You may have heard of the Human Genome Project. This was the government funded effort to sequence the human genome. For nine years Craig Venter worked for the Human Genome Project in their effort to sequence the human genome. He learned some lessons along the way about success that I thought I’d share with you.

Success in any field is about taking risks

Venter grew frustrated with the pace of the government controlled project and their reluctance to experiment with new ideas. His novel “shotgun approach” to sequencing the human genome was soundly rejected by the powers that be on the project. So, taking a huge risk, he quit the project and started Celera Genomics in 1998. He invested all the money he had into Celera. Within 9 months, using his “shotgun approach”, Venter was able to sequence a human genome for the first time.

Believe in yourself and don’t let others opinions define you

Venter was consistently admonished by the powers that be on the Human Genome Project that his “shotgun approach” would not work. Venter never wavered in his belief in his novel approach and that belief eventually would prove them wrong, turning genome sequencing on its head.

Success comes from doing something extraordinary with passion and intensity

Venter’s passion for his unique approach to sequencing the human genome endowed him with an inordinate supply of energy, work ethic, persistence and focus. When you pursue something you are passionate about, success traits you never knew you had, bubble up and help drive you forward in realizing your dream. Pursuing a passion, unleashes your inner success traits.

Passion attracts other passionate people

When Venter left the Human Genome Project to start Celera he soon found many apostles to his cause. Success-minded people are attracted to other success-minded people like bugs to a light. Pursue your passion and you will become a magnet for other success-minded people. Since no one succeeds on their own, the ability to find others who believe in your cause is critical to success.

Human beings were intended to be creative. It’s hardwired into our DNA. Creative pursuits unleash our inner genius. We all have the creative gene. When we pursue anything creative it triggers positive emotions and creates new neural pathways. Our brains like it when we create new neural pathways so it rewards us with an infusion of neurochemicals that produce a feeling of euphoria. 

In a paper published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in which the brains of 46 teenagers were scanned, they found that risk-taking teens activated a portion of the brain called the ventral striatum. The ventral striatum is comprised of a large amount of dopamine receptors. Dopamine is the happiness neurotransmitter. It’s clear from many studies like this one, that the pursuit of success will make you happier in life. Playing it safe in life not only prevents you from pursuing success, it also results long-term unhappiness. When we engage in a creative pursuits we are literally turning on the happiness centers of our brain.

In my Rich Habits Study 61% of the self-made millionaires were small business owners. They created something out of nothing. Even more interesting, 80% of those self-made millionaires had devoted much of their adult lives in the pursuit of some dream. And how did they score on happiness? Eighty-five percent of the self-made millionaires in my study said they were happy.

Big deal, you might say, until you find out that 98% of the poor in my study said they were unhappy. Why were the poor unhappy? Because the poor were not creating anything. They were working for others who were doing the creating. 

We are hardwired to create. That’s why the brain rewards us with neurotransmitters that release happiness chemicals. Those chemicals are the brain’s way of stimulating us to create. When we do, we become happy and fulfilled with our lives. When we don’t, we struggle in life.

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Failing to meet expectations is the #1 cause of unhappiness and discontent.

Successful people make a habit of managing the expectations of those they serve. They understand that failing to meet the expectations of others results in lost clients or lost customers. As a result, they seek to manage expectations others have in them at the outset. They Under-commit and then they Over-deliver.

As a client or customer, when your expectations are exceeded you come back for more. Why? Because you like the feeling. You like feeling happy about the product or service you purchased.

When you make a habit of under-committing and over-delivering, you set yourself up for success. People will pay for anything that brings them happiness. They will loyally pay, over and over again, those who consistently meet or exceed their expectations. The richest and most successful people have a tribe of loyal clients or customers seeking a repeat of the consistent expectations experience they provide.

Habits are contagious. They spread like a virus throughout your social networks. That is why it is critical to surround yourself with individuals who get it and separate yourself from individuals who don’t get it.

Individuals who don’t get it are the ones you see living in big homes, driving expensive cars, drinking coffee from Starbucks, going on exotic and expensive vacations and then posting their pictures on FaceBook. Take a gander at the personal financial statements of those who don’t get it and you’ll see a lot of debt and behind that debt, a lot of stress and unhappiness.

Unwitting observers drool at the sight of those driving their expensive cars. But while you’re drooling, the drivers of these expensive cars are worried about making the next car payment.

