Anders Ericsson is the world expert on experts. What he found in his research was that experts practice deliberately every day. The Japanese call this Kaizen – continuous improvement.

Experts engage in deliberate practice for at least ten years in order to become the best at what they do.

Deliberate practice requires that you set a stretch goal, one not easily achieved, and then practice every day until you reach that goal.

It might be running a mile in less than 4 minutes.

It might be becoming a best-selling author.

It might be becoming a CPA, CFP or a Doctor.

Each stretch goal sets your destination. Deliberate practice helps you create daily habit goals that help achieve your stretch goals, moving you closer to your destination.

Deliberate practice also requires feedback. And this is what separates the experts from the rest of the field. Experts practice and then seek feedback from others. Feedback lets you know what you did wrong, allowing you to tweek what you’re doing, refining your practice, in order to perfect your skills.

I’ve been using something I call the Binder System since I discovered it during my Rich Habits Study. The Binder System helps you in your quest for success. Each binder is a tool in your success tool belt.

Fact Binder

In my research, I found that self-made millionaires were dedicated to daily growth and daily self-improvement. Each day, they sought to increase their knowledge through reading, listening to audio books, listening to podcasts, watching educational video, attending seminars, webinars, tele-seminars, participating in formal or informal mastermind groups and asking questions of others to gain more insight and expertise. This enabled them to grow their knowledge each day to help them evolve into the person they needed to become in order to realize success.

While reading is important, retaining important information uncovered in your reading is critical to learning new facts and information. One strategy to do this is the Fact Binder. In your Fact Binder create various topic sections that are meaningful to you. Each day, after reading, add any new facts or information to your Fact Binder. You can even add a section titled: “New Words” where you add any new words you come across in your reading. Writing down what you read has a way of reinforcing what you just read. Abraham Lincoln would write things down 3 times in order to commit them to memory. The physical act of writing somehow acts to create a new neural pathway that allows the new facts or information to stick. Once a week go over the new information you added. That will help reinforce the learning.

Mistake Binder

The Mistake Binder is a running list of every mistake you make in life. Each mistake is documented on one page. You want to document four things on that one page: WHAT went wrong WHY did it go wrong HOW to avoid repeating it in the future LESSON you learned The goal is to get into the habit of filling your Mistake Binder with page after page of mistakes that you make. Then spend a few minutes every other week reviewing your Mistake Binder. This helps make the learning stick and will also keep the mistakes in working memory, acting like a radar system, alerting them when you are about to repeat a mistake. The Mistake Binder will take the taboo out of making mistakes and will change your negative perception regarding mistakes. You’ll soon find yourself embracing your mistakes and the lessons they teach.

Book Binder

This is a binder where, in 1-2 pages, you summarize the key points of every book you read. This binder gives you immediate access to these key points at any time.

Vision Binder

The Vision Binder includes a picture of every dream that you one day hope to realize. It gives you instant access to each dream, allowing you to easily document and review each dream. By periodically  reviewing each dream, you help consolidate it into long-term memory, allowing your subconscious to go to work behind the scenes to help you make your dream a reality.

Goal Binder

In this binder you list every one of the goals you want to accomplish in order to help you realize each one of your dreams. In my Goal Binder I put at the top of each page one dream. Then, on the same page, I list all of the goals I will need to achieve in order for that dream to be realized. In the Goal Binder each dream is your destination and the goals are your GPS – how you get there.

In my research on the habits of self-made millionaires I discovered two types of habits that these millionaires used to help them achieve success: Temporary vs. Long-Term Habits.

Temporary Habits

With Temporary Habits you develop daily habits that make it possible for you to accomplish a short-term goal.

Developing study habits to help you obtain a degree, license or certification is an example. Another example might be writing a book, completing a project, manufacturing a prototype product, or saving money for a year for a down payment on a home.

Temporary Habits don’t necessarily stick with you for life. They last for as long as you need them to last.

 Long-Term Habits

These are habits that stick with you for life. They help build the infrastructure for a better life. Examples include reading every day to learn, practicing a skill every day, exercising daily to improve your health, eating healthy every day, daily habits that promote a positive mental attitude (i.e. expressing gratitude every day or meditating).

Long-Term habits are like the foundation of a building. In the context of a life, they represent habits that lay the foundation for a good, healthy, happy and successful life.

When you do anything that is challenging, when you are learning something new, when you are developing a new skill or when you meet new people, you will feel discomfort.

Discomfort is a minor form of stress and a little stress is a good thing, it turns out.

The latest research on stress indicates that minor stress elevates your ability to focus.

It sharpens your cognitive abilities by releasing certain hormones and neurotransmitters that tap into all three parts of the brain: the neocortex, limbic system and the brain stem.

