Sometimes it’s the small things. Sometimes all you need are simple changes in your daily life to get you on the right track. To get the right mindset. Successful people often have a few things in common: Their daily habits.

If you want to learn what kind of habits these highly successful people have and why they are so important for your career, read on. Some of them will surely surprise you.

Success Bringing Habits

The following habits might seem to be very simple. However, they can have a huge impact on your life. so don’t underestimate them.

1. Keep a Positive Attitude

Do you know any super successful entrepreneur or business owner who is constantly depressed, grumpy and has self-doubts? I bet there are not too many.

If you want to be successful, you will fail often. No doubt about it. If you don’t keep a positive mindset, there is no way you will stick to it and make it.

The founder of Addicted2Success, Joel Brown, also confirms this and adds, that everyone should make daily positive self-talks to one of their priorities if you want to change your attitude for the better.

2. Stick To The Right People

Negative people are toxic and will drag you down on the long run.

If you want to keep a positive attitude, you have got to surround yourself with positive people. Look for people who are energetic and passionate about their life and business. Spend time with the motivated and positive ones.

How to find them? Check out coworking spaces or local events. The website Meetup is a great way to find local groups of people who have the same interests, private or business ones. You can also look for like-minded people in certain Facebook groups or forums, for example if you are interested in drop shipping or blogging.

Spend time with people who lift you up.

3. Practice Gratitude

Maybe you have noticed the trend in Instagram stories, too: People sharing the things that they are grateful for. This can be family, friends, physical things, health, education, or whatever comes to their minds.

The reason why this is so popular is because this simple habit has a huge impact on your mindset. It’s improve your happiness and gives you energy to strive for more.

The CEO of Gifts for Good, Laura Hertz, also practices gratitude every day and explains:

“First thing when I wake up, I write down three things I have to be grateful for, three things that would make that day great, and one daily affirmation.”

She says this helps her reflecting who she want to become.

4. Prioritize Networking

According to Tom Corley, the author of Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, only 16% of poor people spend at least 5 hours a month with networking. Guess what? On the contrary, 79% of all wealthy people do so. Coincidence?

It’s important to exchange ideas with like-minded people, learn from them and create synergies. The more connections you have with other people in your industry, the better. You never know what can develop from there.

5. No More Time Wasting

Be true to yourself: How many minutes (or even hours) do you spend every day checking your Facebook newsfeed? Or scrolling through Instagram? Or watching Netflix?

You could install apps like RescueTime to track how much time your spend on what applications both on your phone and on your computer. I promise you, you will be surprised how much time your really waste on things like that.

It’s important to become aware of how you spend your time; Find out what is useful and what doesn’t help you in achieving your goals at all. Eliminate those time wasters and focus on the important things.

6. Take Action

The best idea is absolutely useless, if you don’t implement it.

I know you want to plan everything in detail, be prepared and wait for the right moment. But what if that moment never comes? Stop thinking and start doing!

Nobody else is going to do the first step for you. According to author James Clear highly successful people often act even before they feel ready. So don’t spend your life waiting and finally become a doer.

7. Stop Multitasking

Although you should finally take action, you shouldn’t try to do it all at once. This is not going to work.  You will get more done if you do it step-by-step.

This is also what Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek recommends. He agrees that multitasking harms your productivity and suggests to set a maximum of 2 goals per day. This ensures that you can really achieve your goals.

8. Organize You Tasks

Author Laura Vanderkam says that weekends are a kind of secret weapon of successful people. Why? They use it to organize the upcoming week.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is practicing this habit, too. He uses every Sunday to prepare his tasks for the following seven days.

And the before mentioned Joel Brown even sits down every day before going to sleep and check his calendar. This prepares him for the following day and helps him to stay organized and productive.

9. Read Often

“Nothing will help you as much as reading,” says billionaire J.K. Rowling. She read anything she could get when she was a little girl and that helped her a lot with her success.

But reading is not only important for authors. Business magnet Warren Buffet spends up to 80% of his day reading and learning about industry-related topics. He emphasized a few times now, how important reading was for his career.

This will help you get a better understanding of your industry. You will learn about your competitors, trends, potential difficulties or improvement. Even reading fiction can be beneficial. It will help you being more creative and helps your brain to relax after a day full of work.

10. Healthy Food

A healthy body is one of the basic requirements you need to have if you want create a winning mindset. Fuel your body with the right things to keep your metabolism up and your brain energized and focused.

There is scientific proof that a healthy diet can improve your success in life, especially your academic success. Many processed foods, refined sugar, alcohol, and saturated fats are well known to slow your body, and eventually your mind, down.

In order to prevent a weak and tired mind and soul, make sure to nourish your body with lots of healthy things, like fresh produce, legumes, whole-grain foods and plenty of water.

