How to Become Successful: Succession Planning, Strategies and Habits

Don’t stop networking with your colleagues, even with your boss. You never know which new opportunities open due the networking.

There are many opportunities to network. For example, you can use your lunch time to catch up with colleagues you haven't talked to in a while. Likewise, seminars or conferences are an excellent opportunity to meet new people and expand your circle. Every new or old acquaintance that you communicate with can become a big CHANCE. 

The key is to network a lot, also with people who at first sight don't look like they can help you. You never know what ideas they have or what other useful connections they have from you can benefit.

There are new ideas behind each successful story or each successful man.

Don’t stop thinking and don’t stop being passionate about starting something new. It doesn’t matter what you think about your project or idea. Share it with your colleagues and experts in this field, even with your family members or friends. Be open for opinions or suggestions. 

Nobody was born as a billionaire and everybody started from something small. And this something is idea. So write your ideas in a notebook or laptop. Think about them, discuss them with your friends or colleague and start creating something new.

Sure, it’s been million times that you heard someone saying “I will start with it tomorrow”.

I will start my business, my fitness exercises, my diet, my book etc. The keyword here is “tomorrow”. Every other day “tomorrow” will work, because every day has its own tomorrow. 

STOP SAYING "TOMORROW."

Delaying something that you think is important means that you’re either scared as your life will change or your reasons are not valuable enough for you. Another explanation to that is that you are just talking (bla bla bla) because you don’t want to change anything, and you just want to talk.

Make it a habit to say NOW. It would be even better if you don’t talk, just start doing it.

Are you overloaded at your workplace? You don’t’ have time for your family or your own projects? Yes. Usually yes.

The main problem is in your way of thinking: you want to prove to your boss that you are ready to do everything. That you are ready to cancel a dinner with your family, ready to stop your own project and do his/her stuff. 

Every time that you said Yes to something means you said No to the rest.

So analyze each suggestion. Are you ready to stop your own life and build the life of your company? The main idea to quit saying yes or no is the following: say NO to everything that will slow down your ideas, your free time, your project, your relationship, your own business.

Say YES to new opportunity, new life, new collaboration, new ideas, new career stage. Say YES to your life and your interests.

You don’t like what you do? You don’t like your job, your boss, your colleagues? Why the F* are you working there?

Stop being the victim of your job. You think that you have to do this?

It reminds me of stories, where men and women aged above 60 years old talk about doing something in other way, talk about leaving their job which they hate, starting their own business, working on their ideas, but do not have any other choice than continuing working on something that they don’t like. 

Remember, you have a choice in every situation and in every condition. Yes, it can be hard, it can be even worse than you could imagine, but you always have a choice and chance.

Don’t miss the chance. Don’t say “but I can’t…but I have no choice.”

What do you think? Why usually people don’t become successful? Because all those people miss the hard parts of their path to their dream.

What do you usually think about when having an idea of starting your business that let’s say produces gadgets. I am sure you are thinking about sitting in your office,  receiving congratulations and going to trade shows where your product is the only thing that everybody talks about (is it close to what you dream about?).

Don’t miss the hard part of your success.

To be successful means to work hard, to work 28 hours a day: solving problems, managing risks, struggling with competitors, meeting with unsuccessfulness and this is the small part of your problems and the path that you need to pass before becoming successful. 

When dreaming, keep in your mind to be ready to meet these problems.

Stop talking about what you want to do. Stop wanting something, just do it.

It is as simple as the idea that you can’t be alive if you don’t drink water. 

Be a man of action.

If you decided to do something, to start your business or to keep diet, stop thinking about it. Analyze everything and take action. Stop telling about it to everyone you meet. Just do it. 

There are several cases when talking about your plans or ideas can stop you from realizing them. One of them is that you are missing your enthusiasm. Another one you feel relaxed, because psychologically you think that you have already done it. If you decided to do something you need to start immediately.

Just do the first step, even something very small, but something that you have to do in any case: something that can make your goal closer.