Individuals who get it don’t drool. They don’t care what house you live in, what car you drive or how impressive your vacation pictures look on FaceBook.

What they do care about is how much they learned that day from reading, attacking their list of daily habit goals, getting in their daily workout, how much money they saved last month, building more relationships with success-minded people and pursuing their dreams.

These individuals don’t follow the herd. They don’t buy the next new gadget. They only care that their car can get them from point A to point B or that their house is nearly paid off.

Seek out those who get it in life. Avoid those who don’t. Success isn’t complicated. It’s a process. And a big part of that process requires that you surround yourself with the right people; the ones who get it in life.

If you follow the herd and try to keep up with others by emulating their lifestyles, you will ultimately fail in life. Money See Money Do is a loser mindset. It will keep you in debt, create unnecessary stress and leave you feeling unfulfilled and unhappy. Don’t be that person.

There is a great deal of science surrounding the impact our social networks have on us.

Numerous studies have shown that we pick up most of our habits from our parents (Brown Univ. Study – 50,000 families). In a 2012 Yale University study, parents who gambled  increased the likelihood that their children would gamble as adults.

According to research conducted by Edward Horwitz, PhD, CFP and Associate Professor of Behavioral Science at Creighton University Heider College of Business, money patterns we observe in childhood drive our financial decisions later in life.

Parents’ educational pursuits influenced their children’s educational pursuits later in life according to a 2009 longitudinal study of 856 people according to Bowling Green University’s Psychologist Eric Dubow’s research.

Success is no different. It can spread like a virus throughout your social network, if your social network is comprised of successful people. This is why it is so important to surround yourself with the right people. If your social network includes success-minded people you will pick up their habits, thinking, behaviors and work ethic.

Conversely, if your social network is comprised of negative-minded people who see obstacles everywhere, or made up of people who have bad habits, or includes individuals who gamble or have bad money habits, you will become infected by them.

Success is a process. Part of that process requires that you surround yourself with others who are pursuing success or are already successful. They will infect you like a virus. Choose your virus.

Study after study points to unmet expectations as the #1 cause of unhappiness. We have a tendency to overshoot. We look at the world through unrealistic rose-colored lenses. We expect too much of others. We expect good outcomes or outcomes that are unrealistic.  We focus on the best case scenarios. And this sets us up for disappointment.

Successful individuals have a positive mental outlook. They aren’t born with it. They develop it during their lives. It’s a constant work in progress, maintaining a positive mental outlook. When expectations are not met, it drags us down into a negative mental outlook, throwing a wrench into years of working hard to foster a positive outlook on life.

The key then is to manage expectations right out the gate. If you ask someone to perform a task or a favor for you, set the bar low or make sure your expectations are realistic. Successful people don’t put all of their eggs in one basket. They reach out to many individuals for help. They have a back up plan in the event the person they are relying on doesn’t come through.

If you’re pursuing some dream, be realistic about realizing it. Dreams oftentimes take years to turn into reality. Successful people don’t expect immediate success. They expect failures, mistakes, obstacles, potholes. They set their expectations low. This allows them to persist without negatively affecting their positive outlook.

With a new year upon you, it’s a good time to change your thinking with respect to expectations. Take your expectations down a few notches. This way, when something does not go your way, you will not be dragged down into the abyss of negativity.

Sixty-one percent of the self-made millionaires in my study were small business owners and 39% worked for some big company.

Of the 39%, most were senior executives at those big companies or high level salesmen and almost 100% of those senior executives/salesmen owned stock in their employer.

When I peeled back the layers of the financial lives of these two groups, I found that the one common variable they all shared was multiple streams of income.

In the small businesses, the owners had numerous people working for them, either providing services or selling products. In the small business world those employees are called producers. Each one of those producers represented a stream of income to the small business owner.

For example, if a small business owner had ten producers, that represented ten streams of income, all working hard to make the small business owner rich. In many cases, the small business owners would then reinvest a portion of their profits into the business, growing the businesses and adding more producers; more streams of income. They would also invest a portion of their profits into investments that generated additional streams of income. Think retirement plans, real estate, stocks, bonds, annuities, etc.

And let’s not forget the elephant in the room. At some point, those small business owners generated a huge windfall by selling their interest in their small business, realizing enormous capital gains.

