“The movie Rudy just happened to connect to the fiber of the American underdog. The idea of being the underdog is such a powerful, powerful thing. If you’re the underdog, you have that chip on your shoulder, you always work hard, you’ll only accept excellence, you keep striving toward excellence. You’re not going to try to be perfect—you’re going to try to have a perfect moment, but you’re not going to be perfect. That’s not saying you’re not going to struggle. I think the struggle comes in finding the right people to be around.”
— Rudy Ruettiger, interview with Dean Graziosi
This chapter is going to be like a lightning round on success hacks that you can adjust to fit into your life at a moment’s notice. Of course, there are thousands of habits, daily routines, or “hacks” that can help you along your journey to success. These are some of my favorites, and you can incorporate them into your life easily, quickly, and with a far greater impact than you might think.
TAKE CREATIVE TIME DAILY
We often get into ruts or routines, and we live the same schedule day after day. Sometimes we feel like we’re on a hamster wheel or that we’re just running in place on a treadmill. When this happens, your creativity, new ideas, dreams, visions, and inventions don’t get a chance to flourish.
Set aside 10 to 30 minutes each day, and just think creatively. Don’t respond to e-mail, don’t read over your to-do list, don’t text or look at social media. Just think. I do this after I work out in the morning and before my kids wake up. I focus on what’s next for my life. What should I say in my books? What new idea can I share with people today that will have the most power to transform lives? What’s my next TV show going to be?
As you allow yourself to exercise your creativity, you’ll get the juices flowing. I don’t care if you think you’re not creative; you are. If you’re like most people, you don’t give yourself credit for all your innovations. You’ve invented a new relationship, a business, a career, a game you play with your kids, a more efficient way of doing your yard work, a character that makes your spouse laugh. Nothing in life comes to us unless we think of it first. Look around you. That lamp, that chair, that painting—somebody thought about them first by being creative, and then those items became reality.
If you forget to take creative time every day, you’re not feeding part of your soul, and you don’t want it to wither. Sometimes I’ll do a whole day of just being creative, where I spend time finding those things that spark my mind and fire me up and keep me looking forward to that next level of life. All of us have our own definition of creative time. It can be painting, writing, sculpting, inventing, digital design, or 1,000 other things that get your creative juices flowing. Whatever it is, schedule the time and do it daily.
OBSERVE OTHER JOBS FOR GRATITUDE
What the heck does that mean? I know we spoke about gratitude earlier, but I want to give you some additional ideas for being aware of it and expressing it. Whether you are expressing thanks for something big or small, you need to find a way to get this feeling out into the world. But sometimes it’s hard, right? You’re busy, you’re doing 10 things at once, and finding gratitude isn’t always at the top of your mind.
So what I do is observe other people’s jobs to create a kind of gratitude consciousness. I don’t care what you do for a living—I know it can get stressful. More than that, it can be overwhelming or it can make you feel like you’re doing something that’s trivial or mundane and that you’re not making a difference. So when I see people hard at work, getting their hands dirty, I mentally say “Thank you” to them. I send my thoughts of gratitude and appreciation.
Here’s an example. I live in Phoenix, and in the summer it gets brutally hot. I was driving around recently and saw five guys working up on a roof in 106-degree heat. So I looked at them and I sent love. I’m not trying to be foo-foo or New Age here, but this is just what I do. I think to myself, “Good for them. Thanks, guys.” They’re taking care of their families, they’re making a house in my neighborhood look better, and at the same time, it reminds me that I’m so grateful for what I get to do for a living. Every day I see hardworking people doing difficult jobs, and I feel gratitude for my life and send that appreciation to others.
SET GRATITUDE ALARMS
Since cell phones can do pretty much everything in life except go to the bathroom for you, I love using the daily alarm to remind me to stay grateful. This is a cool little trick I learned from my good friend Brendon Burchard. In the craziness of our day, not only can we forget to be grateful, we can get frustrated, overwhelmed, annoyed, or even become pessimistic or unable to smile. So I set the alarm on my phone to go off every day at three different times, accompanied by a description that pops up when the alarm goes off. At 10 A.M. the alarm sounds, and it reads, “Be optimistic, enthusiastic, and loving.” At 3 P.M. it goes off again and reads, “You can handle anything.” And then again at 7 P.M., when I am typically home with my family, I see, “You are truly blessed. Be grateful.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed those exact messages at those exact times. These little reminders typically make me take a 30-second break from whatever is going on and appreciate everything I have in this world. And as a bonus, the alarm and message often snap me into a better state.
