 Look guys, the internet is filled with all these lists of the blank number of habits of highly successful people. Now following in line here I figured I'd share my own BS list of the XYZ habits of highly successful people. But specifically, this comes from not only reinventing my own life and focusing on the worst habits blocking my fulfillment and success and happiness, but on top of that, this is based off of coaching hundreds of people in their 20s to help them have some self-insight into what was holding them back. So let's jump in and I want to share these 21 habits. What's up guys? Alex Heim, author of the book Master the Day. Now if you are interested in being more successful and kind of plowing forward in your life, check out the free goal-setting worksheet in the description. It's going to help you plan out how to have your best year ever and the exact rituals and goals to help you do that. You'll also get an email every three days on goal-setting advice that you can use right away. So check it out right there in the description. Rule number one, to live an uncommon life, do what most people are unwilling to do. By definition, if you do what every guy does in the bar to try to get a girl, you're not going to get a girl. If you do what every other person does to try to get a raise at their work, you're not going to get a raise. To become the uncommon, do what very few are willing to do. Number two is produce instead of consume. The reason I've gotten to where I am now is because all day when most people consume the news, the media, YouTube, blogs, podcasts, I produce media. Spend your day producing works, producing creative things, producing something new in the world rather than consuming. Number three, be faith and excitement driven, not fear driven in life. Most of us are driven by fear. We get married not because it's the right person, but because it's the right time and we're afraid. We get this job because the fear of not being able to pay our rent rather than the love of I love this field so much. Be driven by excitement and love, not by fear. Number four, the perfect time is right now. Remember you said you were going to start learning salsa lessons? Remember you said you were going to work on that introverted trait of not being so comfortable meeting people in public areas? Remember you said you were going to get fit or start the business or write the book? Well guess what? The perfect time is right now. Rule number five is to do what you love with an asterisk on that. When you talk to many, many highly successful people, you will not hear that they do what they love. But you talk to many, many, many other successful people, you will hear they do what they love. The difference is you always want to show up for the 10 hour a day job you will have even if you don't like it for the next 60 years. You've got to show up to work somewhere. It might as well be doing what you at least enjoy because then you can focus on being really, really successful. Rule number six or habit number six, but work your ass off too. There's a lot of people I know that do what they love but they are lying to themselves because they are not doing the work required to be successful at what they love. It doesn't mean if you do what you love you're never going to work. You're still going to freaking work. It's just going to be a lot easier to be successful because you'll put in the time required to actually be great. Rule seven, outlast everyone else. For me building my business, it was very unsexy and uneventful. It took three years to quit my day job to even make a low income to replace it. And many people were like, oh, after six months, when are you going to quit your little cheesy blog? When are you going to stop shooting videos on the internet? Well, five years later now, I'm the one who's laughing and smiling and it's just begun. I can't imagine 10 years from now. Sometimes all you have to do is outlast everyone else. Rule eight is to be the exception. This goes with rule one. If you want the life that only 5% of humanity has, you have to live like them in terms of their habits. So if you want to be the exception in terms of your financial life, what are your friends doing that is giving them average results? How can you save or earn more money in terms of habits they're not doing? If you want an exceptional relationship or marriage, look at the habits of the average or bad marriages or relationships and do the opposite. Study in terms of practical habits and philosophies. What does the average person do? What does the exception do? Rule nine is let your work speak for itself. Early in my business career where I didn't have any success to show, I was always eager for my ego to get validated to say, oh, look what I had done, like this little snotty little type A kid that wanted to get validation from the world. But if you can be so intensely focused on your life improvement and your mission that it doesn't matter if it takes five years for a world to see what you've done or 10 or 20 years, that's great because you don't have to prove anything and you'll put your head down and do the damn work to become the best. And when you have that life that everyone envies, you won't have to open your damn mouth. Rule 10, don't try to impress anyone else other than your own soul. Any goal you try to achieve for anything other than your own soul, you will regret because you're doing it to compensate emotionally for some other core need you have not met in childhood or adulthood. Do not do anything to improve mommy or daddy. Guess what? No matter how much you love them, they're going to be dead one day. Don't do it to improve friends, family, spouse, anything. Do it for yourself. Rule 11, review your goals every single day. Sometimes the simplest things are the things that work the best. And I know for a fact that most of humanity does not have a little piece of paper with the goals they're currently working on and the game plan to get there. If you just do that, you're already ahead of 99% of people. Rule 12, when the wolves come run against the hermit. You know, most people when adversity comes, when the wolves come and they attack the flock of sheep, all the sheep run. But the sheep dogs, they run towards the danger. The sheep dogs run to protect the herd. So when the wolves come, when adversity comes in your life, look at how other people crumble and that's the time you have to decide to be brave and make the