There’s a lot on the internet about the habits of successful people. The more common ones are things like waking up early, meditating, taking cold showers, fasting, doing yoga or stretching, journaling and so on. Often they’re sold as magic pills in the pursuit of clicks and views. So many people are told do these things every day to be successful. And they are disappointed when they “don’t work” they quit.
I actually practice a lot of these habits on a regular basis. Most days I do wake up before 6am, take cold showers, stretch, yoga, exercise, meditate, journal, etc. I know none of these things make me succeed in anything outside the skills themselves. But there’s a reason they are so common among successful people: they are all ways to cope with the high amount of stress that complex lives and lifestyles demand. You don’t do these things to start that business. You end up doing these things because you’re running a business. In other words, these habits are often a consequence of success, not the cause of it.
The lives of top performers is always complicated, except perhaps in the field of Buddhism. Nothing about being at the top of something is easy. It may not be difficult in the way that construction work is difficult, but it is always demanding especially on the mind. And that’s what these popular habits help you manage. You start meditating when you realize you have so much work, you need to learn how to focus. You commit to the cold showers because it will wake you up fast and add 30 minutes to your morning. You begin exercising every day to combat the pain and degradation of the body that comes with daily office work, travel and stress. You wake up at 5:30am to fit all of it in.
I don’t mean to say that habits are useless unless you are successful. I think they can be useful to everybody depending on their personal circumstances. I’m passionate about my daily/weekly practices and a big proponent habit-building in general. They make significant contributions to my happiness, well-being and performance. But not everything is for everyone, and zero of my habits are responsible for any of my successes. It’s the other way around. The stress of my successes is responsible for my habits.
You stick with all of them because the discipline and structure they add to your life becomes necessary for managing yourself day-to-day. I can feel myself degrade whenever I don’t keep up my core habits for more than a couple of days, and the only way to remain balanced is to maintain discipline. And the thing is: all of these practices are difficult to maintain, by design. So if you don’t have an external driver to maintain them, it will be hard to keep up. My least favorite thing is waking up early in the morning. But I know that if I sleep in, I won’t have enough time to do my yoga, stretching and mobility routine in the morning. And if I don’t do that I know my body will be stiff and uncomfortable during the day, which will make it hard for me to relax. And if I’m not relaxed, it will take me longer to get through my to-do list, which means I’ll have to stay in the office until later, which means I’ll have to rush my training in the afternoon and then I won’t have any personal time in the evening – which will burn me out over time and get in the way of future success. So I just get up when the alarm rings and take a cold shower – problem solved.