10 Keys to a Successful Life - John Maxwell

John Maxwell is one author whom I really like. He does make leadership simple and gives solid advice on major life themes like growth as well. His latest book Leadershift was good. I do listen to his podcast [The John Maxwell Leadership Podcast]. The latest episode was How to Start Successfully and in that he gives 10 invaluable tips on total success. Here they are with my take on each.
Know yourself
Know thyself is the oldest advice. All of us need to take the time to understand what our strengths and weakness are. We should understand what our unique mission is. We should decide what we want out of life and how we are going to achieve it. We should set personal goals for ourselves. Yes, all this takes time, but success requires a thorough understanding of yourself and it does take time.
Settle yourself
This is all about giving importance to your family. When your family life is settled you feel great about yourself. Every area of your life improves when you have a peaceful and stable family life.
Focus on your priorities
There are many things that vie for our attention daily. We must choose between what is important to us and what is trivial. So, focusing on our top priorities can help us achieve more and create less anxiety.
Determine your life philosophy
As they say you can live life any way you want but you can live it only once. All of us should determine what we want our lives to stand for. Writing your own eulogy is a good step in this direction. Get to know what you truly want your life to stand for. Again having a strong personal mission statement can help in determining your life philosophy.
Get physically fit
Everyone’s health situation is different. Of course, there are specific health conditions which require special attention. However, this portion of the article is barring any health conditions we can make the most of what we have. Unless you are full of energy it is very difficult for you to create a world class life. To accomplish everything, you want in life being in excellent health enables you to have higher energy to accomplish more. First requirement for health is to get adequate sleep. Sleep researchers have confirmed that everyone requires at least 7-8 hours of sleep daily. Keep this in mind and design your work schedule to ensure you get this requirement of sleep. Second you need to have a consistent exercise program to stay energetic. There are so many health benefits from exercise that we owe it to ourselves to stay fit. Third we need to be careful about our diet and eat lots of vegetables and fruits. None of these steps are rocket science but simple things are hard to implement. Of course, any health program should be undertaken with the help of your doctor.
Learn your trade
Make the time to learn everything about the field you are in. Of course, the abundance of information available to all of us is mind boggling. Identify the experts in your field, connect with them, read their blogs, read their books, document what you learn and share what you learn.
Pay the price
Whatever we want to achieve in life requires a price to be paid. We need to determine what the price is and be prepared to pay it in advance to reap the rewards later. Sometimes I have heard people say you can pay the price now and play later or you can play now and pay the price of failure later. That is indeed true.   
Focus on future
We can choose where we put our focus in life. We can either look back or we can look forward with hope. Our best is yet to come and all the moments before us are nothing compared to the moments in front of us. Future focus is a key hall mark of all top leaders.
Develop solid relationships
Relationships are where the rubber meets the road. Everything in life comes down to the relationships we develop throughout our lives.
Find purpose of your life
The key is the purpose of your life is unique to you and only you can decide what it is. With the advent of social media sometimes we can get pulled by the public success of someone else. However, that person is not us and only we can decide what the purpose of our lives is. Again, writing in a journal to explore your purpose will be a worthwhile investment of your valuable time.
There you have it the 10 keys to achieve overall success in your life. Thanks for reading this post.
The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my organization.

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