Hard Work Pays Off – Period

Hard work pays off

No, no, no…Let me rephrase that – Hard work always pays off!

If you don’t believe me, for whatever strange reason…

Look at all high achievers in any field and this habit will jump at you right away.

One of the things that all have in common is an insane work ethic!

They work like maniacs, even when they don’t feel like it.

And they get rewarded Big time. Hard work pays off period!

“Good things happen to those who hustle.”

Now you may be feeling superior to me and other mere mortals and think that you can succeed without work.

You maybe heard about the Law of Attraction, you maybe even saw the movie The Secret…

And You have read all kinds of books that talk about The Law of Attraction and The Law of Vibration and how you can alter your circumstances with your thoughts.

If that’s the case, you’re probably thinking now that you can attract the things you desire into your life without work.

In my own experience and from the experiences and life examples of so many people(and most of them are huge achievers)…

Here’s how things are:

You can keep the image of the thing you desire NON-STOP in your mind.

Also, you can dream about it, visualize it, use a ton of affirmations, incantations and other techniques that can attract it to you.

And you can wake up and go to sleep thinking and feeling that you already have it, but…

Most things will come to you only after you put some skin in the game.

Only after you come forth with some sweat equity.

Even the people that were interviewed in The Secret like Bob Proctor, Joe Vitale, John Assaraf…etc say the same thing.

If you want success, you need to combine the mental and emotional stuff with Massive Action.

There’s no other way…

And here’s the punch line 🙂

This should really go without saying…

The bigger the thing you want the harder you need to sweat.

On that note…

If you are like me and many other entrepreneurs and want success BAD enough, let me give you a friendly advice:

Rid yourself of whatever cute little negative sayings about work you have floating in your brain right now.

You better squash them fast, before they kill your chance of ever succeeding.

You need to embrace work, love work…

And make it a habit of working like a dog daily to make your plans and dreams come true.

By the way…

I don’t mean to love the work you do at your 9 to 5 job.

That work is just for survival, and we are not here just to survive. You are here on this planet to thrive and enjoy life.

So, You need to have a vision, goals and plans and work hard on those plans daily.

This is the work you need to love and embrace.

Start working on your goals like there’s no tomorrow and you’re bound to get success.

Build up a reputation of being a hard worker. People need to know you for your hard work not for how cute or smart or…you are.

One more thing…

Please don’t confuse work with something else!

I have some friends that bore me to death with a lot of talk about what they will do and what amazing plans and strategies they have and how creative they are.

But I never see any action behind all that talk and all those plans and ideas.

I mean, some of them make me cry with all the good ideas they have all day long.

All they do is talk talk talk until my ears bleed.

And talking has no value man because even a 2-year-old can do it.

So please, if you’re guilty about this – stop with “the baby effect” already.

Understand that just because you’re talking about what you will do and you write down a plan of action and you get tons of ideas on how to do that…

It doesn’t mean you’re working.

Working means to stop talking and planning and start doing something about it, one step at a time…

Start that blog, write those articles, make that call, start that business or whatever you need to do – DO IT.

Or as Nike says it – JUST DO IT!

All the ideas, all the planning and all the strategies in the world means nothing. Action is everything!

So you probably wonder by now…

What the hell hard work really means anyway?

In an entrepreneurial context, working hard means expending 120%(yeah I know, that’s more than you think you’re capable)of your mental, emotional and physical energy to do the stuff you need to get done to accomplish your goals.

No matter how tedious and boring this stuff is.

Besides giving it all you got to finish the job regardless of your feelings, working hard also means to work focused for long hours daily.

Most millionaires, billionaires and top achievers in many fields say that in this day and age you need to work at least 10 hours per day to get ahead…

Some say that 13-15 hours per day is needed if you want to achieve BIG Things.

This means roughly 70 – 100 hours of work per week, each week.

If you have a 9 to 5 job, then you should work 5 – 7 hours per day after you come home from your job and 10-15 hours per day on the weekends and on your days off.

If you think this is a lot…Think again.

Some people, like Gary Vaynerchuk work 19 hours per day, every day…

This insane work ethic and his passion for what he does helped him got the success that he has.

I know, it seems crazy to work at such a pace, but when you love what you do it’s not work anymore.

