Success requires focus. This focus comes in many forms. Focus on dreams. Focus on goals. Focus on building relationships that help you move ahead. Focus on minimizing expenses.

But there is one area of focus that I believe is the big differentiator between those who ultimately break through and become successful and those who don’t – Purposeful Improvement.

Purposeful Improvement is self-improvement that is intensely focused on one field for long periods of time. This self-improvement is specific, intentional and requires daily discipline.

The overall objective is to gain an expertise, or niche, that puts you in the upper echelons, making you a virtuoso in that field.

It takes many years to gain this niche knowledge or niche skill-set.

In my study, it took, on average, twelve years for that particular sub-set of self-made millionaires to break through and realize success.

Purposeful Improvement requires that you develop the following daily habits:

• Purposeful Reading – Limiting your reading to books/articles that expand your knowledge in a specific field.
• Purposeful Practice – Practicing specific techniques in various ways in an effort to master that technique.
• Purposeful Study of Facts – Limiting your study to facts that are specific to a topic and focusing on that topic until every fact about it is known.

Purposeful Imprvovement equips you to handle just about anything that can possibly come your way in a field or niche. It forces you to a higher level of expertise. As a result, the world is willing to pay you more money for your knowledge or expertise.

If you are a student of success, you’ve likely noticed that most of the “experts” out there focus almost exclusively on wealthy, successful people. They write books, articles, do seminars, podcasts, and media interviews sharing the secrets of wealthy, successful people. Few, if any, focus on the secrets of failure.

Why? Because most of those “experts’ have not done their homework and really have no idea why people fail or what mistakes they made that caused their failure.

What a shame. It’s a shame because they are actually setting people up to fail.

How?

Studying successful people, or studying what to do, only gets you halfway down the field. What gets you the rest of the way is knowing what not to do.

If you really want to succeed, knowing what to do will never get you there. What will get you there is knowing what to do and knowing what not to do. You need to also be well-informed about why people fail. You need to understand the mistakes they made. You need to know what went wrong.

In fact, I believe that understanding failure is more important than understanding success. Failure teaches lessons that success masks.

This is why, in my Rich Habits Study, I not only focused on the habits of the rich. I also spend an equal amount of time explaining those habits, those mistakes, that result in failure. Knowing both sets you up for success. It opens your eyes, allowing you to see or anticipate potential mistakes that can lead to failure.

Most new businesses fail because they run out of money. They run out of money because they make too many mistakes. These mistakes are almost always the result of incorrect assumptions. These incorrect assumptions force entrepreneurs to learn what not to do through trial and error.

If you have enough money, you can survive this trial and error process, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and then create processes around what to do and what not to do.

If you don’t have enough money, however, making too many mistakes can mean the end of your business (your Dream), leaving you wondering what might have been. All because no one ever told you what not to do.

My job, as I see it, is to be that one unique resource who covers the entire playing field of success (what to do and what not to do), helping to take you from the fifty yard line, all the way down the rest of the field and into the end zone.

Adversity is painful. It pushes you, challenges you, tests you.

No one likes going through adversity. In fact, it stops most people in their tracks. That’s one of the reasons why there are so few successful people. Most quit as soon as they realize the path to success is through adversity.

Your true potential, however, is only revealed through adversity. Adversity forces you to a higher level – higher level of focus, higher level of knowledge, higher level of skill.

Through adversity you acquire willpower, patience, street smarts, knowledge, foresight, insight, intuition, resilience, attention to detail and mental toughness.

Adversity also exposes your innate talents. Talents you never knew you had.

Adversity toughens you up. It makes you better.

Adversity is the progenitor of growth. Without adversity you will never grow into the person you need to be in order to be a success.

Don’t run away from adversity. Run to it. Embrace it. Adversity is you friend, not your foe. It is the beacon that shines a light on the correct path – the path towards success.

You work for it. Every day you devote a huge chunk of your day to earning your income. But is it really your income?

If you’re like 90% of the population, your income doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the bank who holds your mortgage. It belongs to the credit card companies. It belongs to the company you pay your car lease to.

In fact, your income belongs to just about everyone, except you.

And that 90% happily accepts this insanity. Or put another way, that 90% is unwilling to make the hard choices that allow them to regain possession of their income.

But there are a few who refuse to play this game. These are the individuals who diligently save 20% or more of their income every month and somehow are able to make due on the remaining 80%. For these individuals, at least 20% of their income, they can call their own.

And, every year, as their saved income grows due to prudent investing, they inch closer and closer to owning 100% of their income.

Their invested savings grows and compounds and they are able to use that money to pay down their mortgage, buy stuff without credit cards and purchase, not lease, their cars.

We call those people who own 100% of their income, rich people.

Maybe the goal should not be to become rich. Getting rich sounds too hard anyway for most people. Maybe the goal should be simpler – to increase how much of your income you actually own.

Inside every cell in your body is a nucleus. Inside every nucleus is DNA. And that DNA is supposed to be identical in every nucleus of every cell. It is your unique fingerprint.

But what is DNA?

