5 Small Actions To Take For Huge Success

Success can mean many different things to different people. Depending on what you value or consider a priority, it can be all about career achievement, personal growth, happiness, helping others, or overcoming the challenges of life. Of course, that’s not a full list—it can vary greatly! There's no one-size-fits-all definition of success and that's what makes it so interesting.

This also means we can do a lot of different things to make sure we’re paving the way to success. And even though it may feel like this isn’t the case, especially if we define it as something big or grand, taking small actions is actually key to getting us closer to achieving whatever we’ve set out to accomplish. How? Here’s a quick list:

• The small actions we take add up over time and eventually lead to big results.
• Much like taking tiny steps, small actions build momentum. It also creates a sense of accomplishment when we finish each one of them.
• Small actions are less overwhelming and, as a result, easier to integrate into our daily routines.
• Celebrating small wins along the way can help us stay positive and motivated.

These tiny steps help us build good habits that stick around for the long haul, too! Instead of stressing about the end result, small actions allow us to stay in the present moment and enjoy the journey without losing focus of our destination. But what specific actions can you take? There are so many, .which is why in today’s list, we’ve compiled five of them so you can get started on being successful right now!

1. Why do something later if you can do it now?  

Procrastination is the enemy of success. When we put things off for later, not only are we wasting precious time, we’re also pushing everything else that needs doing forward, further and further away from being completed. It creates a domino effect until we’re drowning in everything we’ve left unfinished; tasks that were easily doable in the beginning become overwhelmingly impossible to do.

The first step is to figure out what’s causing us to procrastinate so we can start to develop strategies to overcome it. Maybe you need to break a big project down into smaller, more manageable tasks, or find ways to make the work more enjoyable or rewarding. Maybe you need an accountability buddy to keep you on track or need to remove distractions from your environment. Or maybe you’re stressed and need to address certain issues that are impacting your mental health. Whatever it is, taking the time to address the cause of your procrastination can help us develop the habits and mindset needed to achieve success.

Not sure how to begin? We’ve got a post on how to stop procrastinating here to give yourself a head start!

2. Eat healthy, hydrate, and exercise! 

This goes without saying and yet, it doesn’t seem to be a priority for a lot of people. What’s the use of listing down goals and setting up systems if we’re doing things that jeopardize our health? If we ever want to reach our destination and accomplish what we’ve set out to do, we have to live long enough—and well enough—to get there.

Done are the days of overworking ourselves to death just to reach our goals as well: now it’s all about work-life balance and self-care. Success and good health go hand in hand because it allows us to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Imagine finally achieving everything .you’ve worked so hard for only to be in a state, at the end of the road, where you can’t even enjoy your success. The entire journey would have been in vain and we don't want that.

3. Maintain a growth mindset.

Imagine you're a new gardener just starting to tend your own garden. You know that in order for it to thrive, you’ll have to give the plants in it the right nutrients and ensure they get the right amount of water and sunlight. The thing is, not all plants’ needs are the same: some grow more slowly than others or have very specific needs, so your approach to each one will be different. Since this is the case, it will take time and patience to see the full results of your hard work.

With a growth mindset, you approach your own development and learning in the same way. When you’re faced with obstacles or setbacks, instead of giving up, what you do instead is change your approach and come up with new strategies to help yourself move forward. You arm yourself with the right tools, look for the most helpful resources, so that you’re constantly moving forward. And this is because you know that with consistent effort and care, you can become successful.

If we want to cultivate a mindset like this, we have to stop looking at success as something linear. Things can happen along the way as we work towards our goals and dreams and the key is to be flexible and adaptable by viewing the roadblocks to our success for what they are: nothing more but temporary hurdles that we can overcome.

4. Learn to say no to distractions.

Nothing can keep us from taking action more than losing focus—and it’s all thanks to distractions. It can make us lose our way, veer off track, until we’re no longer doing what we said we’d do.

Unfortunately, the modern world is brimming with distractions and, because it’s something we can’t avoid, it’s up to us to develop the self discipline needed to say no to the things that won’t help us achieve our goals.

There are many ways we can reclaim our focus and, to start, here are five things you can do. Having better time management skills can also be beneficial since it can help you weed out distractions and figure out what your priorities are. You can also check out this post for specific methods and practices you can try.

5. Hold yourself accountable. 

Whenever something doesn’t go your way, who do you blame? If a plan goes sideways, is the first thing you do find fault in everything else: people, circumstances, luck, or even fate? The answers to these questions are important because they give us an idea of what kind of mindset to avoid—one where we have no accountability over the things that happen to us.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it doesn’t give us room for action. How can it when nothing is ever our fault? Instead of taking responsibility, we play the blame game. But pointing your finger elsewhere means you expect somebody else to take action or fix things on your behalf. It’s the equivalent of letting the world and everyone living in it dictate what happens to you. If you’re a passive participant in your own life, then no wonder success seems out of reach.

However, by holding ourselves accountable, we have a chance to learn and grow because we’re making a conscious decision to look inwards. This gives us the ability to reflect on our actions and figure out what to improve, and change, so we can become better. Need help with accountability? Check out this post for a few to-do's.

Here’s to success—one small step at a time!

At the end of the day, success is all about taking action in general. In order to accomplish our goals and reach our dreams, it’s vital that we constantly strive to become our best self. By starting with these small actions, we lay the important groundwork needed so that we can eventually take bigger, more impactful steps to succeed.

What other small actions, outside of this list, have helped you become successful? Share it with us in the comments below.