STASH CASH
Trust me on this one: You must make it a habit to put money away. I don’t care if you make $500 a week or $500,000 a week, save some of it. There are certain people in the world, and maybe you know some, who will spend as much money as they make and more. If they make a dollar, they’re going to spend $1.25.
But you’ve heard this advice before. Parents, financial advisers, and spouses may have all insisted that you start saving. This success hack, however, isn’t as much about money as it is about confidence.
When you have money put away, it does something for your confidence. You will know in the back of your mind that you can weather any storm. If you have a bad month, a bad three months, break your leg, can’t work, you can handle it. You possess peace of mind knowing that you and your family are going to be okay until you’re back on your feet.
On the other hand, if you have no savings, you’re always going to worry about your future, even if only subconsciously. And that is the worst feeling in the world. All it does is tug away at your confidence and peace of mind. You’ll start thinking, “If I have another bad couple of months, I won’t be able to pay my rent. I have nothing saved for my retirement, and I have nothing in savings. I have nothing to fall back on!” So I would encourage you, no matter what your income, to make it a habit of stashing something away every single week of your life, even in the bad weeks. It’s not about the money you’re stashing away as much as it’s about the feeling of confidence that helps you make better decisions moving forward.
Have you ever heard the saying “Scared money makes no money”? For me this is true. If you have no money stashed away, you’re going to make decisions very cautiously, avoiding risk to feel safe. Because of this you might miss out on taking an educated gamble that could lead to a big payoff. If you have no money stashed away, you’re going to stay at that job you hate because you have no cushion. But if you stash money away for three or four years and your boss comes in and finally treats you so badly that you can’t take it, you at least have the option to quit. But if there’s no money, you’ll swallow your pride and take the abuse. I don’t care if you save $10 a week, $100 a week, or $1,000 a week—whatever amount you can put away, do it. It will give you more than just a savings account.
SPOIL YOURSELF RANDOMLY
This might seem to contradict my previous point. But hear me out; you can save and spoil yourself. You just have to choose wisely about how you spoil yourself. I don’t have hundreds of cars and thousands of shoes, because to me, that’s a waste. But I do spoil myself and my family with the things that really matter to us and that we derive value from.
For example, I know I spend three times as much as the average person on our household groceries because everything in my house is organic. I don’t want my family eating food chock-full of chemicals.
I will occasionally take the family on incredible trips, stay at the best places, and we pamper ourselves. I love experiencing a great meal with my family no matter the cost. These are my rewards for my hard work, and they make me want to achieve even greater success. So when I say spoil yourself, that’s what I’m talking about. Treat yourself to things that evoke a positive emotion; and if this spending creates a lasting memory at the same time, wonderful.
If you stash cash and spend less on things that don’t mean much to you, when it’s time to spoil yourself on the things that really matter, you’ll have the money to do it. Spoiling yourself can empower you, give you glimpses of what could be the norm, and push you harder to implement strategies and make decisions to better your life.
INVEST IN YOURSELF
I truly believe that we die when we stop learning. When it comes to life, we’re either climbing or we’re sliding. If you want to make more money, and have more money in retirement, more time for you, and more freedom, then never stop investing in yourself. Gaining more knowledge will transform your life experiences into wisdom; and wisdom will provide you with the insight and guidance to reach your next level. I currently spend well over $100,000 a year on continued learning, and you reading this far shows me that we are kindred spirits. But please remember what I shared earlier about bad advice. Make sure you are learning from someone who has done what you want to accomplish on a grander scale. Get a mentor or a coach. Do an internship. Digest knowledge from those who have the path and the plan to the success you desire.