11. Meditation

Another great way to strengthen your mind is to meditate. Media star Oprah loves meditation and confirms she sits in stillness twice a days for about 20 minutes each time.

Only a few minutes a day can improve your mental well-being a lot. It helps your brain to get a break from your busy day. You can better deal with anxieties and it will improve your concentration.

For those of you who are new to meditation, you can use apps like Headspace or Stop, Breathe & Think to guide you through the process.

12. Exercise

In addition to healthy foods and meditation, exercise is a great way to energize. According to a Harvard study a regular and heart-pumping exercise can improve your learning ability and your memory. You will find it easier to focus and your level of happiness also increases due to the dopamine release. This will, in turn, motivate you on your way to hang in there even in rough times.

Take Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, as an example. He gets up at 5 am every morning to workout, usually he goes for a bicycle ride. He even says that this regular exercise has doubled his productivity.

Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, also exercises regularly. Every day she plays tennis for one hour to keep her body and mind fit.

13. Good Sleep

As simple as it sounds, but a good night’s sleep is so important. Your brain needs to rest to recharge for the next day. A lack of sleep can result in a bad temper, disability to concentrate and decreased memory.

Albert Einstein slept about 10 hours every night. While this might seem a bit too long, it worked well for him. Tom Corley’s research showed that 89% of the questioned self-made millionaires sleep 7-8 hours a night.

In case you struggle with falling asleep or sleeping through, lifestyle adjustments can often help. For example, you could start to meditate, stop watching TV or using any type of electronics before you go to bed or don’t eat heavy meals late at night.

You could also go and see a doctor to get your blood tested. Maye you are lacking any minerals or have a hormone imbalance which causes sleeping disorder. Work on this and make enough to for sleep!

14. Getting Up Early

I am not an early bird at all. Never been. But I have to admit that every time I drag myself out of bed early, I get so much more done than on the days I get up at 8 or 9 am.

Of course, you could get up early and start working straight away. If you are like me and your brain just can’t do any intense business related tasks to early, use the time otherwise.

You could exercise, meditate, do yoga, prepare your food for the day, read industry news, or do dimple social media tasks. Once you have that out of the way, you have the rest of the day to fully concentrate on your work.

Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Disney’s CEO Robert Iger are only two examples of successful people who love getting up early. According to Tom Corley research about 50% of the questioned millionaires get up at least 3 hours before they actually start to work. TTHREE HOURS!

15. Take Care of Physical Appearance

When you work from home it’s easy to neglect your appearance. Skip the shower in the morning, stay in your pajamas all day long, no need to do your hair and your teeth can be brushed later. Sounds familiar?

While this behavior might be very comfortable, your brain will switch to a “weekend-mode”. You will find it harder to concentrate and to approach business tasks with the necessary professionalism. No need to mention that this will have an impact on the outcome of your work and thus, your potential future success.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk was once asked which daily habit has the biggest impact on his life. His answer? “Showering”.

16. Reflect Your Work

Another idea what you could do early in the morning before starting your actual work is to reflect. This is also a very popular daily habit of highly successful people. They sit down and think about certain aspects of their life, like their health, career or relationships.

This will not only relax your body and brain und thus reduce stress, but it will also help you to spot areas in your life that you can be grateful for and areas that you could improve.

You could either take a few minutes every day or once a week to reflect in your mind or you could write your thoughts downs. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and Napoleon Bonaparte both loved keeping a journal with their thoughts, accomplishments and reflections.

Bill Gates is also a big fan of self-reflections, too, and states: “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

17. Control Your Money

I know it sounds odd, but many highly successful people have the habit of being economical. They don’t overspend and keep an eye on their incomes and expenses. Especially, when you are at the beginning this is absolutely necessary to keep your finances under control on the long run.

Best-selling author Shama Hyder checks her bank accounts every week. This helps her know what is coming in and going out.

Brittany Castro of Financially Wise Women agrees about the importance of keeping track of your financial situation: “You’re reviewing your spending and maybe your budget. It just brings this whole new level of awareness.” She also advises to set weekly dates for this task.

Want To Learn More?

In case you want to learn more about the topic “Habits” and need a few more ideas what habits you should start, check out the following books:

Change Your Habits, Change Your Life by Tom Corley. Self-made millionaires answer questions about their daily habits and show what you should do to become successful in life.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. An absolute classic that shows the seven most important habits you need to have to improve your effectiveness.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Learn why we create certain habits in the first place and find out how you can trick your brain to break bad habits and replace them by good ones.

Small Things Matter

As you can see, these daily habits of highly successful people are fairly easy to apply. They are simple practices that everyone can implement in their daily life. However, they can have a huge impact on your mindset and thus, help you to become the successful person you’ve always wanted to be.

Of course, you don’t have to implement them all at once. Go step by step and slowly integrate them into your lifestyle. Find out what works best for you and which habit has the biggest impact on your life.