5 Top Daily Habits of Highly Successful People
Hard work is not the only key to success. Many self-made millionaires and billionaires like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffet have created daily habits, disciplines, and rhythms that propel them to success.
The truth is the things you do daily form your habits, and your personality and ultimately create your lifestyle and future. If you want to change your life, look at your habits and start making changes.
The good news is you don’t need to wonder how to do that. You can look at the patterns of successful people and follow the same to achieve success as well.
As you go through the 5 Top Daily Habits of Highly Successful People below, consider how you can adopt them into your life. They’ll help you increase your productivity, boost your mood, promote positive thinking, and improve the quality of your life.
Imitating wealthy individuals is a skill you can use in your own path and journey to achieve great success.
5 Top Daily Habits of Highly Successful People
If you want to reach your goals and dreams, you can’t just coast through life on autopilot in your comfort zone. You need to have a clear vision, set intentions, and make an effort.
Simple daily actions are the only way to reach the finish line. This applies to your health, career, ministry, business, or relationships.
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey says, “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”
John C. Maxwell’s Intentional Living says, “Nobody finishes well by accident” and that “an intentional life embraces only the things that will add to the mission of significance.”
It’s important to consider how you’ll integrate these 5 Top Daily Habits of Highly Successful People into your day-to-day routine. How do you fit these good habits into an already full life?
The solution? It doesn’t have to take hours to get all these habits in. You can cater them to your life and your schedule.
I’m one of those early risers and one day while on a run, I was thinking about these daily habits, and I created a fun, formulaic way to remember the non-negotiables of successful people.
That’s what I do on runs. I think about new things and come up with good ideas. In fact, l solve the world’s problems!! When it’s just me and my thoughts, watch out!
I’m not sure if it’s the fresh air the solitude or the fact that I’m doing something to better myself, but it’s the place where I’m inspired most.
Introducing WRAPS
The formulaic acronym that I created to remember these important habits is called WRAPS. We know that creating daily disciplines or rhythms in our lives is important, but the question is, how does it all come together?
How can we create these habits, and how do we know which habits to create? I’ve created a formulaic system to remember the crucial daily disciplines and it’s WRAPS.
- W — Workout
- R — Read
- A — Affirmations
- P — Pray/Journal
- S — Success Audios
W is for Workout
A workout will boost your mood, reduce stress, and lead to a healthy body and successful life. We’re no good to anyone without our health.
It’s a great idea to get that heart rate up even just a little first thing in the morning. It increases our endorphins and wakes us up to be productive the entire day. I love running and I’ve learnt some surprising life lessons from running.
Our health is of utmost importance. This is one area that if you even commit to just 20-30 minutes a day, I promise you that you’ll feel a difference.
You’ll have more energy, more focus, and just plain feel better about yourself because you stinking did it even when you may not have felt like it.
Daily exercise is one of the most important things you can do to take care of your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Physical activity promotes mental clarity, an ability to focus, and improves your attention span.
Successful people like Sir Richard Branson include tennis matches in their daily routine, and Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey never compromise on their daily workouts.
That sense of accomplishment you feel translates to doing great things in other areas of your life too. You feel better, look better, and function better with exercise.
The key to exercising on a daily basis is to be able to get enough sleep, set an alarm clock, sleep with your workout clothes ready, and go for it. Along with a workout, a healthy breakfast and cup of coffee will also set you up for a successful day.
Being an early bird has other benefits too like boosting productivity, enhancing your mood, and improving your mental health. A fresh start to the day makes you feel more in charge and more confident which leads to great success.
“Habits are repeated actions that you take over and over. If your habits are positive and fine-tuned they’re going to drive you to success faster than if you’re running on autopilot.”
Joel Brown
R is for Read
Leaders are readers. Almost every successful person l know loves to read. We must develop a love of continuous learning in our lives if we don’t have it already. We just can’t grow without a reading habit.
Reading is vital because it breaks us open and begins the necessary process of working on ourselves. It exposes our weaknesses and helps us develop our strengths. It’s not about how much we read, but it’s about applying what we read to our lives and creating a lasting change.
The morning pages of your daily reading lead to inspiration and set the tone for a positive day. Instead of spending too much time on social media consider reading instead.
I’ve shared about the books that have literally changed my life, so if you’re not sure where to start or what to read, maybe that will get your juices flowing. Pick up one of those books first!
In Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, author Tom Corley shares that 88% of wealthy people devote at least 30 minutes daily to self-improvement reading.
The most successful people like Jeff Bullus, Daniel Scocco, and Bill Gates are avid readers too. Investor Warren Buffett has revealed that he spends at least 80% of his day reading. He advises reading 500 pages daily to build up your knowledge.
A is for Affirmation
Have you heard it said that what you say is what you get? Well, there’s more to it than that, but we naturally feed ourselves negative all the time. Our thoughts want to go to the negative right away rather than to the positive.
You can speak affirmations about your goals, your marriage, your finances, your career, your kids, yourself, or any other thing that you are struggling with currently that you want to change.
Think about it as a mini-pep talk to get you ready for the day! We can become our best cheerleaders!! This is one of the daily habits of successful people like Oprah Winfrey.
The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:8 to dwell on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy.
This scripture doesn’t say to dwell on the negative, the obstacles on the journey to our goals, whatever’s going wrong, why we can’t finish, and so on. How we speak to ourselves is what we believe about ourselves. Words are powerful.
Including affirmations in your daily routine gets your mind in the right place, and has a huge impact on your self-esteem. It improves your confidence, and mental health, and enhances your mood for the rest of your day.
P is for Pray
I believe wholeheartedly in the power of prayer! Spending quality time talking with God allows me the space to express my gratitude for the good things He’s done for me and also to ask for what l need. The good news is God is always there, always listens, and is ready to answer our prayers.