The same happens when you have amazing results.

It’s hard to feel the “work” when your brain is rewarded like crazy.

So, find something you’re passionate about and start hustling.

Now,

just because I shared with you what most entrepreneurs consider hard work and Gary V’s supernatural work schedule…

Don’t make the mistake of believing I’m a workaholic that neglects anything besides working hard non-stop.

This is not the case.

I’m also not recommending such a behaviour.

Work is truly important and anyone should work focused for long hours daily on their goals.

But you should also make time in the day to take care of your body, your loved ones and other things that are important to you.

Working like a dog to reach your goals at the expense of your health, marriage…etc it’s a mistake and a recipe for a failed life. 

Be wise and make time for everything that is truly important and valuable to you.

Nevertheless…

let’s not minimize the importance of hard work.

Keep in mind that Work…in fact, hard work is required if you want to really have a happy and successful life.

“Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you.”

If you’re not working hard towards hitting your goals life will be rough

Your laziness will invite all kinds of unpleasant things and situations in your life:

• a BOSS and a lousy job.

Let’s face it.

If you’re not working for your dreams you will be hired to make someone else’s dreams a reality.

For most folks this is not fun stuff!

Be wise…

Life is way too short without throwing 70% of your waking hours to the trash.

Work hard and be your own boss. It’s a lot better.

You have freedom to do whatever you want with your time and energy.

And if you’re smart you can make way more money than a boss can throw at you in three lifetimes.

• very little money

Most people live paycheck to paycheck and the number one reason for that is they never do what is necessary to get out of that situation.

They don’t go on vacations, they don’t eat the foods they want to eat and they don’t wear the clothes they want to wear.

And of course, their favorite saying is “we can’t afford it”…

These people are stuck in a life they don’t like, full of shortages and mediocrity, just because they don’t come up with a financial goal and commit to working hard on achieving it.

Life is really simple.

If you want something, just pay the price in time, investments, hard work, sacrifices and you will get it. 

Otherwise, you will stay where you are and suffer.

Successful people endure some pain in the moment/today for long-term gains and pleasure, while most other people give into short-term pleasure all the time and experience long-term pain(for life).

• Very little options and time to enjoy life

You’re married to your JOB and I understand this, you need to pay the bills…etc

But you’re left with very little time to use it as you please.

You have no freedom, very few options, or money…

If you want to pack your bags and go on a trip you can’t. Even if you have the money, You’ll be fired.

Society lied to you. There’s no freedom, you’re just a modern slave.

I’m being a little facetious here, but seriously man…

Working most of your day in a job(that you can’t quit because of bills and obligations) you most likely don’t enjoy and being left with a lot of month at the end of the money makes for a pretty miserable existence in my humble opinion.

• Negative behaviours and thinking

When you work on your goals, you are focused and consumed by that activity and your brain will stop the negative chatter.

On the other hand if you’re always wasting time and have nothing to do, 

your mind will entertain a lot of negative thoughts that will sooner or later manifest some unwanted things in your life.

Also when people don’t work on some constructive goal they usually use their time destructively.

They engage in all kinds of behaviours that don’t help them at all…

Playing video games for hours daily, watching too much TV, watching porn… and a lot of other stuff that will continue to keep them in a mediocre life.

• Dissatisfaction and even depression

Results are the name of the game. When you have results(the money, the cars, the house, the work that you love, 

the contribution to the society, the body that you want) life is amazing and you feel like a million bucks. 

When you don’t have results you are dissatisfied and in many cases, people without results become depressed and in severe cases even suicidal.

And results come only from work, from action.

There’s no way around this.

So, why not embrace working hard on your goals? What do you have to lose if you do it?

Well, I’m not sure if you can lose something…

But let me better portray the benefits of hard work so we can change those old and nasty beliefs of yours about effort, action, work, sweat…etc once and for all.

Here’s just a few of the

Reasons why hard work pays off BIG TIME:

• You will get new skills that will make you more valuable in the marketplace

To get any kind of success you need skills.

The only way to get the skills is to roll up your sleeves and get dirty, start testing/trying/doing stuff.

How else can you learn those skills?

And with the right set of skills you can literally print as much money as you want at demand and hit your goals super fast.