If you are thinking about small achievements your success will be small. If you think big and dream big your success will be big, or maybe even huge.  

If you want to be successful you should dream big. Your visions, your imagination about your future must be HUGE. 

It doesn’t mean being just romantic. It means having big plans and creating a long running plan on every aspect of your goal. Big minds create big things.

Big dreamers have wide vision. After you have created your future in your mind start the hard job of reaching your aim.

It's a pleasure to be relaxed, to be comfortable in every aspect of your job and life. But one day this may work against you.

Feeling comfortable in the “job” of creating success is like getting on a machine that slows down your personal and professional growth.

When you are comfortable with what's already there, you don't see new opportunities around you, you don't see what else you can do to become more successful, to be wealthier, to reach more goals, to be more effective, to create more things. 

Being comfortable makes you lazy mentally and psychologically. So if you want be successful you have to get out from your comfort zone.

Yes, it's hard to change your job you are so good at it. It’s hard to start doing something in which you are not experienced yet. It’s hard to change environment, city, house, job, people around you etc. But if you want to grow, you need to understand that this is the only way to get to achieve new heights.

Do you have your "to do list" for today and tomorrow? Do you know what aims you would like to have achieved in 2 years' time?

What are your goals and vision? What have you planned to reach your goals and achieve your aims?

Write down your goals, your things to do. Write in details mentioning what is your aim, what you should do to reach them, what challenges you may face and how you can overcome them. Write down about the problems that you would need to solve on the way to reach your goals. 

People, who clearly imagine what their goals and the ways to reach them are, are more effective and more successful than those who are leaving it up to faith.

If you don’t believe in what you do or what you want to achieve, you will never achieve it.

Believe in yourself and believe in the realization of your dreams. Otherwise, your dreams will stay as dreams, and you will be stuck in the same place. 

It doesn’t matter how unbelievable your dream or vision is. You need to believe in it so that you get motivated.

If you don't believe in yourself and your dream, you don't believe that doing this or that will make you closer to it as according to you it's unreachable anyways. So to make your dream come true, first of all believe in that it can actually come true. 

Hundreds of people think about doing something, creating something, becoming someone, but 99% of them are not reaching their dreams, because they don’t believe in what they want to become or what they want to do.

Your mind is very powerful. What you think, you become.

If you have already set your aims and goals, you need to start working on details.

Big dreams sound nice, but big things consist of small things. When you decide what you want to do, you need to start making small efforts every day. These small steps will take you to your big dreams.

If you don’t have enough patience, you will miss small but important details. If something, even a small thing, in a big mechanism doesn’t work, the whole mechanism stops working. Details and small efforts are the key to success.

Success is small things done well.

Have you made yourself do things that you didn’t want to do?

Start doing something that  you don’t like doing. Do it every day.

Your success is the result of your habits. Start useful and good habits to have quality life and big success. 

Don’t watch TV for more than 30 minutes in a day. Stop wasting your time surfing in the Internet and social media profiles. Stop smoking. Stop eating unhealthy food. Stop complaining. Stop grunting.

And this is not the whole list. You need to seed good habits. 

Think about what bad habits you have, habits that may prevent you from becoming more successful and begin to form new habits, habits that will help you become more energetic, more positive, healthier etc.

How many times have you heard someone saying that he is waiting for the right moment to start something, for example a business?

Thousands of times! Or maybe even more? And I’m sure that for 90% of those people that right moment never comes.

There is no such thing as a right moment or a wrong moment for doing the first step to success.  

It’s just the first step. In every situation there is something that you may consider as a reason to delay your plans. In every condition there are challenges and there is always someone that will tell you and prove to you that “it is not the right moment”. Do you want to start doing something? Just do it.

Don’t wait for the right-wrong moment. Don’t avoid from your success, because the situation seems not so right.

Everyone knows dozens of people who go to office every day and dream about weekends to do something that they love more than their own job. Are you among these people?

This means that you don’t even need to think what business to start. You already know a business that can become profitable. Start making money from what you love doing!  That’s the best business for you.