This is important because, well three parts of the brain are better than one, obviously. But more to the point, when our limbic and brain stem are called into action, the power of emotions charges in. And emotions are the key to long-term potentiation (long-term memory).

Emotions make learning stick.

So, embrace discomfort. Welcome it. Seek out situations in life that put you in a state of discomfort. Discomfort causes change and growth. And growth is the hallmark of all successful individuals.

A body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion. This is one of Newton’s three laws of physics. Successful people are in perpetual motion. They are, every day, devoting their time to productive pursuits. These productive pursuits are centered around their dreams and their goals. They do things every day that move them closer to realizing their dreams and achieving their goals.

But it’s not easy. It’s not easy because realizing your dreams and achieving your goals requires that you take action. The hardest part about taking action is starting. Getting started is the hardest part of the pursuit of success because the action or actions you need to take often seem daunting. It’s like staring at a mountain that you are about to climb. All you see is the long, hard climb. When you visualize taking action this way, as if you have to climb a mountain, it’s much harder to take action.

So how do you get motivated to take action? Answer: start small. Instead of looking at the 10,000 steps you need to take to climb up the mountain, look only at the first step. To put this in context, just agree to spend 15 minutes in getting started and focus just on devoting 15 minutes each day to taking action on your dreams and goals. Psychologically, this shifts your thinking from the mountain of activity you must take, to small daily actions. Once you get started you will find yourself devoting, on some days, much more than 15 minutes to your daily actions. When you commit to small steps, it’s much easier to get started. The brain does not fight you when the action you need to take is small. So, start small and you will soon find yourself at the top of the mountain staring down.

The average adult sleeps 7 1/2 hours a night in five 90 minute sleep cycles. Each of these five sleep cycle is composed of five separate levels of sleep: Alpha, theta, delta, rapid eye movement (REM) and then back to theta. The first three sleep levels last 65 minutes. REM lasts 20 minutes and the final level of sleep lasts 5 minutes. The number of hours you sleep is less important than the number of complete sleep cycles you have when you sleep. Five complete sleep cycles a night is optimal.

But why do we sleep? The science on sleep is still a work in progress. But there are a few things they do know for sure:

• Sleep helps form memories – The hippocampus and neocortex send signals back and forth to each other thousands of times during the REM portion of sleep. This process allows memories to stick.
• The REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase of the sleep cycle is where most of your dreaming occurs. It is also known for the side to side movement of your eyes. Do you know why your eyes move from side to side? That movement oxygenates your eyes. Why is oxygenating the eyes so important? Because the cornea has not blood cells to provide oxygen to the eyes. Without enough Oxygen the cornea warps and becomes less transparent and will develop scars, making it hard to see. 
• Sleep makes your brain cells bigger – Sleep increases the size of your myelin sheath. The myelin sheath insulates the axon branches on each brain cell. Without the myelin sheath brain cells would not communicated with each other. The thicker the myelin sheath the faster brain cells communicate with each other. Individuals who have thicker myelin sheaths around their axons are smarter than those who have thinner myelin sheaths.
• Sleep restores willpower – When willpower is depleted we become unable to focus and think clearly, causing us to make bad decisions.
• Sleep allows our conscious mind to communicate with our subconscious mind – Sleep enables offline communication between the conscious mind (aka neocortex), which shuts down during sleep, and the subconscious mind (limbic system and brain stem). This is important because the subconscious mind is regularly taking in sensory data that is invisible to the conscious mind. When we experience intuition, this is actually the conscious mind telling us something the subconscious mind communicated to it during the last sleep cycle.
• Sleep makes learning stick – During REM sleep what we’ve learned the day before is transported to the hippocampus. If we do not complete at least four 90 minute sleep cycles a night, long-term memory storage becomes impaired. Completing at least four sleep cycles the night after learning a new skill or the night after studying for a test locks in the new skill or study material. If we get less than four complete 90 minute sleep cycles the night after learning a new skill or the night after studying for a test, it is as if we did not practice the skill or did not study at all because it never fully gets transferred to long-term memory.

Now you know why we sleep. So, go gets some sleep.

Things often go wrong in life. How you react to things that go wrong is one of the keys to living a happy and successful life. Those that live a happy and successful life do so by following the following formula:

Think then Evaluate then React

Jails and prisons are filled with individuals who get this formula backwards. They react first and then spend the rest of their lives regretting their knee-jerk reactions.

For most, getting this formula wrong doesn’t put them in jail but it does damage relationships or their business. We want to feel comfortable with the people in our inner circle. When we feel uncomfortable around individuals because they are constantly reacting to their emotions, we eventually kick them out of our circle. We avoid associating with them. No one wants to do business with individuals who fly off the handle, reacting emotionally when things don’t go according to plan.