However, if you don’t, then consider meditating, which is also a great practice. Prayer can calm our anxieties and create a peacefulness, a sort of rest. It’s a place where we can shed our frustrations and grievances. We can take off any emotional baggage.
Prayer is a place to build a relationship with a God who loves you and wants to take your burdens on himself. It’s comforting to know that I don’t have to do all and be all because I have God on my side also, and if I just ask Him to come alongside, He will!
He wants more than anything for us to prosper and live a life of abundance, but it starts with a true and vulnerable relationship.
Meditation or prayer are good habits that help to relax your body, gain greater mental clarity, and facilitate creative thinking.
It puts you on the right path to stay focused and set yourself up for success. Successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs believed in the power of meditation to help them to have a productive day.
The Power of Journaling
I’m also going to insert journaling here.
I journal almost every morning, and sometimes it’s just my own thoughts, sometimes they are prayers to God in written form, and sometimes they are lists of gratitude.
Journaling allows me to reflect on my accomplishments and challenges, provides clarity, and helps me track my progress toward my dreams and goals. It’s an important tool for personal care.
Writing out our thoughts in the morning is a great way to release them and be ready to get to work. It can help us figure out what to focus on and what may not need attention at the moment.
I also believe there’s value in logging your personal journey because you can look back on that and see where you came from and take pieces of that journey as lessons to help others as they walk through similar situations.
Once when l broke my ankle, I started an “Injured Runners Journal”, and it helped me log my thoughts and even figure out how I was feeling at times. Looking back, if I hadn’t taken the time to log the journey, I’m not sure I could even remember some of it, and it was a traumatic experience.
Journaling is one of the daily practices that gives you the perfect opportunity to write down your long-term and short-term goals, daily to-do list, and most important tasks to work on. It boosts your mental health and helps you cope with stress and anxiety.
Tim Ferriss author of The 4 Hour Workweek, The 4 Hour Body, and Tools of Titans Ferriss once said he doesn’t journal to be productive but because it’s the most cost-effective therapy he’s found.
S is for Success Audios
One of the best daily habits of successful individuals is they are lifelong learners. They understand that the best way to learn is through others’ experiences.
They are the greatest teachers. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. What a way to get an education!
Whether you have personal projects, a work problem to solve, clear goals to crush, or a skill you want to master, there’s an expert you can listen to who can support you on the journey.
This can be through listening to podcasts like the Pursuing Goals God’s Way Podcast, audio tapes, webinars, or radio shows of people who are experts in your field or people who will inspire you to reach your goals. The knowledge and wisdom you’ll gain will save you time, effort, and money.
I usually throw a podcast on while I run, when I’m in the shower, or when I’m driving. Drive time is a great time to get a success audio in because you’re stuck in the car and have nothing else to do.
Turn off the music and turn on something that will have a direct effect on your future! It actually makes my drive time enjoyable and something I look forward to.
“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.”
— American politician Colin Powell
“If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.”
Tony Robbins
How to Get It All In
- Read 15 minutes a day in a personal-development book.
- Listen to audios while driving or getting ready in the morning (doesn’t take extra time, just changes what you do in that time)
- Pray and journey for the first 15 minutes of your day.
- Start with a short 20-minute workout.
- Get up an hour earlier than you normally do, or stay up an hour later.
- Create a morning or evening routine that reflects these habits.
Related: My Morning Routine
So there you have it, my formulaic way to remember the daily disciplines that will move you forward in business, goals, and life. All you need to remember is WRAPS!
You may think there’s not enough time in the day to integrate these habits but I’m here to remind you that where there’s a will, there’s a way.
If wealthy individuals running billion-dollar companies can do it, you can too. This doesn’t have to take hours of your day. Start small. Stop making excuses and start taking small steps toward your goals. These successful habits are a game changer.
Everyone likes a present, and they especially like one with a bow on top. It creates an essence of completion. Presents are fun, it’s something new and exciting. Kids could care less what’s inside half the time because the fun is in unwrapping the gift!
As you’re creating these habits, you’re creating change. You’re creating a new you. WRAPS gets all of that in there. It’s like you’re unpackaging a new you every day as you consistently develop these habits with WRAPS.
Successful people share a few common traits. They journal their thoughts, meditate or pray, speak positively over their lives, read personal development books, work out, and listen to podcasts or success audios of others who have gone before them.
They don’t practice these 5 Top Daily Habits of Highly Successful People occasionally. It is a daily ritual, and they are non-negotiables in their lives.
So if successful people are forming these habits, and you want to be successful in your own life, then it can be concluded that you need to develop these same habits daily as well.
Our success is rooted in our daily habits. What we feed on, we will absolutely hunger for. Choose to feed on disciplines that will make you better and propel you forward.
Which of these disciplines is easiest or hardest for you? Comment below and let me know.
And, remember, you are a winner. Just run YOUR race!
My Game Plan Workbook (free resource)
The “My Game Plan Workbook” will walk you through creating that deep rooted why for a goal you may have and then creating a plan for stepping-stone goals and habits to bring that goal from the start to the finish in a stress-less, no hustle kind of way so that you can be present in your everyday life as well.
A bonus reflection journal is included that will help you reset each week and determine if there’s anything you need to start, stop, or keep doing so that you’re not just working hard and going around in circles. You can download the workbook at https://redhotmindset.com/game-plan
The “My Game Plan Workbook” will walk you through…
- Creating a deep-rooted why that will make you take action on your goals
- Drafting a roadmap for stepping-stone goals and habits to bring that goal from start to finish in a stress-less, no hustle kind of way
- Reflecting on your progress to reset each week so that you’re not just working hard and going around in circles.