All you need to do is to think how to make profit from your hobby or passion.

If you don’t want to take risks and you’re afraid of failures, you won’t reach success. You cannot find any success story without failures. 

Failure is a new chance, new opportunity on the road to success. It is an opportunity to start over and not make the same mistakes. It is an opportunity to become more intelligent. 

Don’t be afraid to fail.

Everybody fails - successful and unsuccessful. But what distinguishes the successful people from the rest is that when they fail, they don’t give up. They think about what they can benefit from the situation, what it is that they can get and learn from that failure. If you avoid taking risks, you may not discover your capabilities. 

So don’t be afraid, go ahead!

Successful people never avoid opinions. Be open-minded, learn from everyone. You never know what ideas a low-level worker or your colleague or even a guy from a bar can trigger. 

Be open-minded.  

When you open your mind, you free yourself from total control and restrictions. You start thinking bigger. You become open to new ideas and new opportunities. Be open to criticism. It will help you see your mistakes. Allow others to speak about you. 

They may show you something that you have passed by. Most of the times criticism is not constructive; you will always need to rethink about it. But you need to be ready to hear others’ opinions.

It will work for you.

Everybody has done something that makes them frustrated or embarrassed. But what do you think? Will it help you reverse the time? NO!

That is why you need to stop negative dialogue with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Why someone was able to reach something that you couldn’t? Everyone has his own path. Everyone should create his own way.

Negative dialogue won’t help you. It stops you. It doesn’t allow you think on a positive mode and progress. Did you do something wrong? Did you present yourself in not the best way?

Ok. It is not the end, it is another point that you need to work on. Replaying those thoughts, however, and punishing yourself for past mistakes, is counterproductive. 

You’d better learn from situations and move on.

Successful people learn from past mistakes, but they don’t live in the past. Don’t get stuck in the past.

Define yourself by who you are today and by who you’re working to become. Past is not the future. It’s not even a perfect one. Your obsession about your past prevents you from the present and future.

Have you graduated from university? Do you have an excellent paper? Yes! And do you think that it’s all?! No!

Do not stop learning.

Every day you need to learn something new. Every day you need to achieve some new skills. The most successful people in the world never stop learning. It doesn’t mean that you need to go to university again, though it’s not a bad idea, but you need to read or listen, watch or write something that will help you improve your skills and knowledge. 

You don’t need to read too much. Sometimes even 10 minutes of reading is enough. Find 10 minutes and grow your vocabulary in a foreign language. Find 10 minutes and watch a video that will teach you how to make a table from woods…just anything useful. How much time is it in total? 30 minutes.

Only 30 minutes in 24 hours. It’s easy, isn’t it? But you will learn hundreds of things that you didn’t know before.

So DON’T STOP LEARNING.

It always takes a long time to become good at anything. Therefore give it time, be patient... and work hard!

Your products and services are not selling well? Maybe you are not selling what people need? 

There are thousands of businesses that open and close rather quickly. The main problem is that they are not selling products and services that people need, they are selling products that they can produce. 

But times are changing, needs are changing, you should always keep track of your customers needs. You can still produce what you're already producing today, but a small change in your approach and the way you present your products may have unbelievable results.

You have to earn more cash than you spend. That is why you need to keep yours costs and expenses low.  

You can save on the office rental, furniture, devices and so on. In short, try not to spend much money on things 

the quality of which doesn’t reflect on the quality of your products and services.

Remember! The main purpose of a business is to generate profit. Find ways to do this.

Generate more leads, convert leads into customers, increase the number of purchases from those customers. If possible, increase the price of your products and services and so on. 

Constantly think about how you can make more profit! What else you can produce or provide as a service to complement your products?

Grow your business, think wide, consider successful businesses from various industries and take an example from them.

Sure you know hundreds of brands that do not provide high quality, but people are going crazy for them, even if they are too expensive.

Do you know why? Because of the image that they have created. 

Work on the image of your company. Don’t be shy. Promote it everywhere. Use storytelling. Make your brand legendary. 

