This article is delivered in two parts. Read the first part: 10 Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs (1 of 2)
We are all creatures of habit. Some habits can ruin our lives while others can be beneficial to us. Whether we choose to nurture bad habits or good habits, it’s up to us.
6. Break big goals into small steps
Having a big, ambitious goal is wonderful but reaching it may feel intimidating. The secret is to break your big goal into small achievable steps. In this way, you will feel empowered to begin your journey and more motivated each time you achieve your small step.
Stephen Duneier, the former Head of Currency Option Trading at Bank of America, has applied this method throughout his life with impressive outcomes. By breaking his ambitious goals into small tasks and making marginal improvements to the process along the way, he managed to advance in his career, learn German, lose 25 pounds and crochet his way into the Guinness Records – yeah, you read this correctly! Listen to Stephen’s TED talk, you won’t regret it:
7. Experiment
What is the method giant companies use to develop, innovate and grow? The answer is experimentation. According to fastcompany.com, Google and P&G run 7000 experiments a year, Amazon – 2000 and Facebook – more than 100,000! Rapid experimentation is the strategy by which startups and small businesses grow exponentially.
The companies which build their culture with experimentation at its core are winning in the long run.
Read More: The 10,000-experiment rule – your path to success.
8. Reframe failure
What if Elon Musk gave up after so many of his rockets crashed? Instead he said “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you’re not innovating enough” and moved on.
In your entrepreneurial journey you will face failure multiple times. View it as normal, reframe it into a learning experience and keep going. Reframing failure is a process and if you turn it into a habit, it will be greatly beneficial to your personal and professional life.
Read more: How to reframe failure – 6 steps.
9. Monitor your inner talk
Do you have critical thoughts? Like I will definitely fail because I cannot do anything right?
This is your inner talk and it is disempowering. Such negative inner talk is strongly correlated to low self-esteem and self-confidence. A low self-esteem is the expression of a negative image of yourself: you don’t like or love yourself which usually leads to a low self-confidence. Self-confidence means you have little trust in your abilities and you perceive yourself of being less capable than others to perform certain tasks.
Read more: Self-Awareness – 5 tactics to improve it.
10. Never give up
Turn never giving up into a habit.
Psychologist Angela Duckworth found that never giving up is a characteristic related to the temperament of successful leaders and entrepreneurs. She calls it grit.
Grit is perseverance, passion for long-term and the ability to maintain effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity and plateaus in progress.
Read more: This is the no 1 trait that predicts entrepreneurial success.
