Your ambition won't make you successful.

If you’ve ever felt motivated, you’ll know the story.



THIS IS IT.

I’M ONTO A WINNER.

2015 IS MY YEAR.



I AM GOING TO WRITE 100 EMAILS RIGHT AFTER I SCROLL THROUGH FACEBOOK ONE MORE TIME. Damn it, it’s bedtime.



My doctrine for the next 3 minutes of your time: Your ambition and enthusiasm will not make you. What WILL make you, are your habits. What do you do, every single (swear word for emphasis) day?



Who cares how ambitious you are if you don’t do anything about it. Why do you think employers look for real experience and skip over your personal description of how you are a ‘highly ambitious XYZ student’?



A man’s life is a product of the activities that he most often repeats. Essentially, you become what your habits dictate. So if your habits aren’t driving value for your life’s purpose, then you’re doomed.



Sorry. But there is hope!

There’s a guy called Charles Duhigg who writes about this in his book ‘The Power of Habit’ I listened to this e-book on an app called ‘Blinkist’ (check it out if you want to get into reading) (it’s good for when you’re jogging) (really).



Duhigg says that it’s possible to train yourself to change your habits…



‘All habits compromise a cue-routine-reward loop, and the easiest way to change this is to substitute the routine for something else while keeping the cue and reward the same.’

The key to experiencing the same reward is believing in the change you make. Try swapping facebook for answering emails, and embrace the feeling of reward you get from sorting things out.

If that’s too big a change, how about starting with smaller habits. Such as making your bed, putting clothes away as you take them off, or reading 20 minutes before bed. Small changes snowball into bigger ones, just like small bad habits can cause serious harm.



Here’s the kicker: you can change your life and start chasing your ambition right now. Not wanting to get too philosophical, but we can only live in the now. The past and the future aren’t important because nothing ever occurs in them; things only happen in a continuous stream of present moments (just got too philosophical… blame Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher who teaches ‘the power of now’).



For ambitious people, we need to think carefully about our actions. Is what I’m doing improving me or taking me towards my goal, and am I going to do anything about it NOW?



So we’ve come full circle. Whilst your ambition will never single-handedly make you – it might make you think about your actions, which could make you change them. Because if you can change your habits, you can change your life.



But you must do it now. Most people won’t. That’s precisely what makes high-flying people remarkable. They are able to implement change not here, not there, but now.





Be remarkable.