How To Find Out What To Do In Life
- To be successful at something you need to be really good at it.
- It is important to do something you enjoy doing.
- Commit to being the best in your chosen field.
- Read about your subject for at least 1 hour every day.
You may already be familiar with the 80/20 rule, but in case your not, it states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities.
In sales this can be found as 80% of the sales coming from 20% of the sales people, or in business, as 80% of the market share belonging to 20% of all the competing companies.
The 80/20 rule shows that in order to be successful, you must be extremely good at what you do. As it is only a small fraction of the total number of competitors, who ultimately get the majority of the rewards.
A Commitment To Excellence
People who reach the top 20% make a conscious effort to do so. They decide they want to be the best, and then commit themselves to achieving excellence in their field.
Whatever it takes to be successful, and whatever price they must pay to achieve it, they will do what they need to do, when they need to do it, whether they like it or not.
This may sound like an obvious thing to do, but ask yourself, have you committed yourself to being the best? Are you willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want? Are you willing to make some big sacrifices?
For most people the answer is no.
The Importance Of Committing To Be The Very Best
For those who do not consciously commit themselves to becoming excellent in their field they automatically, and subconsciously, commit themselves to a life of mediocrity in the bottom 80%.
Without a commitment to becoming the best, you will always perform at low levels and never achieve your true potential.
As a result your self worth and self esteem will likely fall, resulting in feelings of unhappiness, depression and a lack of fulfillment in life. Is that the kind of life you want to live?
How To Get Into The Top 20%
In order to become truly successful at something, you must first enjoy what you do. This means that if you are currently doing something you do not enjoy, it is highly unlikely you will reach the top 20%.
What Do You Want To Be Successful At?
For many people, finding out what they want to become successful at is one of their biggest obstacles. They may have the drive, passion and desire to get into the top 20%, but because they do not know what they want to be successful at, they never get there.
If you are struggling to discover what it is you are truly good at, ask yourself…
- If you won the lottery, what job would you do?
This is an extremely important question to ask, as most people decide upon a job with money as their primary concern. However later they may find they do not enjoy their job, and so fail to become truly successful at it.
Money certainly can make a job you do not enjoy bearable, especially if you do not have much money to begin with. However you will often find, as many people do, that money isn’t everything.
Over time the job will become more and more unbearable, and the money will seem less and less attractive. It is at this point when people must decide whether they want to live their life doing something they enjoy, or continue living a miserable, stressful life doing something they absolutely hate.
Be Successful At Something You Love To Do!
When selecting a job with enjoyment as your primary concern, you may not start out with lots of money. But because it is something you enjoy, eventually you will become very successful at it.
As we have already seen, people who are successful in their field get 80% of the rewards. However please do not confuse the meaning of success with earning lots of money.
For some people that may be the definition of success, for others, it may mean something entirely different. It is therefore up to you to decide upon what you most enjoy doing in life, and how you define the success that will come from it.
Study, Study, Study!
When I was younger I used to think that the only time I needed to learn something was at school, boy was I wrong! I now realize that life is all about learning, without it you cannot grow.
In order to reach the top of your chosen field, you must therefore commit yourself to learning as much as you possibly can about it. And that means reading!
Since most people do not read, by spending at least 1 hour every day reading about your subject, you will quickly rise to the top. If you don’t like reading you can always watch TV instead, as long as you don’t mind being in the bottom 80%!
Review Your Actions
It is good practice to get into a daily or weekly habit of reviewing your actions. By reviewing the things you did right, and the things you would do differently, you slowly begin to program it into your subconscious mind.
As a result, the next time you are faced with a similar challenge, you will automatically respond in the best and most appropriate way.
However a word of warning, do not focus solely on the mistakes you made or the things you did wrong. If you do so, you will program this into the subconscious and repeat the same mistakes!
Final Thoughts
Very few people commit to being the best. Those who do commit themselves to excellence, do so in a field of interest they truly enjoy and are passionate about.
They believe what they are doing is important, and actively work each day to better themselves. Whatever it takes to achieve their objective, they will do, whether they feel like it or not.
So once you have decided what you want to become a success at, commit yourself to becoming excellent at it. Keep moving towards your goal and never consider the possibility of failure.
If you can apply this principle to every aspect of your life, you will be a success no matter what you do.
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October 20th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Hey thx for the nice article, more like a nice reminder…
Cheers!
June 6th, 2008 at 1:53 am
A very interesting definition of purpose; deffinitely would keep you motivated if you have a desire for a specific career. I’ll apply this to my life because I currently am pursuing a career in web development and am intern-ing for a web and video production company. The only question I have is, Is career or success the only purpose of life?
June 7th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Hi Christopher,
Is career or success the only purpose of life? No. Although most people tend to assume that their life purpose must be something related to success or their career.
There are many different types of purposes in life, and i don’t think anyone can tell you what your purpose is.
