grandparents
• Our Siblings
• Our Spouse or Significant Other
• Our In-Laws (Spouse or Significant Other’s Family)
• Our Friends
• Our Teachers
• Our Schoolmates
• Our Teammates
• Career or Life Mentors
• Public Figures – Celebrities, Professional Athletes, Famous People
• Fellow Workers
• Our Culture
• From Formal Education
• From Self-Education – Books (Self-Education Reading)
• From The School of Hard Knocks – Our Mistakes and Failures

Darren Hardy, in his early days as a salesman, would not stop working for the day until he was rejected fifty times. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, was rejected 26 times before he found a publisher. Colonel Sanders failed over 1,000 times in finding a partner for his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. Everyone knows the story of Thomas Edison’s 10,000 failures. To date, I’ve accumulated 35,000 failures in trying to publish and promote my books.

There’s a great irony in the pursuit of success, in that you have to climb a mountain of failures to get there. It’s not some, or a few of the self-made millionaires who experience failure. It’s the rule, rather than the exception. This isn’t meant to discourage you. It’s intended to prepare you for you your journey. There’s a reason so few succeed in achieving their dreams. Not many have the stomach for failure. Not many have the grit that it takes to overcome their failures in order to realize success. In a very strange sense, pursuing success is really the pursuit of failure. You have to walk through hell (failure) in order to get to heaven (success).

If you ask any business owner or business executive, they should be able to rattle off a list their main competitors. In small companies, most of your competition is local, maybe even regional. In large companies, you’re competing with other industry leaders, trying to coax market share away from a handful of other large companies.

In reality, however, there is only one person you should be competing with. Yourself. Or should I say, your “Yesterday-Self”. When you are competing with yourself, rather than some business competitor, then you know you are on track for unlimited success. The only person you need to best is who you were yesterday. When you shift your focus from external competition (a business competitor) to internal competition (yourself), you and your business will grow exponentially, leaving your external competition in the dust. The only person you need to be competing with is who you were yesterday.

For the past five years I’ve failed frequently and consistently (What it’s Like to Fail 35,000 Times in Pursuit of a Dream http://richhabits.net/copy-what-its-like-to-fail-35000-times/). I’ve gotten over the embarrassment of failure. When you are pursuing a dream, I’ve learned that you have to get used to failing. You have to develop an immunity to its negative emotional affects or you will quickly lose your mind. On the rare occasion I succeed, well, it nearly knocks me off my chair. Its so completely unexpected.

What I’ve learned from all of my failures is how important it is to soak yourself in those rare successes. They are like an oasis in the Sahara. They renew you. I’ve learned to stop and let those rare success events pour over me like sweet honey.

I think there’s something important in failing. Failures not only teach you important lessons in what not to do; failures also teach you the importance of cherishing those rare successes. I’ve learned, over these past five years, the importance of celebrating my victories. They may not be often but when then happen, boy, they’re like life’s white out. They erase the pain of those failures, as if they were never there in the first place. When you succeed, for a moment in time you feel good about yourself. I think we all need to celebrate our rare victories when we have them. Life is just too short.

Whenever you have to think about anything, you use precious brain fuel (glucose and oxygen). The brain cannot store fuel, so when you think, make decisions or rely on willpower, you drain your brain.

Think of habits as cars that get 150 miles per gallon. Habits take you very far on very little fuel. Thinking, decision making and relying on willpower are all gas guzzlers. They are like tanks, getting 5 miles per gallon. You can’t get very far driving a tank. Eventually, you’ll run out of fuel and stall.

Self-made millionaires understand this powerful truth. They use good habits to get them far in life without much exertion and this helps them conserve their brain fuel and energy. Because they have good habits, they have more available brain fuel to help them think creatively and make important decisions. The fuel is there when they need it thanks to the habits they formed earlier in their lives.

If you want to excel and succeed financially in life you have to get into the habit of asking. Ask for help, ask for favors, ask for support for your initiatives. If you don’t ask you won’t get. Self-made millionaires figured this out during their journey. Successful people make it a habit of asking for whatever it is they need at the moment.

Fear holds most back from asking. Fear of rejection, fear of being indebted to someone because they gave you some help, fear associated with deepening a relationship. There are all types of fears that rear their ugly heads and stop you from asking. But self-made millionaires overcome those fears and get into the habit of asking. They get accustomed to the rejection and, after some time, rejection does not sting as much because some do say yes. And those yes’s help move them forward towards achieving their goals and realizing their dreams.

