5 Daily Habits of Successful People: A Review of millionaire success habits book

We all have dreams and goals that we want to achieve – financial independence, a thriving career, happy relationships, good health and fitness. However, most people don’t end up achieving what they truly want. Why does this happen? Primarily because success doesn’t happen by chance. 

It requires developing habits that, when done consistently over time, build up the mindset and skills required to attain your goals. In this blog post, I will be sharing the key lessons from the excellent book “Millionaire Success Habits” by Brian Tracy. This book distills years of studying extremely successful people and the patterns common across them. 

Implementing just these five habits discussed below, even if starting small, and doing them daily can put you firmly on the path to success, no matter what area of life you want to improve. So let’s get started!

1. Clearly Define Your Goals and Vision

Jim Rohn famously said that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with. We can also extend this to say that we achieve the average of the five goals we focus on the most. 

Unfortunately, most people have a blurred vision of what they want to achieve. If you ask them what they don’t want, they will rattle off a list – “I don’t want to work under my bad boss”, “I don’t want to wake up early”, “I don’t want a boring job” etc. On the other hand, if asked what they do want, they struggle to define concrete goals. 

This is like driving extremely fast in a sports car but having no clear idea of which destination you’re headed towards. You’ll simply waste gas and burnout without reaching anywhere. 

Action Step:

Spend quality one-on-one time envisioning and defining what your ideal life looks like one year from now. Make sure to imagine specifics across all areas – financial, relationships, career, health, personal growth etc. A few key questions to ask yourself:

• What level of income/savings do I have? 
• Who all am I supporting financially?  
• What does my career/business look like?
• What are my top 3-5 priorities each day?
• What do my family relationships look like?
• What new skills have I gained?

The clearer your vision, the smoother the journey

2. Know Exactly Where You Currently Are

A Chinese proverb goes – “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. But even before you take that first step, it’s important to honestly know where exactly you are starting from.

Evaluating your current circumstances gives you a benchmark – both to measure progress as well as for clarity on the work required to bridge the gap between your present reality and your envisioned future. 

Action Step:

On a sheet of paper, map out a detailed evaluation of your current life situation – not just finances but also career, relationships, physical health, mental mindset and anything else that matters to you. 

Here are some sample questions to analyze yourself more deeply:

• What’s my current income and monthly expenditure? What about my savings?
• What skills do I have? How many hours a week do I devote to learning new skills?
• How stressed do I feel on most days? What are my stressors?
• Am I healthy? Do I exercise regularly? How many hours a week?
• Do I have mentors and role models I look up to? Who are they?
• How strong are my relationships with family and friends?

Honest assessment will highlight areas needing improvement – giving direction on forming new enabling habits.

3. Uncover Your Life Purpose – Your Powerful ‘Why’

Merely having clear goals is usually not sufficient motivation by itself to withstand the long-term hard work required to turn dreams into reality. You need to be connected to a deeper emotional reason ‘why’ you desperately want to achieve said goal. Your why provides the relentless drive needed to pull you across the finish line on days when you want to quit.

Unfortunately, surface level reasons like ‘I want financial freedom’ or ‘I want to get a great job’ rarely have enough emotional juice. These tend to still be coming from the head. The soulful why that activates heart and spirit comes from asking ‘why’ multiple times over. 

Action Step:

Ask Why do I want X goal? Then whatever reason you give – again ask why do I want that? Keep probing deeper through continuously asking why 7 times total. By the fifth, sixth, and seventh why – watch the shift happen – from logical reasons to deep soulful emotional reasons gushing forward. This can uncover surprising truths about what you really want.

Here is an example sequence:  

Goal: Earn 100 million dollars

• Why? So I can live a luxury lifestyle  
• Why? Because I never got nice things growing up and had to live frugally
• Why? Because it was so hard seeing other kids have ease and plenty while I had to struggle   
• Why? Because I felt inferior and not good enough  

As you can see, with every subsequent ‘why’, we are accessing the deeper unconscious motivations behind what is consciously driving our current goals.

4. Feed Positivity – The Inner Game of Success 

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” — Brian Tracy

There is an inner game when it comes to success. Your daily habits must nurture positive emotions within yourself. Your confidence, optimism and self-belief are the foundation stones on which strong habits and skills can be built on.

It’s said that inside each of us are two wolves constantly battling – one embodies things like fear, anger, jealousy while the other embodies positivity, courage, love. The one that wins over time is the one you feed daily.

So how can you feed the good wolf and starve the bad? Here are five suggestions:

Focus on Strengthening Natural Talents: Stop trying to fix shortcomings not central toward your goals. Instead identify and build upon strengths aligned with your vision. Invest energy into excelling at activities you have an innate flair for. 

Limit Influence of Negative News & People: Both drain away positivity needed to power through obstacles. Stay guarded about who and what gains access to your mental real estate.

Have Gratitude: Start and end your day reflecting on people/things you are grateful for. This trains the brain to scan for positives rather than threats. 

Meditate Daily: Creates mental spaciousness to manage thoughts and emotions skillfully. Disconnect identification with negative self-talk.

Take Inspired Action: When energy and motivation are low, take small action toward goals anyway and momentum can build.

5. Change Your Inner Narrative – The Power of Story

There is another key shift required for success – changing your inner narrative or story you subconsciously tell yourself that shapes beliefs and behaviors. 

We all have limited ways in which we have understood the world, often formed in childhood or by significant emotional events. And when situations come up not fitting that paradigm, it creates inner tension and resistance.  

Common examples of such outdated dominant stories running inside that prevent goal attainment:  

• I’m not smart enough  
• I don’t have the proper education  
• Someone like me could never do such a big thing
• It would take too long now that I’m older  
• I wouldn’t fit in with that crowd
• It’s risky so better not try in case I fail

Take a moment to reflect – what old stories are still playing inside that prevent you from rising higher? The cost of not evolving your inner narrative is massive. Your entire life trajectory five years from now will be determined by whether the old stories continue or are refreshed.

Action Steps:

• Become consciously aware of your inner stories  
• Question their factuality & usefulness going forward
• Collect examples disproving them e.g. people without college degrees achieving great success
• Strengthen the new narrative through daily visualization  

In summary, success requires the right combination of outer skill building and inner mental training. These five areas – defining goals, evaluating starting point, connecting your why, feeding positivity daily and mastering your inner narrative – form the core habits separated out by Brian Tracy as essential for anyone to actualize their potential. 

Hope you find this long read useful! Do share your key takeaways and which habit you will start implementing first. Now over to you.