hard decision. Whether it is taking the extra job, whether it is getting up earlier and feeling cranky, but you have to do it to live a better life, whatever it is, when adversity comes, while the sheep run, you need to be that sheep dog that runs towards the wolves, towards the danger, towards the adversity. Rule 13 is to follow your gut and also follow logic. I'm a big believer in a career with Freud who said that in the small matters of life, follow logic. But in the big matters, like in the choice of a career or calling and the choice of a life mate or partner, choose following your gut. It doesn't mean that you ignore your logic in these things in life. It means your intuition should have a recognition. I really do feel like this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, this career. I really feel like this person, this is it. I just feel it. There's no cold feet. Rule 14, don't push work, love, or friendship that isn't already working. Along the lines of following your gut, if you're with friends and you always have to do something for it to work. If you're in a career and it's just like this never-ending push, if you're dating someone and it's just like the pieces just don't fit, don't push it, move on. Rule 15, if you think about success and growth every day, that's what you'll get. I was listening to this interview that was based around Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world at the time or maybe the richest. And he said that if we think about what we want, think about the difference here. I have employees that work for me that say they would, they just want to make a living. They just want to get their days worth, their money's worth. So every day their affirmation is that I just want to make a living. So where do they get paid? The bare minimum to live. But if they said I want to make this much money to live my awesome life, I want to increase my income every year, that's also what happens. So if you focus on just making enough versus I want to increase every single year. Those two things will both happen. Rule 16 is to recognize the signs of overwork. The signs of overwork typically are mood changes and personality changes and then sleep changes. So when I noticed in my entrepreneurial journey that I was becoming someone who was a little bit more serious and snippy and irritable and harder, it would felt harder to feel emotions. That was a red flag that I had been overworking for way too long. I've been ignoring how my internal insights felt and I had to pull back. And I was having sleep problems. Pay attention to those two things cause those are your canaries and the coal mine. Rule 17 is to make sure to take regular time off to disconnect from work and allow new intuitions and hunches to come to you. Like a lot of other people I found that my best ideas for how to improve my life come when I'm not in my life. When I'm on a beach in Thailand with my girlfriend and I'm reading a book on how to just think about the things that I want to build in my life. There's that space, we're having fun, I'm getting a lot of sleep, new ideas come and that is the impetus for improving my life. Rule 18 is to follow a simple set of virtues. John Templeton was a billionaire investor but the thing I admire the most about him was the fact that he had long marriages, he conducted himself well in life, was a religious ethical man, was someone who tithed and gave generously financially and someone who just was not swayed by materialism despite that incredible wealth and despite being around people that flaunted their wealth. So have your own virtues and stick by them because that will make you a rare individual. Rule 19 is hang around people who are growth oriented. At the end of the day, if you hang around people who are just achievers, you'll probably become an achiever but the other spots of your life may suffer. What you want is to hang around people who are oriented around growth. They want to get better. There's nothing wrong with those friends that want to hang out and drink beer and play World of Warcraft or watch the sports game but the problem is every year they're the same person and you want to be a new person every year that's gotten better. Rule 20 and if you don't know anyone who's growth oriented, start your own wolf pack. In my mid-20s I started a weekly mastermind call with four or five friends who are both growth oriented and business owners and every single week we talk for an hour on what the goals were working on, what struggles come up and how we can improve this following week. And I've done that call every week for over five years and sometimes on the weeks where I feel like shit that is the only thing that makes a difference between quitting and not quitting. Rule 21 is that you are the most successful person that has ever lived but if you don't believe it, you'll never try. At the end of the day, a lot of us don't go after that thing we feel like is our calling in life because of fear. All kinds of different fears but ultimately it's fear and every successful person, every fulfilled person, every person that's fulfilling their potential in life that you admire was once in the same boat as you are afraid to do that thing for whatever reason, whatever story they told themselves. But you already are the chosen one. The path is there for you. You have to follow your intuition and you have to have the courage to follow it because you may not be able to explain that to other people but following that intuitive gut hunch and being brave is what will make the difference between you becoming the kind of person you can become but you can't listen to fear. So if you don't believe that there is some mission there for you you've been given, you'll never try. You'll stay at your regular nine to five and play it safe, get the good job with the 401k and the safe marriage and the white picket fence. If that's what you want, great. But follow your gut, have the courage to go after that thing you feel like is the most exciting in your life, is your purpose, is your destiny, follow that. Those are my 21 rules that I wish I knew in my 20s. And again, click the first link in the description for a free goal setting worksheet to plan out having an awesome year. You're also gonna get a weekly email on how to use goal setting to radically change your life. So check it out the first link in the description and then my most recent video there and the related one right there.