DRAW ENERGY FROM YOUR FREQUENT SMILES
I am optimistic and I love people; it’s as simple as that. But I know it can be a challenge to maintain this positive, friendly outlook. Sometimes we get so busy and caught up in our own worlds that we put our heads down and ignore people who we think don’t matter because we’re too busy to notice them. The delivery truck driver, the building custodian, and the restaurant server may go unnoticed. But then, someone with influence walks into the room, and only then do we put on our friendly faces. I promise you, I have never in my life been one of those people who treated a server badly. I’m always nice and polite. But I decided 10 years ago that I’m not just going to be polite, I’m also going to be consciously aware to smile and make eye contact with everybody I interact with. This isn’t just a decision to be “nice”; it’s a choice to plug into the power source provided by an upbeat, human-centric attitude.
Now, you can’t be “on” all the time. But you also don’t want to be the person who treats somebody well because of what you think you can get out of them. Instead, wouldn’t it be better to make an effort to appreciate everyone daily, and give a quick smile as often as you can? Think about it: How much energy does that take? Not much at all, yet it will actually improve your state of mind and boost your energy while potentially making someone else’s day.
FIND THE GOOD IN THE BAD
If you can create a habit to find good when things go wrong, your life will be transformed. So many people have things go wrong in their lives, and they wallow in them for years. Until someday down the road they say, “You know, it’s a good thing that relationship didn’t work, because I found the love of my life.” Or “You know what? It was actually good that my first business failed, because I learned from it, and that experience helped my next business succeed.”
How many people do you know who have avoided committing to relationships because they had their hearts broken years ago? Or do you know someone who won’t start a new company because a business venture failed years ago? I believe everything that happens in our life happens for us, and there is a lesson and something good in all of it. If you can create a habit of finding that good sooner rather than later, you’ll change your life.
BOUNCE BACK FAST
I’ve been successful for lots of reasons, but my ability to bounce back from setbacks fast is near the top of the list. Why not be the person among your peers, coworkers, or employees that rebounds from failure or overcomes obstacles faster than anyone else? I have self-programmed this habit or “hack” of fast rebounding, and it has paid huge dividends. How long do you linger on things when they go wrong? How long do you play the situation over and over again in your mind? Learn from it, but pick up the pieces and move on with that experience in hand. The people who fail the fastest are the ones who find the solutions the quickest.
THINK SOLUTION, NOT PROBLEM
It’s unfortunate that when something goes wrong, people obsess about why it happened, whose fault it was, and “why me?” Honestly, what good is that thinking in most cases? Yes, learn from it, but train your brain to be solution oriented. Let’s take the simplest example on the planet. What happens when a glass of milk spills? Yes, you can obsess and say, how did that fall, who made it fall, will it stain the floor, will it smell, or think something along the lines of, “Why always me? I’m in a hurry and don’t need this.” But someone with a solution-oriented thought process would simply get a towel, pick up the glass, and get a new glass of milk. Use your energy wisely; learn from mistakes but then move on fast with solutions.
Develop a habit that when stuff goes wrong, you immediately ask, “How do I fix it? What steps can I take right now to lessen the damage?” Make it a habit to put all of your energy into the solution, not on why it happened or who’s to blame.
ASK HAPPY PEOPLE
Every time I see people who are always in a good mood, always smiling, and always find the good in things, I strike up a conversation with them. I’ll say, “What do you do to be happy?” As you might have guessed by this point, I love asking people what makes them happy. Sometimes you get a funny one-liner as an answer, and you just have to chuckle and be on your way. Other times you might get a thoughtful answer that has a lasting impact on you. When you see happy people, talk to them, and find out what they are doing to stay that way.
My wonderful friend John laughs more than any single person I know. He owns and runs a multimillion-dollar company, has tons of obligations and pressure, and has three young children, but he finds the simplest things funny, and his laughter is contagious. So, of course, I asked him what it is that makes him happy. He told me, “I personally think every day how lucky I am to have been born when I was, to live where I live, and to have the family I have.” So as you see, nothing groundbreaking; John doesn’t possess a magic happiness button. He found a way to be happy with a routine of gratitude.