You may not see the results in the beginning though. Give it a time. Be consistent and stubborn!

It's axiomatic that business is about customers. If you want to succeed in your business, you need to care about them, constantly communicate with them, build good relationship with your customers. 

Have you ever done service or product quality surveys? Do you know what features are missing in your product or service?

You need to make an effort to listen to your customers' opinions. This will make your customers feel exclusive. 

Even if you don't change your product in the end, your customers will think high of you due to your efforts.

If in the case of man the looks don’t matter that much,  in case of woman looks play an important role. You always need to look perfect. It doesn’t mean you need to wear expensive dresses and jewelry, it means you need to be neat and tidy. 

If you are a mess most probably you will not be organized in your work also.. So go to a spa saloon, take care about your skin and body.

You don’t need to be super model and you don’t need to sell your look, but you need to be impressing.

You can’t be successful if you are not able to take care of your physical and mental health.

You need to plan your finances: write down about your monthly spendings and try to manage your income efficiently.

For example, you can download an application, which will at hand and will help you to manage your budget.

Don’t waste your money on things that you don’t need. 

Do you want to be able to afford your bills?

Do you want to be independent from your husband or parents in terms of money? If it is important for you, you will need to do your best to grow in your career.

I guess nothing can motivate more than the feeling of independency. If you feel independent you are more respectful to yourself, you are more motivated to progress, you are ready to take more responsibilities.

If you are in a relationship with your prince-man it doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your dreams and goals. If you are wise woman you can balance your family life, your career and dreams.

The easiest way to balance these is to find consensus between you and your husband or it would be even if you have the same vision. If it’s not working yet, you can still balance your life and house-work, succeeding career and relationships.

Talk about this with your husband, explain to him why it is important for you.

Don’t give up just find a consensus.

Mature women always take in to count their husbands opinion. If you don’t except your husband vision on happiness, you disrespect his life and who he is.

Think about what will make him and your family happy. Your personal goals are important, but the goals and happiness of your family member can be even more important.

Share about your vision of happiness, but if your husband doesn’t share this vision with you, you need try understand him and make him happy.

Are you that kind of woman who likes to gossip? If you are, I am sure, you will not be successful in your relationship.

In other words, if you like sharing your family details with others you will not be happy.

So stop discussing your family problems with people around. Nobody and in particular your husband will not like this.

So be smart and communicate with your partner to solve the problems.

Each man in this world want to see the results of his work and to share the happiness with his family, especially with his wife. 

Men like to hear appreciation words. They want to be appreciated by their wives for they do.

So a smart woman will always celebrate each success of her husband, rather than be selfish and hold her husband back.

Everybody has bad habits and traits. Don’t focus on your partner's bad habits and traits. Take him as he is. It will prevent you from building healthy and happy relationships. 

You can talk about things that you don’t like, you can explain how important it is to you, but be careful and intelligent. If speaking about it doesn't help, concentrating on it will not help either.  

So don't concentrate on it. Try to take it easy. 

Men and women think in different ways and they have different values and priorities. If you want to be happy in your relationship, you need to take him as he is.

Don’t try to change your partner. If he wants to change, he will change. Don’t try to change him according to your liking, instead focus more on what you already like in him. 

To be successful in college.

It's important that you have a plan for education before you go to college.You need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve at college. 

Who do you want to become? In what field do you want to work later? Does what you want to become match your talents?  

What about the finances? Can you pay for your college? Are there any scholarships suitable to you? 

You thought it will be easy? No. You need to concentrate to achieve good results. 

Set your priorities, find good literature and read it, be attentive during the lectures, take notes and revisit them from time to time, surf in the internet to find some more materials, case studies and so on. 

When you are in college studying should take most of your time.

Now it's easy to keep in touch with your professors and lecturers due to social media networks. You couldn't get the material you needed and couldn't find the right time to approach your lecturer during the class?

Write an email to your professor, use LinkedIn to get connected, call on Skype and ask your questions.

When and where do you feel more productive?