Each one of us inherits 23 chromosomes from our Mother and 23 chromosomes from our Father. Residing on each one of those 46 chromosomes are genes. It is estimated that humans have approximately 23,000 genes. One single chromosome can, therefore, have hundreds of genes.

Each gene = an instruction, or computer code, that tells individual or groups of cells to perform specific tasks. Ideally, these tasks are intended to keep us alive and healthy.

So, your DNA is actually an instruction manual the body reads every day so that it can do what it needs to do in order to keep you alive and healthy.

But, an individual cell’s DNA can change, or mutate. These mutations occur for many reasons: diet, lifestyle, environment and ……

Habits and Beliefs.

That’s right. Your habits and beliefs can turn on or off certain genes. This is known as Epigenetics. Through Epigenetics, chemicals can be added to genes that turn specific genes on (methylation) or turn specific genes off (demethylation).

The release or triggering of these chemicals can occur in various ways and two of those ways is by your beliefs and your habits.

Example: If you believe you are about to be attacked, this stress trigger turns on the gene CYP17, whose job is to convert cholesterol to cortisol, preparing you for fight or flight.

Your habits and beliefs, therefore, can cause the release of certain chemicals that alter your genes. This is not only your problem, however, for two reasons:

1. You can pass your altered genes on to your yet-to-be-conceived children and/or
2. Your beliefs often become your child’s beliefs, thus causing your child to alter their own genes.

So, be very careful which beliefs and which habits you forge. Negative beliefs and bad habits can cause harmful genetic mutations that negatively affect you, your children and their progeny.

Emotions are like steroids with respect to the brain.

Our strongest, longest-lasting memories are always emotion-based. Loss of a parent, loss of a child, illness, major wins, major losses, getting that first “A”, running your first marathon, speaking in front of a group for the first time, writing your first of many books, etc.

Whenever emotion is involved in forming a memory, the number of neurons called into action is 10 times that of a non-emotional memory. Plus, with an emotional memory, the memory is not isolated to one part of the brain (the cortex), like all other memories. The emotional memory is linked to two parts of the brain: the cortex and the limbic system.

Emotions are also very powerful when it comes to habits. In fact, Emotional Habits are the most powerful type of habit any person can forge.

Emotional Habits, like emotion-based memories, are forged as a result of some powerful emotion.

Let me give you some real-life examples.

One person I know runs almost every day. They’ve been running every day for more than thirty-five years. As a result, this person is very lean, very healthy and in top physical condition. Why did this person forge this particular habit?

One of their parents was obese and struggled with Type II Diabetes most of their adult lives. This person loved their Mom and watched her health deteriorate until she died of Diabetes-related causes.

One of my childhood friends never had a drink of alcohol. This wasn’t easy, as most of our mutual friends began experimenting with alcohol in our teens. But not this one friend.

One day I asked him why he didn’t drink. He said his father, who had recently passed away, had been an alcoholic.

Emotional life events can become a catalyst in forging habits that elevate us and dramatically improve our lives. They can also be a catalyst for forging habits that drag us down into the abyss, creating a life of misery.

Life has a way of pulling the rug out from underneath us. Oftentimes, these are emotional events that stick with us forever. How we react to that rug being pulled out, shapes the life we lead.

Everyone, at some point, hits a wall.

When you are focusing on a project or some task for a number of hours, you deplete the easily accessible stores of glucose that the body has at the ready. Glucose is a sugar that serves as a primary energy source for every cell in the body.

When easily accessible glucose reserves drop to a certain level, the brain sends you a signal to either rest, eat or engage in a habit.

Depending on which course of action you take, these diversionary tactics buy the body time to restore glucose levels. Once the glucose level is restored, your brain sends you a signal that it is OK to resume working on your project or task.

If you ignore your brain, it will punish you. Your cognitive ability will decline dramatically and you’ll find yourself making mistakes. Or worse, your brain will force you into a dreamlike alpha state, which is a precursor to sleep. Falling asleep, while driving a car, is an example of the brain shutting down due to glucose deprivation.

Whenever you find yourself hitting a wall while working, grab a healthy snack.  Apples, bananas, oranges, pineapples, cherries, avocados, raisins are all good glucose-packed snacks. If you eat carbs, such as bread (whole wheat or multi-grain = good carbs), just remember that carbs will require some additional processing (digestion) time before they are converted to glucose.

If you hit a wall, while exercising or while engaged in some physically demanding activity, such as a half marathon, tennis match, basketball game, etc., our amazing bodies have a solution that does not require you to stop. During vigorous activities, the body shifts to a ketogenic state.

When our muscles and livers run out of glycogen (glycogen is converted into glucose), the body must turn to fat. The fat is broken down and converted into ketones. Ketones are a superior fuel substitute for glucose. These ketones are then sent around the body, via our blood, to where they are most needed.

I spent five years studying the daily habits of 361 rich and poor people and in my bestselling books, Rich Habits and Change Your Habits Change Your Life, I shared some of the important findings from that study.