Asking is a Rich Habit. Start small. Ask for little things at first. Build up an immunity to rejection. After some time you will lose your timidity and you will start asking for bigger things. You will get many no’s but all you need is a few yes’s. The benefits you derive from those one of two yes’s make all of the no’s worth it.

I found a common thread in the spending habits of self-made millionaires that is one of the many pieces to the success puzzle – discipline. They are disciplined about how they spend their money. Here are the top four spending habits I discovered:

1. They do not use credit cards for ordinary living expenses
2. They do not make spontaneous purchases
3. They spend no more than 25% of their after-tax (net) income on housing
4. They do not gamble, or gamble infrequently

Of all of the self-made millionaire stories I encountered in my Rich Habits study, there was one that really stuck with me. What made this millionaire’s story so compelling was the anguish he described during his pursuit of success. At one long stage during his journey things were going very badly. He was on the verge of bankruptcy. All of the money he and others in his family had invested and all of the money he had borrowed was close to being depleted. During this very difficult stretch of time, 20 months, he told me he would have to force himself to get out of bed, shave, shower, dress, and drive to work. He felt like a zombie each day during this 20 month period. He wanted to run away and hide from everyone. He was severely depressed. He said he tried to avoid looking at himself in the mirror each morning because all he saw was a miserable failure. To avoid looking in the mirror, he shaved in the shower. Nonetheless, he kept at it very day. He never quit. He showed up every day.

Today, this individual is worth over $20 million. He has two magnificent homes. Both on the ocean. He travels frequently. Sometimes for months at a stretch. He’s happy. But interestingly, he says he looks back on that 20 month period fondly. It was during that period that he found the greatness within him. The anguish he encountered forced him to grow and get better. It also infused him with enormous confidence.

The pursuit of success is not easy. Growth and change is not easy. But it is necessary. You’ve got to show up every day, especially when it seems the world is conspiring against you. It is during those moments of great anguish, of great struggle that the butterfly eventually emerges from the cocoon.

Success isn’t an event it’s a process. We have become conditioned to view success as an event because self-made millionaires oftentimes experience some avalanche of success event that gets the attention of others. But that avalanche of success event is really the result of daily growth and consistent efforts that move you closer to achieving your goals and dreams. You become that successful person, long before the avalanche of success event occurs. The manifestation of any success event requires that you learn and grow every day.

The “Rule of 1” is a strategy that will help transform you into the person you need to be in order for success to occur. It’s a simple strategy. Each month you focus on learning one new thing. Ideally, this new thing should be something related to:

• Your main job
• A side job
• Your side business
• A future side business
• Goals or a dream you are pursuing

The “Rule of 1” process:

1. Every day for a month spend at least 30 minutes reading about a new topic or subject (alternatively, you can listen to podcasts or watch videos on the topic)
2. Write down important facts on a sheet of paper
3. Summarize the most important facts on large index cards
4. At the end of the month transfer the important facts on that topic from the index cards onto a summary sheet
5. Put the summary sheet in a “Fact Binder”
6. Repeat this process each month focusing on a different subject or topic
7. Once a week review each summary sheet

After one year you will have learned 12 new subject areas. You will have grown in your knowledge. This new knowledge will help you become an expert in your field. It will move you closer to becoming the person you need to be in order to realize that avalanche of success event.

If you want to become a self-made millionaire you need to begin creating multiple streams of income. In my Rich Habits study, 65% of the self-made millionaires did just that. They had 3 or more streams of income. 45% had 4 or more streams of income. 29% had 5 or more streams of income. Diversifying your sources of income enables you to weather the economic downturns that always occur. These downturns are not as severe to the wealthy as they are to the poor. The poor put “one pole in one pond” and when that single income stream is impacted by an economic downturn, the poor suffer financially. Conversely, the rich have “several poles in many ponds” and are able to draw income from other sources when one source is temporarily impaired. Some of the additional streams included: real estate rentals, REITs, Tenants-in-common real estate investments, triple net leases, stock market investments, annuities, seasonal real estate rentals (beach rentals, ski rentals, lakefront rentals), private equity investments, part ownership in side businesses, financing investments, ancillary product or services and royalties (patents, books, oil, timber).