GO TO YOUR HAPPY PLACE
I touched on this in the happiness habit chapter, but this success habit boils it down to one particular happy place or thought. Sometimes we find ourselves in funks and need quick hacks to set us free from our negative moods and set our minds and souls straight. For me, it’s thinking about being a child and being with my grandmother. She was this warm, comforting light in my life, and when I was with her it felt like a warm hug wrapped around my body. She taught me how to cook Italian food, and I’d sit with her on Sundays for hours while she made the tastiest Italian dishes you could imagine. Things like that are my happy places. So when I need them, I go to them. I urge you to find your happy place and make it a habit that when you’re having a rough day, you remind yourself to imagine this place. Once you get out of your funk, you can start thinking clearly again.
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER
This signature phrase from Star Trek is worth applying to your life. If you don’t have a healthy body, it’s hard to have a healthy life and healthy thoughts. An Indian proverb says, “A healthy person has a thousand wishes, but a sick person only has one.” How true is that statement?
This isn’t a health book, and I don’t claim to be an expert. But knowledge of healthy lifestyles is easier to find now than any other time in history. Search it out and create habits that get you in optimal health. Why make all the money and attain all the fulfillment and abundance you desire if you can’t be the parent, grandparent, leader, or spouse you know lives inside you?
To live long and prosper, you’ve got to exercise. It may be hard to start this habit, but once you make it a part of your life and you feel and see the benefits, you’ll be hooked. You can find amazing workouts to fit your body and your fitness level online. Heck, you can hire a coach to keep you accountable and have him or her help you with a routine. But whatever you have to do, make it happen. I find that a few things keep me exercising. First, I want to be an example to my children. I want them to see me making exercise a part of my life and not treat it like a chore. I know this to be true: Kids do what you do, not what you say. Also, I want to be an active dad and, someday, an active grandparent. I’m sure you want the same.
Here are a few other ways to make exercise a habit. First, create a fitness challenge with a friend, whether it’s based on weight loss, pants size, a 5K, or a before-and-after picture contest. A challenge makes it more likely you’ll get engaged with the program and stay there. Next, I recommend mixing it up! Don’t do the same thing every day! Go for a walk, run, ski, swim, bike, do some weights, row a boat, play tennis, or do short sprints. Just get in the habit of doing something different daily. When you exercise, you do everything else better. You make wiser food choices, you refrain from adult beverages more often, and you even start to sleep better. On top of that, you start looking better. It’s truly addicting! So, why not start this habit today?
TAKE TIME TO UNDERSTAND
When someone does something to make you feel slighted, underappreciated, snubbed, or even disrespected, you become upset. That’s understandable. But many times, we don’t understand how they really feel, and we are simply assuming their negative intent. And like I stated previously, this can cause us to waste energy, thoughts, time, and focus. It happens sometimes without even knowing it, and we have to stay away from this energy and time grabber. We are so much better off not wasting our time on the perceived sense that someone is doing us wrong.
I had this happen with my daughter’s friend’s father. Every time I saw the guy, I felt he was snubbing me. I remember thinking, “Well, he must have a problem with me.” He never smiled and barely said hi when I tried greeting him a few times. I convinced myself that he was snobbish or opinionated, and foolishly never talked to him about this subject. Finally, one day I just decided to sit down and chat with him. He and I talked, and I discovered that I was completely wrong about the guy! He was just shy and a little insecure. He turned out to be the furthest thing from pretentious: a humble guy and a great dad. He just lacked the confidence to communicate well with people he barely knew.
Forcing myself to understand a situation before I react has been transformational. Make it a habit to pause in any circumstance that offends you, no matter how bad the offense may seem. So much energy and stress can be avoided if we try to understand why people are doing what they do; or, if necessary, we can avoid this wasted energy by deciding it is not going to affect our mood, no matter what. If you find out your spouse lied to you, your children lied to you, somebody at work is trying to undermine you, somebody at the gym is making fun of you, or someone went behind your back, stop and take a breath. After any upsetting event that happens in your life, taking a breath and refusing to react in the moment can lower your stress. Make the effort to understand where that person is coming from. Look through their eyes and then respond. Letting yourself go down a rabbit hole of assumptions is one of the largest energy-drainers there is. So make it a habit: decide not to do it.
DON’T JUDGE
Easier said than done, I know. But when people ask me about times in my life when the biggest shifts or changes happened, I always reflect back on the moment when I completely let go of making judgments. Can anyone be perfect? No, of course not. But can you get pretty darn close? Heck, yeah! And the results are life-changing.