In the big companies, the senior executives and salesmen earned a high salary plus they participated in various employer stock ownership plans offered by the big companies. Those stock ownership plans represented a future second stream of income that, when sold, dwarfed their salaries, and made them wealthy. Like the small business owners, these big company senior executives would plow part of their salaries and stock gains into investments that generated additional streams of income. Once again, think retirement plans, real estate, stocks, bonds, annuities, etc.

Multiple streams of income, therefore, are a common denominator in building wealth. If you want to become rich, you must create multiple streams of income. That’s what self-made millionaires do. One stream of income is just not enough, if you want to be rich.

What’s in it for me? This is a common refrain of millions when asked for something. Too many have been programmed to believe that one hand washes the other or scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, or tit for tat thinking. 

It’s programming. It’s habitual thinking. And it will keep you poor or stuck in the middle-class.

When you have been raised with this mindset, you view the nature of relationships as an immediate exchange of favors. 

As I’ve articulated many times, relationships are the currency of the wealthy. Those who succeed in life don’t see relationships as an immediate exchange. Instead, they see relationships as a long-term investment. 

The rich build relationships with other success-minded individuals by investing in those relationships over many years. Their investment comes in the form of favors, giving freely of their time, expertise and sometimes money, without any strings attached.

The rich nurture each relationship like a farmer nurtures his plants. Eventually, one day, their investment bears fruit. It might be in the form of a business opportunity. It might be help in getting their child into a particular college, an internship or that first job interview with Google. Or it might be any number of things. 

If you want to succeed in life, you must view each relationship as an investment. You must first give. The getting comes much later.

It’s hard to save your way to wealth. It took the average millionaire in my Rich Habits Study 32 years to accumulate their wealth. When asked about the importance of saving, however, 88% of those millionaires stated that it was critical to success.

Those who took the slow and steady path, used the power of compounding to grow their savings. Compounding means reinvesting the earnings from your savings, allowing those savings to grow over time.

Those millionaires who pursued some dream and started a business, used their savings as working capital, investing those savings in their dream. In my study, this approach took those millionaires just 12 years to accumulate their millions.

But one of the common denominators for both groups of millionaires was being frugal with their money. What does it mean to be frugal?

Being frugal requires three things:

1. Awareness – Being aware of how you spend your money
2. Quality – Spending your money on quality products and services and
3. Bargain Shopping – Spending the least amount possible, by shopping around for the lowest price.

On its own, being frugal will not make you rich. It is just one piece to the Rich Habits puzzle, and there are many pieces. But being frugal will enable you to increase the amount of money you can save. The more you have in savings, the more options you have to make money. Having money set aside in savings allows you to take advantage of opportunities. Without savings, opportunities pass you by.

Exercise has many beneficial health effects. Aerobic exercise, in particular, increases the volume of oxygen and glucose delivered to the brain, helping nourish brain cells. It also helps keep the weight off, improves muscle performance and improves digestion.

But, perhaps even more important, aerobic exercise has a profound effect on your mental outlook. Studies have shown that daily aerobic exercise fosters a positive mental outlook. It increases positivity, optimism, confidence, cheerfulness and has a calming effect on the amygdala.

The amygdala is the seat of the negative emotions. Those negative emotions, worry, anger, fear and anxiety, have served humans so well.

Negative emotions have been around since the dawn of man. They act like a radar system, looking out for environmental dangers that could imperil our very existence. They are part of our fight or flight response system, alerting us to threats from our environment. 

In our modern world, however, those threats – tigers, lions and bears – are practically nonexistent. These triggers, however, have been replaced by modern day threats to our survival: supervisors, monthly bills, upcoming college costs for our kids and that reckless driver on the road. There are actually far more fight or flight triggers in modern society than there were when humans were hunting and foraging in the cave man days.

As a result, our amygdala is constantly turned on. We call this stress. When our amygdala is perpetually turned on, our brains are consumed with negative thoughts. We become negative about everything – our job, our families, our friends and our lives.

Aerobic exercise reduces stress by calming the amygdala down. This opens the door to positivity, or a positive mental outlook. Aerobic exercise induces positivity by turning the amygdala off. Since positivity is a hallmark of every successful person, this is important. You simply cannot succeed in realizing a dream or achieving goals if your actions are dictated by negativity.

Negativity shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the command and control center of the brain and also the place where solutions to problems are found. When you are negative, you are literally shutting down half of your brain, making you unable to find solutions to the problems you will encounter while pursuing a dream and the goals behind those dreams. Daily aerobic exercise, therefore, is critical to success. Exercise helps you exorcise your demons.