Whilst others may guide you, and give you help discovering it, ultimately it is you who must discover your purpose and when you have truely found it, you will know it.
June 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
It’s beautiful. Simple yet full of valuable lesson. Thanks
June 26th, 2008 at 12:00 am
This has really inspired me even more. Watch out world ANGEL IS HERE AND SHE AIN’T GOING NOWHERE BUT UP
June 29th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Hi Martin,
It’s a brilliant article…. thank you
but there’s a question I have, the answer to which is something I have been searching for since a long time.
I know what I want to do in life, to become in life and fortunately that’s what i’m pursuing as my profession and of course I have all the desire to be successful but there’s something that always holds me back, something that makes me underperform and that’s my insecurities. I am always scared to dedicate all of me towards achieving my dreams because I then start to feel that I’m gonna miss out on other things, like my family.
I’m so sensitive about my personal and professional goals that i’m unable to put myself completely in one direction.
I hope you can help me with this problem of mine.
Thanks
July 1st, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Hi Tedd,
You are very fortunate that you know what you want to do in life, many people struggle with finding a purpose their entire lives.
This then causes them frustration because they feel their life has no meaning, value or purpose.
From what you have said your frustrations come not from not knowing what to do, but from some insecurities within you and some apparent conflict between business success and personal success.
Although you have not specified what insecurities you have that make you underperform, generally speaking insecurities are often a reflection of some degree of low self esteem.
These may be things you doubt about yourself, such as your own ability to do something or concern as to how others percieve you and your actions.
These insecurities are like little chains with weights attached to your feet. Every time you step forward, they tug at your feet reminding you they are there and trying to pull you back to where you were.
Unless you directly address these insecurities, they will continue to affect your entire life.
From what you have said it seems as though you are very well aware of the negative impact these insecurities are having on your life, and can see that they are trying to drag you back as you try to move forward.
To overcome these a good overall starting point is understanding and then improving your self esteem. Everyone has some degree of low self esteem, and so will benefit from examining and improving it.
If you know what your insecurities are you should write them down as a list. Then examine each one, and try to think of what may have caused you to develop these insecurities in the first place? Think back to your past.
By creating a list you face your insecurities head on. You are not hiding from them, disowning them, ignoring them or hoping they will sort themselves out eventually.
By creating a list you must then make it your goal to overcome these one by one.
Starting with your biggest insecurity will have the biggest impact once it is completed, although it will also be the hardest to overcome.
Starting with a minor insecurity will have the least impact (overall) on your life, although it may help build moment and inspire confidence in you.
Whatever you decide, only you can overcome your insecurities and you must recognise and accept responsibility for that.
In terms of commiting to work and family. As you already know, you can never commit yourself 100% to anything in life, as you have to divide up that commitment with many things.
Such things can include work, health, finances, family, lesuire etc… Although within each subgroup, levels of commitment can vary.
For example, someone may not feel very commited to performing their best at work, but may be extremely commited to having a good time on holiday.
Our level of commitment to something is often a reflection of our level of interest into something and/or our percieved value of it.
In other words, do we like what we are doing and do we think it is important to us? Or is there something else we would enjoy more, or think is more important?
Of course other factors may also affect our level of commitment to something, such as our level of self esteem, in particular our belief in our ability to do something.
To me it seems as though your level of commitment to your professional life is being affected by a belief in yourself that you are unable to perform optimally at a professional level, without adversely affecting your personal life.
As a result you feel a conflict within you, and frustration as a result.
The most obvious question to ask is why do you feel this way? Why do you think commiting yourself to performing to the best of your ability is going to have a negative impact on your personal life?
Who has told you this will happen? Who have you seen this happen to? Is this something from your childhood, whereby your father worked hard and was successful, but didn’t spend much time with his family?
Find out why you have adopted this belief system, because that is essentially what you have. A belief system that one cannot be truely successful in both their prfessional and personal life.
All belief systems were created from something. Some event, or some person implanted that belief in your mind, and now it is causing you conflict because it is clashing with your values and morals.
You want to have a good family life, but you also want a good professional life. But currently you believe these things cannot be achieved to a high standard simultaneously.
As long as you have these conflicting beliefs systems, your frustration will remain, and will likely intensify over time.
The only way to overcome this is by changing your belief systems, and this must be done through personal experience.
If you are able to fully commit to your professional life (whilst carefully managing your time, and prioritising tasks and activies, both professional and personal) then there is no reason why your personal life should be adversely affected.
Have you tried fully commiting yourself to your work? What happened? What could you do different next time?
If you do as i have just suggested, and manage your time, then you should be able to prove to yourself that you are more than capable of doing both things successfully. This in turn will change your belief systems, and most likely remove many of those insecurities you have.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:32 am
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July 9th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Wow! what a great post. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I talk on my personal blog about this kind of stuff all the time. The problem is figuring it out. I’m sure it’ll happen eventually.