When we judge, we are literally expending energy, thoughts, and time on something that’s none of our business, or that we often lack sufficient knowledge of to make a judgment. As a child I grew up around people who were very judgmental, and I think some of that attitude seeped into my young adult attitudes, even though I would’ve considered myself a nonjudgmental person. Then one day it hit me: I was making judgments about people, and I had no idea what kind of circumstances were causing them to act as they did. Sometimes you may see overweight people and, as your default reaction, you assume they’re lazy or just have no control when it comes to their eating. When you see alcoholics, you think they have no self-discipline and that they should just stop drinking. When you see individuals who are grumpy or disrespectful, you think they are bad people. These default mechanisms live inside all of us. But when you get rid of your judgments, a whole part of your soul opens up for new exploration and new growth.
As you can see, I love sharing by example. And I want to make this point in my children’s lives at a young age, so they can be judgment-free their entire lives. For the last five Christmases, after the kids open their presents and we have our morning routine, we jump in the car and drive to downtown Phoenix, armed with bagged lunches that also contain $100 bills. We drive street by street, alley by alley, to find the homeless people on Christmas morning and hand each one of them a lunch bag. We then say, “Merry Christmas,” and as we pull away, in so many cases, they are crying or shocked or saying, “Thank God and thank you.” And it’s about more than the food and the money. It’s about having the chance to feel that someone cares. And my children are old enough to realize that people will say, “Why are you giving money to the homeless? They should work, they’re lazy, they have options, they will use it for drugs or alcohol.” And maybe that’s the case in some instances, but who are we to judge?
Rather than pulling away from someone who’s barely dressed, completely dirty, or smells horrible, the lessons I’m able to share with my children are the ones I want to become permanent in their souls. I get to teach my children that we don’t know if homeless people’s families threw them out, if they were molested, if they were beaten, if they have a severe learning disability that no one noticed. I share with my children that there are a million reasons the homeless person could be where they are. Some of them may be on drugs and may use alcohol, and maybe that’s the only thing that quiets the noises in their heads. I always tell my kids that we have no idea why they are there, but we can wish them well, let them know someone cares, pray for them, and find gratitude for the blessings we’ve had in our own lives. Yes, this is a lesson for my children from a dad who had a tougher childhood than they are experiencing. And yes, I may be doing this to help create adults who have empathy, caring spirits, no judgment, and gratitude. But at the same time, I continue to do things like this to cement those values into my own life and heart. So stop judging, and watch your heart, mind, and world open up—and your income increase in the process.
HELP THOSE WHO ARE WORSE OFF THAN YOU
This may seem like the same advice that I offered in the previous habit, but bear with me and you’ll see the difference here. I had a friend of mine introduce me to Joel Osteen a few years ago, and when we met, he invited me to fly to Houston and attend a service. I remember being in awe of the size of the church and how beautiful it was and also how many smiling, happy people were attending. I got to sit next to Joel’s wife and mother and truly enjoyed it all. I must confess it was the first time I had been in a church in quite some time. As I watched Joel share stories, he told one that really aligned with my heart, and it was something I knew to be true. This was a while ago, so I’ll share as closely as I can remember. He said something along these lines: “When you think things are really bad in your life, when you think you don’t have enough money, love, health, or maybe joy, go help somebody who’s much worse off than you are. When you think your relationship is bad, go to a place where battered women need help, and go donate your time or donate money. When you are feeling you deserved that raise and feel slighted, go visit a homeless shelter. Our problems are our own, and they are relevant, and we still feel the pain. But it is impossible to feel sad or depressed and grateful at the same time. Make it a habit to help those worse off than yourself, and even more so when you are feeling down. When you help others who are worse off, your gratitude will rise and push your stress away. It’s a win for everyone.”
Helping others isn’t a totally selfless act. As important as it is to lend a hand to those in need for its own sake, realize that you’re going to benefit too.
DO YOUR BEST ALWAYS
I know so many people who hate what they do for a living; they are dreaming, hoping, and trying as hard as they can to find the career or business they know they will love. But until you find that thing you love to do, use this quick success hack: do the absolute best you can, even if you hate it, until your next level kicks in. Yes, it doesn’t matter what it is, always give it 110 percent. Remember my earlier story of billionaire John Paul DeJoria, who swept floors in places the boss couldn’t even see, and it set a success habit he followed for the rest of his life? Even though you may not like a particular task or job, do it amazingly well, and the habits learned will be priceless.