Find out the right hours and the right environment where you feel that your study process is more effective.

Set the times when you are more positive and motivated to learn. Maybe just after socializing or just after you wake up? Where do you feel more comfortable? In a library? In your room? maybe in a park?

Be aware of what your college or university provides for students. Be familiar with all the resources available.  

You need to know everything. Where is the library and how you can use it, where is the academic support center and what they can provide you with. How the career center works and what they can offer to you. 

Get use of all the available resources that your college or university provides. It’s an important point to make your study process efficient and effective.

There are hundreds of students that just sit in the auditorium and don’t discuss anything and don’t ask any questions though there are points that they don't understand. 

I'm not talking about speaking out when there is nothing important to add, but if you want to succeed in your class, you need to be interactive, ask questions, discuss the material with your lecturers and classmates. 

Studying is a hard process. That's why it is difficult to get into the mood to study.

When you study a lot, it's hard to find time for your hobbies, to hang out with friends, travel and so on. At the same time doing nothing but studying makes you unproductive. You need to relax, find time for leisure and be able to balance your life. 

That's why it's important to be organized. Get a productivity app, keep a special notebook to write down your priorities and to do lists, schedule and divide your time in a way that you have time both for studies and leisure.

Everybody needs someone who can show him the right way, for example, in business. The same thing applies to the studying process. You will always need some advices: what course to choose, what book to read or how to choose the right paper topic.

In all these cases, you will need someone skilled, who can show you the right way and how things work. Choose someone from your professors/teachers whom you like the most, who motivates you to learn more and do more. 

He/she will help you during your classes. And , who knows, maybe after you graduate he/she will become a mentor in your career.

Do you think I’m joking? NO! You can’t imagine how important this point is. 

You always need to be in the right environment, with the right people. Your campus-room is one of the main places where you will read and study. If your roommates are loud, always hanging around and discussing the next corridor-crawl…

What do you think? Can you concentrate on studying? NO.

That is why you have to choose your neighbors. 

Someone commented your status on Facebook? Another one liked your photo on Instagram. The third one wrote you an email? And all these during your lecture? What do you think? Can you concentrate on your class? NO!

TURN OFF all your notifications.  You’d better not take your smart phone or laptop to your class. If you do, remember, laptop is for taking notes only.

Lecturers and professors don’t like students, who are always late. If you are always late you will get negative feedback from your professors.

If you are late you will need to spend some time to understand what the class is about. If you are always late, you miss a lot of time to fill the gap.

If you are not able to wake up early, you can take online courses. There are hundreds of online courses and classes. Check them and go for it.

Some students write down notes about different topics in one notebook and then get confused which note refers to which subject and topic.

That is why you need to have separate notebooks for each class. This way you will easily find information on each topic and subject.

Studying is very important, but you need to relax in-between the classes.

Learning without breaks is counterproductive. You lose your focus and your brain stops working effectively.

So have some rest after each class.

You don’t want to be sleepy during an exam?

If you don’t sleep you can’t concentrate well and succeed in your exam. It’s important that you have fresh mind during the exam.

The exam itself is a stress, you don’t want additional obstacles.

Remember, a rested brain is more effective and ready to do a good job. Studies show that your brain needs a proper sleep to process and recall information you’ve learned. 

Take a seat for 10 minutes before the exam starts. It will allow you to relax and get your mind prepared for the challenges ahead.

Studying needs a lot of energy and it may be challenging to succeed in all subjects.

Because difficult assignments and subjects require more effort and mental energy, you should start with them.

If you are done with the most difficult one, it will be much more easier to do the rest, and your mental and physical energy will be enough for the whole semester.

Two heads are better than one.

This is true! So engage in study groups and use the time spent effectively. You can always find someone that's more knowledgeable on some subjects and topics than you.  

Get help from others and suggest your help to your group members.

If it's up to your choice, you'd better choose an effective group, a group where most of the members are knowledgeable and concentrated on studying rather than wasting time.

Do you want to impress your professors and fill your CV with an intern background? Get a part-time internship!  