In my research, I learned that there were specific habits the self-made rich adopted that enabled them to achieve their dreams and their goals. This included things such as:

• Experimentation – Experimenting with new things in order to uncover an innate talent or passion.
• Reading – Reading 30 minutes or more every day for self-education.
• Build Rich Relationships – Building relationships with the right people – other future millionaires.
• Dream-Setting – Pursuing goals around your dreams.
• Taking Calculated Risks – Calculated risk is a type of risk that requires you to do your homework before investing your money.

There are many others (over 300) but I think you get the idea – the rich are habit-driven.

My research also led to another proprietary discovery – those who were not rich also had habits, however, many of those habits were Do-Nothing Habits:

• Not reading to learn, is a habit.
• Not exercising every day, is a habit.
• Not eating healthy, is a habit.
• Not pursuing your dreams, is a habit.
• Not creating and pursuing goals, is a habit.
• Not returning phone calls immediately, is a habit.
• Not waking up early to pursue self-improvement, is a habit.
• Not saving money, is a habit.
• Not prudently investing your savings, is a habit.
• Not being frugal, is a habit.
• Not doing more than you are paid, is a habit.
• Not avoiding time wasters, is a habit.
• Not doing what needs to be done (procrastinating), is a habit.
• Not networking with other success-minded people, is a habit.
• Not making happy birthday calls, is a habit.
• Not making life event calls, is a habit.
• Not taking personal responsibility for your life, is a habit.
• Not volunteering for a worthwhile charity, is a habit.
• Not being charitable with your money, is a habit.

Most people have Do-Nothing Habits. As a result, most people struggle in life. Some struggle financially. Some struggle with poor health. And some struggle with their relationships.

Do-Nothing Habits are like a mirror, they reflect back the life you have chosen for yourself through inaction. Oftentimes, it’s not what you do that determines the circumstances of your life – it’s what you choose not to do.

I’ve learned from interviewing 177 self-made millionaires that faith comes and goes. One day you’re up and faith is abundant. The next day, everything is going against you and faith is replaced with doubt and uncertainty.

What kept most of the millionaires I studied going, what enabled them to survive the ups and downs, were habits. They forged certain habits that were specific to whatever dream they were pursuing. They engaged in those habits, when everything was going right and they engaged in those habits when everything was going wrong.

The reality is that faith will not keep you in the game.

Habits will.

Habits keep you moving forward. They enable you to survive until you thrive.

But faith is, nonetheless, critical to success.

After eight years of pursuing my dream, faith to me is really about being pumped up about what you are doing. When you’re pumped up, your focus and productivity skyrocket. You get more accomplished when you have faith. Habits keep you in the game, but faith elevates your game.

The problem is, faith is fleeting.

So, what can you do to pump up your faith?

When things are not going my way, when life seems intent on stopping me in my tracks, I pull out something I call my Dream-Setting Script.

A Dream-Setting Script is a script that I write about my ideal, perfect life. It requires that you pretend it is a few years into the future. In that future, your life is significantly better than your present-day life. In 500 to 1,000 words, you describe your much-improved future life. You include details about what you do for a living, how much you make, where you’re living, what cool stuff you own, how you spend your day, etc. With words, you paint a picture of the life you desire.

Creating your own Dream-Setting Script is enjoyable. It’s allows you to use your imagination – to pretend.

And, the best part is, you can create as many scripts as you like. I often create a new script when my life is in suck-mode. It always picks me up.

To date, I have accumulated about sixty of these Dream-Setting Scripts.

Just the other morning, I was feeling the wrath of life and pulled out my Dream-Setting folder, where I keep all of my scripts. I spent an hour reading through all of them. When I was done, I felt as if I could conquer the world. My mindset went from negative to positive.

My faith, as they say, was renewed.

One of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits study told me that the biggest mistakes he ever made was buying a 100 foot yacht.

It had always been a fantasy of his to own a yacht. He said he and his wife, who were in their mid-70’s, envisioned spending their final years cruising around in their yacht to exotic places.

Now, he was worth about $22 million and the yacht set him back about $5 million, but it wasn’t the $5 million that was the mistake. Yachts can lose value, but they can also appreciate in value. So, as far as he and his wife were concerned, this was akin to buying a house.

The underlying mistake was the cost of maintaining the yacht. That cost included the financial cost of regular maintenance and a crew: Captain, first mate and a cook.

The stress, the headaches and the time it took out of his day in dealing with his crew and his yacht was taking a toll on his health and became more than he could bear. My millionaire sold his yacht. He said it was one of the happiest days of his life. He said he felt like he was set free.

Another millionaire in my study had three homes: their main home, a farmhouse and a home by the beach. After a few years of owning these three homes, she sold all but one. The stress of dealing with the problems associated with maintaining three homes was affecting her health and also affecting her marriage.

Most people don’t have problems like that. But, even for the average person, the stuff you own can end up owning you.

A vacation home sounds nice, but buying one doubles your home ownership problems.

Buying a high-end luxury car sound nice, but maintenance and insurance costs on luxury cars can be two to three times higher than the maintenance and insurance cost of normal cars.

I can go on with other examples, but the point I want to make is that the more stuff you own, the more problems you have. You minimize your problems in life by keeping your life simple.

Keeping life simple means not owning a lot of stuff. The less stuff you own, the fewer problems you have and more control you have over your life.