Thread by @jamesduffx

The formula for being successful at anything in life is actually pretty simple (thread):

1. Find someone who has the outcome you want.
2. Try to figure out what they did to get there (both their actions and their mindsets).
3. Model it (take the same actions; adopt the same mindsets).
4. If it hasn't worked yet, start back at step 1 and tweak the process.

Mindsets are super important to note here, because having bad mindsets will sabotage you at steps 3 and 4.

If you focus on your doubts about whether achieving your goal is possible, you'll either not give it your all and reduce your odds of succeeding (aiming to fail), or give up before trying enough things, using a couple failures as validation that it wasn't possible after all.

Your early attempts at something will likely fail (and that's ok). Your initial understanding of which factors to model may be wrong, or that one success may be an anomoly — which is why it's important to read a lot and learn the underlying fundamentals common to most successes.

But since most people don't realize that most efforts at anything meaningful will be failures (starting your own business, trying a new marketing funnel, hiring your first employees, dating and having a happy relationship, getting in good shape), they give up way to early.

Success requires relentlessly repeating the loop. For this reason, most successful people trend on the side of being hopeless optimists, whereas most people whose default habit is pessimism tend to have less measurable success — they simply won't persist long enough to succeed.

The good news is this is actually completely within your control. You can make it a conscious habit to catch yourself when you're starting to have a pessimistic thought, and quickly reframe it to tell yourself a different story that will cause you to endlessly take right action.

It doesn't even matter that the story is completely accurate to reality; what's important is that it excites you and results in you continuing to take the steps you need to keep taking in order to succeed.

This is what is sometimes described as a "reality distortion field."

I think one of the most beautiful aspects of humanity is our ability to have an indomitable will even in the face of seemingly hopeless impossibility.

But not everyone operates this way by default. If you don't, you have to consciously install that subroutine into your brain.

This is all part of the success loop above. It's learning and modeling not only successful people's actions, but also their mindsets.

Read and learn how successful people think, their mental subroutines and reality filters, and consciously adopt the ones that will benefit you.

I'm reminded of the badass story of Mel Fisher. He and his crew searched (seemingly hopelessly) for 17 years looking for an undersea buried treasure.

They eventually found it — over $400 million worth of silver and gold bullion.

One of his crew was asked why he stayed on board so long. He explained that Mel's enthusiasm was contagious.

Every morning he would get the crew pumped up, saying "Today's the day!" And at the end of each unsuccessful day, relentlessly enthusiastic, "Tomorrow's the day!"

Luckily, most of our goals are quite a bit more attainable than Mel Fisher's, and won't take nearly as many years to achieve, because we have access to tons of examples of successful people whose actions we can model.

Hundreds of people have already been successful in business, relationships, and fitness, and written books about it — condensing a lifetime of knowledge into something you can consume in under 5 hours.

Read and try enough of these ideas, and success is inevitable.

But how many of us make it a habit to install the same contagiously optimistic mental operating system as Mel Fisher?

That's the one that's going to keep you going in repeating the loop long enough for you to win.

TL;DR:

1. Success is not mysterious. Study successful people; copy their process.
2. Your first dozen efforts will likely fail. That's ok. Keep learning and keep trying. One will eventually work.
3. Make it a habit to be relentlessly optimistic. It's the ultimate success hack.