It will give you an opportunity to find your mentor, apply your knowledge in practice and gain new skills. 

Besides this, you may get some money if it's a paid internship.

To become successful in writing, you need to read a lot. What are your benefits?

You will find your style in writing and thus understand who is going to be your niche.

You will see how successful writers engage their readers. You will learn to create a plot line, to develop a story and conclude it. 

It will help you open your mind and see the world through the eyes of others, see different perspectives.

So learn from others’ experiences and try to write yourself.

Having an interesting story is not enough; you need to write in an interesting way.

There are almost no topics about which you can’t find hundreds of stories and articles. The key point is not what you write about, but how you write about it. 

Is your style of writing motivating? Is it engaging? Is it breathtaking? Is it thrilling? Is it enigmatic? 

You need to write and tell stories to people in a way that nobody did before. It’s hard, but nobody said it was going to be easy. So find your style and go ahead.

You may have thousands of ideas, but you may not be successful in writing about all of them. Write about things in which you have experience, things which you are passionate about.

Tell the entire story. Tell about the nuances. Make the readers experience what you have experienced and feel what you have felt through your writing.

Nowadays, if you want to be a successful writer, you need to establish a strong online presence. You need to have a website or blog, a Facebook fan page, a Twitter and Instagram account.

People search for things in the Internet. That’s where they are looking for things they need. Books, authors, reviews and recommendations. Tell about your books and yourself, ‘cause nobody will know about you if you don’t position yourself online. 

Before you write, you need to define who your audience is.

Defining your audience is important to shape a story, novel or even a business report. You need to know who your audience is to determine the tone and style to write in.

This will help you make sure that whatever you write is understandable and appealing to your audience.

If you know what the purpose of your writing is, you will be focused on your purpose.

Your writings will be more meaningful and easy to follow, rather than distracted and confusing. This will let you better deliver your message to your audience.

So decide your purpose and be aware of the topic you are going to write about.

The main thing that makes your writing good or bad is the structure of your text.

It would be great if you could have some drafts of structure, check which one works better,

which one is more engaging and interesting and try to follow that structure in all your stories, reports, articles etc.

Do you think you have very few readers?

Overloading your text with difficult vocabulary and sentences might be one of the reasons.

So keep it simple, write short sentences. The simpler your text the easier it is to read.

Please, don’t be lazy. Always double check what you have written. It’s very important. 

Would you be satisfied if someone sold you, for example, clothes that have a defect? Of course, NO!

And why do you think that it is ok to have mistakes in writing? Always check and rewrite your writings!

Long sentences will not make your writing more successful and full of wisdom. Long sentences with difficult structure are hard to read and understand.

Keep it short. Don’t use more than 12 words in one sentence. It will be even better if use less.

The first sentence of whatever you write be it a novel or article or something else plays a crucial role in the success of your writing. It must be engaging so that it gets people interested and they continue reading. 

The last sentence of your writing also plays a vital role. How memorable your work will be largely depends on how you conclude it. So try to be impressive in your conclusion.

You don’t need to be the smartest man in the world. You don’t need to be the most knowledgeable one.

You just need to be honest. Authenticity matters! So be authentic to yourself and be honest with your readers.

Don’t steal! Never! Don’t copy and paste anything. NEVER!

If you copy and paste or steal something even once, you’re dead as a writer.

Be original, be unique, never copy anyone.

So you have chosen your topic, you know the purpose of your writing and you know who your audience is. You should now be able to determine what vocabulary to use to reach your audience.

Use a vocabulary that is understandable to your audience so that you are not misunderstood. Make sure that the message you want to convey is delivered correctly.

Don’t torture your audience with abbreviations and terminology that is not familiar to them.

Knowledge of basic words is not enough for professional writing. If you want to be successful in writing, you need to improve your vocabulary.

You can improve your vocabulary by reading, listening and playing some special games.

Choose your best or most important sentence and highlight it. Underline your uniqueness.

Readers will focus on it and you will make sure they did not miss the juice.