Psychology

The Psychology of Success and Why Most of Us Don’t Succeed.

If you’re not succeeding as a writer, it’s not because you lack skill.

To succeed is to do something well. Most people believe that success is about skill. But success is more a product of habit than it is a skill.

Many people write well, but few do it well and do it consistently.

What separates us.

What makes people successful is a blend of unwavering dedication to perfecting a skill, disciplined routine, and self-control.

The good news is that discipline and self-control are characteristics you can develop. Although the reality is that our minds have limited means for both.

Discipline and self-control.

Self-control is about saying ‘no’ to our impulses and desires. We are only capable of self-control for a limited period of time throughout the day. With practice, we can extend it, but it is still finite.

Successful people eliminate unnecessary decision-making and distractions and focus on what is most important.

The average adult makes about 35,000 decisions each day. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos only makes three decisions a day.

Reduce the number of decisions you make each day and start your day with activities that make the greatest impact on your life.

To quote Billionaire Financial Whiz Warren Buffett, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”

If you want to be really successful, reduce your distractions and focus on one or two tasks at which you want to excel.

Becoming successful.

There are three stages involved in acquiring new skills.

Cognitive

We first intellectualize the task and find strategies to complete it. We make mistakes during this stage but we’re forgiving ourselves since we know we’re just starting out.

Associative

At the associative stage, we are continuing to get better at our skills. Some effort is still required to complete the task but it’s less mentally strenuous.

Autonomous

The autonomous stage, also known as flow is when we go into autopilot. We can release ourselves from consciously focusing on the task, and our subconscious programming takes over.

According to psychologist and researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, it is in this state of flow, where we are doing activities we are passionate and skilled at in which we feel happy and fulfilled.

We give up.

It’s often between the associative stage and the autonomous stages where we get stuck and where most people give up. Feeling stuck and frustrated during these stages is normal. But the rewards are worth it if we stick with it.

The Creative gap

Ira Glass calls this phenomenon the Creative Gap — the Gap between the level or vision we want our work/skill to be at and the reality of where we are currently.

We have this idea of the kind of writer we want to be but because it takes time and discipline to get to that level, we give up. We judge our progress as being slow. We think we’re not good at it. But being good at anything takes time- a lot of time.

Automate your habits.

We can close this gap by continuing to be disciplined. By setting a set time each day to work on our writing or the task in which we hope to excel, we can automate our habits.

Bringing it all together.

The people who succeed — on Medium, on youtube, in business, or at work — are the ones who persevere. They have made practicing their skill their daily habit. Not one successfully completes a marathon without first running as much as they can and as often as they can.

It’s one thing to know a skill, it’s something else to excel and succeed at it. All it takes is discipline, self-control, and unwavering dedication.

Related Reading

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What You Need To Give Up To “Glow Up”

Emotional Intelligence. Make It A Priority in 2022. Your Success In Life Depends On It.

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