When I was in high school and during the few years following, I used to fix wrecked cars in a collision shop with my dad. It was dirty and smelly work that, on many days, gave me headaches from the chemicals. My nails were dirty, my clothes looked like crap, and the truth is that I hated it. But you would have never known how I felt by how I carried myself. If anybody walked into that collision shop, I know they thought to themselves, “Damn, this guy loves his job!” What they saw was that I did that job to the best of my ability every day, and with a smile to boot.
My first big real estate deal was made possible by someone who had often visited the collision shop. We would chat and laugh, and I think he really liked my enthusiasm. One day I told him my story about some real estate deals I was working on and how I was juggling money but still making it happen. He ended up lending me over $80,000 because he saw my enthusiasm. Would I have received that investment if he had walked in and I had a crappy, negative attitude? The guy wouldn’t have given me the time of day! Yes, I hated fixing cars, but my habit was to do the absolute best that I could until I reached the next level of my life. This one instance was a shift in that direction. The real estate deal resulted in over $1,000,000 in sales. True story!
I love to share examples from my own life that reveal the power of the right success habits or “hacks,” as they’ve become part of my life and routine. But I’m not the only one creating these hacks and habits; they are also the habits of the highest achieving, most successful people on the planet.
I met Josh Bezoni a little over nine years ago in Hawaii at a weekend mastermind. At that time he was running a decent-sized company and doing fairly well in the nutrition space. We hit it off and had great conversations. We stayed friends and communicated through the years. Then Josh hit hard times with his company, and it went out of business. I flew to meet him in Colorado about six years ago when this was happening, and I remember walking through his old office. It was like a ghost town, empty desks everywhere, and it was truly sad to see. I could feel that my friend was doing his best to put on a good face, but he was heartbroken.
A year or so later Josh invited me to a small event he did in Austin, Texas. It was really his coming-out party in a sense. He had spent sufficient time trying to learn what had gone wrong, getting over the negative stories and self-doubt in his head, and he was ready to jump back into the entrepreneurial world, even though he literally had no money to start over.
Fast-forward from this moment of reinvention to today, and Josh is the founder and CEO of BioTrust Nutrition, one of the world’s leading premium nutrition brands. His company does hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, employs many great people, and provides outstanding products, some of which I use daily.
What happened? How did Josh move on from failure and the overwhelming stress of closing a business, with no seed money to start to a dominating world brand? His answer was, “I discovered through my success and failures, through trial and error, that I had to change and create new habits.”
Over the years, he’s been incredibly successful in many roles—entrepreneur, nutritionist, and philanthropist. So while I was writing this section of the book, I called Josh and asked if he would share his new habits or success hacks with us. Josh was so excited to share the routines that changed everything for him that he made a recording and immediately sent it to me.
He shared a lot of hacks, and there’s not enough space here to include all of them, but let me give you a “taste” of some of them:
When I focused on my unique abilities, which are hiring the right people, creating the big vision for the company, and putting the right teams together, I made the biggest impact possible and watched all areas of my business and personal life go to the next level.”
From afar, I was a witness to how Josh’s changing habits allowed him to not only rebound, but to create a business and a life that is truly abundant and inspirational. Josh made mistakes, felt he let others down, believed he wasn’t good enough. Is that unlike any feelings you and I have had or are having right now? No, of course not, because we are all so similar. Yet some people choose to stay in that place of despair, to keep the same routines and repeat the same patterns day after day, year after year. Unfortunately, life doesn’t one day become amazing by accident. You have to decide it is going to be amazing. Josh is a shining example of someone who knew what he wanted, learned from his mistakes instead of wallowing in them, shifted his habits, and achieved greatness.
Use Josh’s success hacks, the ones I’ve listed, or modify and create some of your own. These small but impactful habits or hacks can be incorporated into your life starting right now. And like I said earlier, it’s not about adding more time or more habits into your day, it’s about replacing current habits that simply are not empowering your future. If we work on our habits one day at a time, then life will never be the same again.