Five Habits of the 1% club

Radical differentiation and awareness

How to be part of a one-percent club? Identify, define and create your own. Whatever that means to you, use the tools to be displayed in this story to carve and pave your road ahead. Whether you envision yourself in the top tier financially, creatively, or intellectually, decide and visualize. Success leaves clues often broken down into bite-size habits. Let's analyze these essential habits with practical reasoning and implementation.

For context, we first have to pre-establish what success looks like to us individually. I’ll give you my take.

Success is simply a series of contradictions. It is to be satisfied today but to be an eternal learner. It is being happy today but believing that tomorrow can be better. Success is not identifying your being with external factors. Understanding that your goals are not your voids. Success is loving life intensely, vigorously, and leaving no room for regret.

Once you've identified and defined what success looks like to you, understand to be truly extraordinary at something is literally and directly going against the grain, against the current. Nothing less than a burning belief, a personal conviction will suffice.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” ― Henry Ford

The state of mind must be a moving faith, not merely a wish or desire. It is not a hope but your greatest strength. They are convictions that are completely linked and tattooed to our deepest being and essence.

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” ― Jim Collins

Well, now that's out of the way, we can take the foot of the intensity. Let's hop into five simple habits you can practice today.

Read

Since you happen to be here, we can safely assume you enjoy reading. Read more and read often is a piece of great advice. But the key isn't merely to gobble up words. Rather exercise our cognitive function, develop our empathy, expand our vocabulary and point of view. People notice what books you read once you open your mouth, or hence lack of.

Not to mention never before has education or preparation been this democratized. Vastly available through many formats on the internet and well still books. An excellent example, even Abraham Lincoln in the 18th century read his way from seemingly uneducated to a lawyer.

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ― Oscar Wilde

Small improvement

Frequently we find ourselves overthinking how or where to begin looking at large tasks at hand. Whether it be a business venture or lifestyle habits we’d like to adopt, it can be searingly overwhelming to analyze the goal and compare it to our current state. But what if we were to redirect the approach?

“You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.”

— Will Smith

That's possibly as well as anyone can summarize the significance and consequence of simply concentrating on small simple steps towards improvement.

Frogs for breakfast

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

— Mark Twain

Whether this applies to you literally or metaphorically, it's solid advice. Addressing the tough and tedious responsibilities early in the day limits any space for our unsolicited acquaintance called procrastination. Not only that but the rest of your day seemingly can't be any worse than it began.

5 am Club

Speaking of mornings, have you heard of the 5 am club? I couldn't write that with a straight face. But on a serious note, we do need a proper morning structure. The specific time you need to wake up is going to be completely personalized and specific to you. You aren't missing out on any greatness handed out at 5 am specifically.

What is of utmost importance, however, is your ability or lack of to maximize your start to the day and put yourself in the best position possible to accomplish your objectives. Personal accountability is essential to keep us in line with our goals even when we don't feel hyper-inspired. Its frequently said we set the tone for the day in the morning, and keeping things proactive rather than reactive is a huge plus.

Intentions

Do you hop on the metro or train and just go along for the ride? Open to any destination. That's comparable to riding through life without any goals or objectives. Absolutely nothing is going to change for the better if you aren’t even capable of imagining or visualizing it.

You don't need to come up with world-changing ideas, which you could if you chose to. But it's also not a secret a sense of purpose is directly correlated to a daily sense of contentment and fulfillment. Design, desire, and be present every step of the way.

To stand out in the crowd isn't anything too complex. By grasping mental clarity and acting with boldness and prudence, you are already in the one-percent. Most people never get through step one. The price to dream and aspire is usually high, be prepared to break a sweat. If it was any easier it'd be a more transited road.