Unconventional success requires an unconventional path, here are a few tips.
1. Be uniquely you: Most people would rather be wrong with the crowd than be right alone. Remember: the social rewards of conformity exceed those of isolation. You are unique and special.... celebrate it! If you can avoid seeking the approval of others, your power is limitless.
2. Be Consistent: Consistency is underrated. It's not about how hard you swing your bat, it's about how often you swing it. I am a relatively new golfer, and I realised that, the more I practice, the better I get. It's about swinging over and over again till you learn to hit it on to the green. Consistency gets you places hard work doesn't.
3. Fail forward: Get comfortable with failure. Failure is not necessarily a bad thing, failure teaches us resilience, it teaches us to develop strength of character, it teaches us bravery.
The cost of failure is education. Failure is an opportunity to go back and try again. the Wright brothers turned a bicycle shop into the dream today we know as aviation. They failed and failed again... until they found success. Nothing stopped them.
It doesn't matter how often you miss. Just keep swinging till you hit it out of the park.
4. Social intelligence > IQ: Social intelligence is the ability to successfully build relationships and navigate social environments. Our society puts a huge emphasis on being book smart and IQ, but true intelligence is about being being book smart and people smart, in other words, social intelligence. Our relationships affect life, business, family and everything we do in life.
School is a single player-game with clear instructions. Life is a multi-player game with no instructions. Social intelligence allows you to effectively navigate life.
5. Listen, observe, learn: Learning to learn is the ultimate meta-skill. Pursue and persist in learning, organise your own learning, be deliberate about learning. Simply said,
Life is too short to learn everything through firsthand experience.
Make friends with intelligent people and read as widely as possible. Learn vicariously through the writings and experiences of others.
6. Challenge yourself: Decide to take on new tasks and approach things in a different manner than you've done before. When you challenge yourself, you dare to do more meaningful and difficult stuff. You gain confidence after doing something hard - not before.
Too many people never try hard things because they think confidence is a precondition when, in reality, it's a side effect.
7. Focus on building a positive narrative for your life: Creation begins in the imagination.
Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be.
Narrative builds identity.
Identity builds personality.
Personality builds capability.
Enjoy success the unconventional way...