Highly Effective People Don’t Have a Strong Willpower, They Have a Helping Hand

Discover how effective people engineer success with one fine detail.

We associate success with perseverance. No one is on a positive trajectory all their life. There must be something that makes them keep on going regardless of the circumstances, especially on the bad patches. The often quipped answer is perseverance. The willpower to survive, struggle, and then thrive at any bottleneck, plateau, and downward spiral. Highly successful people are believed to keep going despite the challenges they face.

We marvel at how they persevered in difficult situations, how they carry on, chipping away at the current predicament despite the seeming lack of progress nor success and finally achieving what they set out to achieve, and more. We naturally assume that these highly effective, highly successful persons have a strong will, one who would bend iron with their will alone (pun intended).

What if I tell you they don't? What if I tell you the key difference between them and you and me is not because of their strong willpower, which we assumed has enabled them to persevere and keep on pushing for their dreams? What if I tell you that it’s fabricated by none other than themselves? What if I tell you, you can do it too?

The First Key — Environment

If you get rid of the aforementioned assumption, here is the real learning. Highly effective people are not born with strong willpower. They do not need to summon their willpower frequently. There are simply not many occasions that these are necessary. Their environment does not constantly require them to resist temptations, temptations that will affect their growth and success.

You may argue that Warren Buffett wasn’t born into a rich family. Michael Phelps wasn’t born into a family of remarkable swimmers. How then could they thrive to be what they have become if it’s because of their environment?

Yes, indeed, they are not born into the perfect environment. But the key difference between them and anyone else is that, despite the environment that they were born into, they have evolved the environment surrounding them, which allows them to grow into the person we know today.

Yes, evolving the environment. Changing your environment, to your advantage.

Despite the environment that they were born into, they have evolved the environment surrounding them, which allows them to grow into the person we know today.

Everyone wishes to be born into a better place, into a wealthier family, a better country, a better environment. We believe a better environment poise a greater advantage. We lament when we compare ourselves to others, citing successful people have all these advantages since birth. That thinking itself explains that the environment is important to our growth. What we didn’t usually acknowledge is that we should change our environment to our advantage. Destiny is truly in our hands.

We can’t choose how we were born but we can choose how we die.

As crude as it sounds, there is a saying in my culture. If you are born poor, it's not your fault. But if you die poor, it’s your choice. If you peel away the insensitivity of the message, there is wisdom in it. We can’t control our birth, but once we are in this world, we can change our destiny, starting with the environment.

Before your mind starts to wander off and think “But I’ll never be better than who and who, who have a better starting point”, you don't need to worry. It’s not about other people. It’s about you. It has always been about you yourself. Don’t compare. You don't need to. I’ll talk about relativity and trajectory in my upcoming stories, if you are interested, make sure to follow me for more of my stories.

The Second Key — Good Environment Begets Good Habits

Why is the environment important? Consider the environment as the foundation of your being. For centuries, terrain study has been a crucial part of war*. A great general would study the terrain, make use of it to his advantage. It is also common to physically alter the terrain through some means, to create a man-made advantage. Setting up traps, digging trenches, or building a watchtower. A great general understands the importance of the terrain.

We know our surroundings impact us too. This is why parents try to provide the best conducive environment for their kids to grow up in, whether it’s a nice neighborhood or a good school. The reason behind this is simple. Our environment influences us and more importantly, our choices. When you go into a restaurant, you are immediately limiting your food selection to the menu provided. There are no ifs or buts.

A good environment provides us with greater and better choices. If you are surrounded by distractions, music blaring in the background, phones pinging every other minute, you wouldn't be able to concentrate on reading. You will need an iron will to do so. Conversely, if you have a quiet space, a room filled with interesting books, you would be aspired to read more.

Likewise, if you find yourself in a messy environment, and choose not to make any changes to it, you are more than likely to lead a messy life. Worse, you feel totally fine in this situation as you are used to it. Life is all about making the right choice at one moment, and another right choice next, and so on and on.

A good environment begets good habits. Good habits beget success. The opposite scenarios hold true too.

The Third Key — How to Build and Influence Your Environment

Now that you acknowledge (hopefully!) and know why the environment is important to who you are and who you are going to be, it’s time to learn how to change your environment to your benefit. Here is a series of steps to get you started.

1. Be conscious of who you want to be Before you start your car, you need to know where your destination is. Be clear on what kind of person you are inspired to be, a healthy person that leads a healthy lifestyle? To be financially free and secure? Only then you would know how to lead your life. Change your mindset and start believing you are who you are inspired to be and build your life with the question “What would this person do or behave?”.
2. Take notice of your current behavior Be mindful and wary of your behavior. Is this action desirable and helpful to get to become who you want to be? If it’s not, understand why you are doing it, or understand why you are not doing things that could help you to achieve your goal. Traceback to before the action. What makes you behave so?
3. Make small adjustments to your surrounding Once you take notice of your current behavior and its causes. Seek to remove it or add it to your environment. I have a habit of snacking while working. I reduced it by simple steps like clearing snacks from the table, buying fewer snacks, and if the desire is still there, I will take them a little bit at a time, increasing the hassle and obstacle to snack. I increase my daily water intake by placing a cup of water on the table before any meeting, making sure a cup of coffee is accompanied by a cup of water.
4. Surround yourself with like-minded people Your surrounding is not limited to the material state environment. It also means the crowd that you get yourself into. You notice that convicts usually have a bad influence, and their actions are typically emboldened by the numbers in his crowd. Conversely, surround yourself with people who have the same goals as you, who can provide and at the same time need your support.
5. Build the habits Build good habits with the help of the new environment you have created. You’ll notice that it’s now much easier to get on to good habits, and equally important, keep them. You don't need strong willpower to break a bad habit or introduce a good new habit. You need a good environment.
6. Continuously evolve Repeat the first four steps, frequently. The key is to introduce small changes over a long period of time. Successful people don't get to where they are in a single day. They build a lifetime of good habits that support their goals, one small step at a time.

*Writer’s note: the writer has no intention to relate this to any war, previous, current, or future at the time of writing.