Success Habits For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2019 by Dirk Zeller and John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936523
ISBN 978-1-119-50884-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-50883-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-50885-4 (ebk)
Congratulations on making the investment in yourself and your success. The decision to take action to study and learn more about success and how to achieve it is one of the most important you can make in life. Most people want to be more successful, but they don’t do anything to make it happen. You, my friend, are a doer!
I had a “line in the sand” moment with my lack of success. At 27 years of age, I was embarking on a new career hoping the next 5 years would not be like the previous 5 years. I was broke and in debt, wanting to earn a six-figure-plus income, but very behind on my goals. I decided I needed to study and read about success. I wanted to be successful but lacked a plan, strategies, and a system. I was a hard worker, but being a hard worker wasn’t enough. I knew there was something more, so I set about to find it. That decision has changed my life, my income, my relationships, and my bank account. If you are having the type of moment that caused you to pick up this book, I applaud you.
Success leaves clues; it leaves a trail. Success has a recipe, just as making a Caesar salad has a simple recipe that anyone can follow. My objective is to share with you the recipe to success, to teach you the combination of ingredients and how to mix them in the right order. Once you learn and master the recipe, then you can make your own adjustments and change the recipe to your taste.
This book comes out of my passion to help people live the life they dream about. I want to help you define what you desire in life and then help you craft a plan to achieve it. I will coach you on the mindset, habits, skills, strategies, systems, and tools that will guarantee your success and speed up the timeframe to acquisition of it.
I am personally excited about our journey to success together. I frequently conclude correspondence with “To Your Success” before my signature. What I am stating is that I celebrate and cheer for you as you progress to greater success. So let’s clink our glasses and celebrate success!
To Your Success!
This book is about becoming more successful by building strong habits. It’s also about clearly defining what success is to you so it’s more easily achieved. The only definition of success that really matters is yours. This book is a guide that helps you achieve the goals and dreams that you have for yourself and your family.
I’m delighted to share with you the keys I’ve found for success and to help you avoid the mistakes I’ve made along the way. (I’m a firm believer in the idea that we often benefit more from failures than from successes — but that doesn’t mean you have to repeat my failures.) My hope is that you learn from both my warnings and positive examples.
The habits, techniques, skills, and strategies I present throughout this book are the same ones I’ve used and tested to perfection personally and with thousands of coaching clients and hundreds of thousands of training program participants. We certainly live in a technology empowered world today. The influence of social media is prevalent. But the foundational principles of success, personal habits, wealth, relationships, productivity, proper usage of time, and being healthy have not changed as much. This is not a book of theory but of “real stuff” that works and is laid out in a hands-on, step-by-step format. You’ll also find time-tested tools, strategies, and systems, not fluff, contained in this book.
If you apply the information contained in this book with the right attitude, and if you’re consistent in your approaches and in your success expectations, your success is guaranteed.
When I wrote the book, I assumed a few things about you, my dear reader. I assumed you picked up the book because you wanted to achieve a higher level of success. You want to earn more income, create wealth, enhance your family relationships, be more valuable at work, run your business better, and optimize your health. Any or all of the above may apply to you, or you might be on a quest to define success more completely and personally for you. As they say, you have come to the right place.
To help you navigate this book a bit better, you can rely on icons in the book’s margins. The icons are little signposts that point out the important info.
This icon points out little-advertised nuggets of knowledge that are certain to give you an edge in increasing your success in life.
This icon denotes critical information that you really need to take away with you. Remember these points if nothing else. They address the issues that you will come across repeatedly in climbing higher on the mountain of success.
Consider this the flashing red light on the road to success. When you see the this icon, you know to steer clear of whatever practice, behavior, or response I indicate.
When you see this icon, I'm giving examples from my personal life or from the lives of close family and friends.
In addition to the material and content in the print or e-book version you are reading now, there are also additional resources that I created that you can access on the web. There is a valuable Cheat Sheet, a Dummies staple. You can access it by going to www.dummies.com and typing for “Success Habits For Dummies cheat sheet” in the search box. The Cheat Sheet is a wonderful reference to keep handy and refer to frequently. It is comprised of key reminders, quick strategies, and focus points for achievement. It's a great tool to have on your phone, computer, tablet, or even printed out and taped to the mirror.
To tackle a book so packed with tools, techniques, and strategies, Part 1 is a good place to start. It deals with the formulas and principles of achieving success, and reading this section first will create a solid foundation upon which to build your success.
After that, you might use the table of contents or index to pick out topics that you have the greatest interest or need in. Select the chapters that are most important to your definition of what success is to you. Feel free to move around the book in any way that suits you. Even this approach will lead you to a vast array of new knowledge and strategies for success. If you feel well-versed in, say, your relationships, then you might want to dive into Part 5, “Success with Wealth and Money,” or Part 6, “The Time and Success Connection.” These two parts of the book cover the most common roadblocks to achieving success.
The truth is, no matter where you take your first plunge, the water is fine. You will find a vast array of valuable information that you can use to increase your performance, income, relationships, and quality of life.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Get familiar with the formula for success.
Learn success from the successful people around you.
Discover discipline’s role in the achievement of success in life.