Why Successful People Are Hard to Copy
Challenges and Solutions to Emulating Success
I’ve tried a lot to copy my successful friend’s morning routines. Internet personalities' productivity techniques and the way they plan their day and sleep. But none of that worked for me.
While doing my research, I realized that I’m not the only one facing this problem; the majority of people who want to be successful search for the habits of successful people in their morning and evening routines. How their mindset works and try to implement it in their lives, but they end up in the same position as where they started.
I got curious about what it is that makes it so hard to copy successful people. I started learning about behaviors, how the mind works, neuroscience, and the difference between a successful and unsuccessful person’s mindset. Just to get an idea of what they have different from their material success or fame.
After reading a lot of books, watching so many self-improvement videos, and consuming hundreds of podcasts and courses over 5 years, I have found out how to successfully copy anyone.
I’m going to share three areas (art, lifestyle, and mindset). You can learn the one you want to copy from any person you like.
1. Art (Skill)
If you are into writing, then you would want to write like the famous writer you got inspired by.
You read loads of their content. Purchase the courses they are selling. Subscribe to their newsletter.
But when you write an article yourself, you still suck at it.
You are nowhere near that person.
Why is it so?
That is because learning does not equal performance. You can’t expect yourself to become the best writer in the world by watching all the courses on writing.
Learning is good to a point, but if you are not taking action, then you are going to suck at it.
The more you learn without taking action, the more you will be overwhelmed.
The resistance between thinking about doing something and actually doing something will increase.
The solution to becoming like the person you are inspired by is to put in the effort.
You can replace writing with any skill or art you want to copy from any successful person.
The key to achieving true expertise in any skill is simply a matter of practicing, albeit in the correct way, for at least 10,000 hours. — Gladwell
Research says that to be good at any skill, you will have to put 10,000 hours of practice into it.
The people who are at the top of their art have put 10,000 hours of practice into it, which is why they are so good at what they do.
You can’t expect to copy their model and start producing the same art. You’ll have to put in the effort.
Your art will suck at first, but that is what will help you improve and become better at it.
In order to be great, you’ll have to be willing to suck at it from the start.
Reason: It is hard to copy the art of anyone successful because they have put in 10,000 hours of practice.
Solution: You can put the same amount of effort into any art and become the best at it.
2. Lifestyle (Habits)
When we see our friends or any successful person who is very productive and wakes up early without any effort, we get motivated to become like them, so we set an alarm to wake up early tomorrow.
We delete all the social media apps, throw away all the snacks we have, and cancel the Netflix subscription. But after a few days, we are back in the same position as when we started.
We start waking up late again. We watch all the YouTube videos we missed during this fasting period and start binge-watching the latest shows again on Netflix.
What makes it hard for us to copy any person who is very disciplined in their life, even after putting in 100% effort? We aren’t able to become like them.
That is because we try to change everything at once. We have so many bad habits accumulated throughout 3 to 4 years, which makes our whole lifestyle miserable.
When we get the external motivation to change our habits, we try to change everything at once. But our brains and bodies don’t work like that.
The brain doesn’t have a switch button that you can press to become a totally different person.
There are some rules that our body and brain adapt to change. That is changing one habit at a time; you need to repeat one behavior for a minimum of 21 days to change the pathways in your brain to make that behavior automatic.
It takes so much energy to make decisions and do things consciously, To save energy, the brain makes 95% of the behaviours habitual and reflexive, so you don’t have to put in the effort each time doing it.
That is why the brain needs to learn things one at a time.
Reason: Successful people haven’t built all their positive habits in a day or month; they have accumulated all their positive habits over the years.
Solution: In order to become like them, you’ll have to put in almost the same time in order to accumulate those habits.
This is the basic rule.
1 habit = a minimum of 21 to 30 days.
12 Habits = 12 Months
If you want to copy 12 habits, you’ll have to put 1 month on each habit. In 12 months, you’ll accumulate all of the habits that the person you want to copy has in their life.
You fail to copy their lifestyle because you want to get the results of 12 months of effort by putting effort in for a few days.
3. Mindset
You would see most successful people have an optimistic mindset; they believe they can make money as much as they want, and they believe in their ideas even in adversity and setbacks.
But when we are in a bad situation, we can’t stop thinking about all the negative things that are happening or are going to happen.
We try to copy successful people’s mindsets by trying to become optimistic, believing everything is possible, and believing our idea is going to succeed. The financial failures are going to turn into financial success.
But when we see that even after applying the mindset of successful people, we are still failing to succeed, this makes us more pessimistic than we were before.
In order to have an unshakeable mindset, you’ll have to make sure that your lifestyle is working for you, not against you. Like waking up on time, putting in deep work, and all the other habits we discussed in the second point. Then you must put a good amount of time into your art, which we discussed in the first point.
Once you complete the prerequisites, you’ll be in a situation where you can apply the mindset of successful people.
Our mind predicts the future based on our memories. If you had a lot of failures in the past, then your mind will only be able to predict the failures in the future.
The mind is like an algorithm that produces results based on available data (memories). You can’t give your mind to the data of failures and expect to get results for success.
Successful people have a lot of memories of when they overcame the obstacles in their lives, faced major setbacks, and came out successfully.
When their minds check the previous data to predict the future, they can see all the memories of how they successfully overcame the tough situation. That is why their minds are so optimistic, even in the face of adversity.
You can’t copy someone’s mindset without having all the experiences they had.
Reason: This is the reason why you aren’t able to copy someone’s mindset because it is not just about beliefs; it is about real evidence.
Solution: To have the mindset of someone who thinks positively about the future, you’ll have to give evidence to your mind that you are capable of it.
Solve the problem you are facing in your life, and once you do, you will have the memory of successfully overcoming the tough situation.
Your mind will observe the data, and it will see that yes, you do have the memory of coming out of a bad situation, and it will project the future as positive.
Summary
Successful people are hard to copy because they have put in time and effort to attain all they have. You can become like them if you give yourself enough time and have the patience to let the compound interest work for you.
So, in a nutshell,
- In order to copy someone’s art, put in 10,000 hours of practice.
- In order to copy someone’s lifestyle, change one habit at a time.
- In order to copy someone’s mindset, create evidence of overcoming tough situations for your mind.
If you liked this story, you can follow me on Medium so you can get my life lessons to become a happier, more productive, and more wealthy person. Mindful Kamal
Thank you for reading this story.
Kamal