Since relationships are the currency of the wealthy, those who succeed have developed the habit of adhering to this formula in order to preserve their relationships.  We want to work with people who are thoughtful about their actions, especially when things go wrong. Those that do we call leaders. We follow individuals who we trust. And we trust individuals who are thoughtful about their decisions; individuals who do not react first, but last. If you follow this formula, you guarantee that the actions you take will be well thought out. This gives those you deal with confidence in you as a an individual who can be trusted in making thoughtful decisions.

The next time something goes wrong, do not react. Instead think about what went wrong, evaluate why and, only then, take action. Think, Evaluate and React. Your relationships depend on it!

One of the things I learned from my study on self-made millionaires is that they followed one dream. That one dream then introduced them to another dream and then another dream. You see, there isn’t just one dream that takes you to the promised land of happiness and success. There are many dreams. And each dream leads you down a path that branches off into other directions. These paths reveal to you other dreams to pursue. So, how do you know you’re on the right path in life?

Each path you take, each dream you pursue gives you clues that it is the right path. You know you’re on the right path in life when:

• You Feel Uncomfortable – Each dream takes you outside your comfort zone. It makes you feel uncomfortable.
• You Feel Awkward – Each dream forces you to learn new things. In the beginning, you are a novice. New knowledge, new skills don’t come easy. You will feel awkward at first.
• You Experience Ah Ha Moments – Pursuing dreams means you will struggle. Obstacles, pitfalls, mistakes and temporary setbacks will be your partners along the path towards realizing your dream. But it is those struggles, obstacles, pitfalls, mistakes and setbacks that reveal the ah ha moments, the inspired genius inside each one of us that reveals solutions that enable us to overcome them.
• You Will Feel Frustrated – Frustration accompanies action. When things do not go your way, you get frustrated. Dreams cause you frustration. In that frustration you grow. You figure things out.
• You Get Angry – If it was easy everyone would follow their dreams. But it’s not easy. You will experience many emotions. Anger is one of them. You will get angry for not knowing something or for making a mistake. It’s just part of the process.
• You Get Happy – When things go right, it’s exhilarating. Success will make you feel happy.
• You Will Feel The Flow – When you are pursuing the right path in life there will be more and more moments when you are in the flow. There will be more and more moments when time seems to stand still, when you can work for hour after hour on your dream without wanting to stop. This is flow. All dreamers experience flow.
• You Will Become Obsessed – You will find your self thinking about your dream 24/7. You will become obsessed about reading and learning new information. You become a sponge – relentlessly scouring the universe for more and more information regarding your dream. This obsession forces you to grow and learn. It also empowers you. You will become persistent. Relentlessly persistent. And luck finds the persistent.

As I’ve mentioned often in my writings and interviews, self-awareness is a prerequisite to change. If your life is not what you expected it to be and you don’t know why, self-awareness holds the key. Self-awareness forces you to discover the truth about yourself. Unfortunately, most avoid thinking about why things are as they are. Without self-awareness you will never be able to understand why your life is the way it is. So, I thought I’d put on my muse hat to help you confront the inner demons that are holding you back. I’ve devised 5 questions to ask yourself that will help you better understand why you are where you are in life:

Question #1: Who Are My Mentors?

Mentors put you on the fast track to success. Those who seek out and find mentors to help them learn what to do and what not to do, excel. Those who don’t flounder. Have you ever sought out a mentor? Do you have any mentors right now? Is there any successful people you know who you could ask to be your mentor?

Question #2: Do I Have Toxic Relationships?

Success-minded people lift you up, inspire you, motivate you, encourage you, energize you and help you maintain a positive mental outlook. Successful individuals surround themselves with success-minded individuals. But, more importantly, successful people avoid toxic people like the plague. Toxic people drag you down. They demotivate you, antagonize you, anger you, interrupt your life and add little value to your life. They are typically negative, gossip mongers and naysayers who stop you in your tracks. They distract you from pursuing your dreams and your goals. They consume your limited resources of time and money. The fewer toxic relationships one has in life, the better their life will be. Have you thought about which relationships are toxic? How much time do you spend with those toxic relationships?

Question #3: How Much Self-Study Do I Do Every Day?

Daily self-improvement causes growth. Successful people pursue learning every day in order to grow into the individuals they need to be in order for success to find them. Do you read every day for learning? Do you write down what you learn? Do you have a growth mindset?

Question #4: What Are You Passionate About?

Those who pursue things they are passionate about accumulate the most wealth in life. They are the most successful individuals. What makes your heart sing? Are you pursuing things that you are passionate about? What are your dreams and you stretch goals?

Question #5: How Many Hours Do I Waste Every Day?

The hallmark of successful people is their productive use of time. They devote hours every day to self-study, networking with other success-minded people and pursuing their dreams and the goals behind their dreams. They develop a blueprint for their lives and create habits that function like a GPS, directing them to their destination – the life of their dreams.