• You get ahead of the competition

We are all humans. We all have the same tendency to cut corners, to find the push button systems and work as little as we can.

Shortly, we are lazy.

Our brains aren’t made for discipline and hard work.

We want to relax and have fun and go with the flow. It’s a fact.

This is a good thing, though.

Because, while your competition sits on their ass and do as little as they can get away with and still get some “success”…

You can be there committed to working 10 hours or more daily and get more stuff done than anyone else in your niche.

This way you’ll get the lion’s share, while the guys who think they’re “competing” with you, will need to be “happy” with leftovers.

• You will be your own boss

With enough effort on the right plan, you can have your own successful business and even employ people to help you make even more money.

This will give you the freedom to do whatever you want with your time and energy and have more time for the things and people you love.

• You’ll increase the chance to live longer and to have a healthier life

Working on your goals can make you happier and healthier.

It keeps your mind and body in motion…

And this activity can and in most cases will prolong your life and it will also reduce the aging process and the possibility of getting different diseases.

• You become a better person

Through work, you will hit your goals.

But to do this, you will also need to face fears and improve your thinking and behaviours and this will help you get to your next level of yourself.

Now you will be more confident and satisfied with your results.

And you will also be better equipped to deal with life and take on bigger and better challenges in the future.

• You will make a bigger contribution to the world, you may even leave a legacy

You’re not working in a vacuum.

Whatever you create and put out there will affect others.

Assuming that what you create has value/it’s positive…the more you work the more you will affect a ton of people, maybe the entire world in a positive way.

• You will become addicted to doing stuff and you will feel amazing every single day

Every time you will complete even a small task(sending 2-3 emails to clients) your brain automatically releases dopamine.

And the more and bigger the stuff you complete the more dopamine your brain will release.

So what’s the catch? Why should I be interested in this?

Well, here’s the thing…

Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter that is associated with our sense of well-being.

It regulates functions including our sensation of pleasure, pain, sleep, digestion, satiety and emotional response…etc

It’s also called the motivational molecule.

The more you work and complete different tasks in a day the more dopamine releases will be in your brain.

The more your brain will release dopamine the more energized and focused and motivated you will feel to accomplish new tasks and goals and to work even harder.

This will place you into a success loop, where you get stuff done and this releases dopamine

and you feel motivated to get even more stuff done and your brain again will release dopamine.

This, in turn, will bring you the results you desire.

All you need is to get started and discipline yourself to work daily for a period of time until it becomes a habit.

Then you will be literally UNSTOPPABLE.

• You will feel happy and content

Your hard work will give you amazing results that will make you happier and you will always have a feeling of well-being and you’ll experience a life satisfaction that most will kill for…

• You’ll be a winner and you’ll be treated like royalty

Life rewards those who have/get results in many ways.

One, of course, is the way they are treated by other people.

The average Joe is pushed around by others all day long, while the winners of life are treated nicely and with respect and people admire and look up to them.

• You’ll get Huge Success in anything you do and you can make more money that you are able to spend in a life time

Hard work and success go hand in hand and there are countless examples of people who got to the top by working their face off.

Hard work pays off all the time!

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world at the moment, worked like a maniac to build his software and financial empire.

From the age of 20 to the age of 30 he worked daily as hard as he could to make his dreams a reality.

He never took a day off in 10 years and look how far he got…

He even bragged to his teachers that he would be a millionaire by the time he was 30 :D.

Hard work made him a billionaire by 31.

Oprah Winfrey decided to work Sundays too just because she saw that others won’t do it and this way she could get ahead of the competition.

And now she is one of the richest, most powerful and influential person in the entire world.

Mark Cuban the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks went seven years without a vacation, from the time he got fired from a job and started MicroSolutions.

He said he didn’t even read a fiction book in that time.

That’s how focused he was and he worked like hell to get what he has now.

Muhammad Ali worked so hard and was so disciplined that he preferred training instead of messing around with all the girls that were around him…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqpJJ0IW5fc

Will Smith is also known for his hard work Ethic and he said that he never saw himself as hugely talented,

where he excel is at working like a maniac to hit his targets.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is another person that became rich and famous because of his serious commitment to his goals and to the hard work on each and every task.

And I could post video after video and write 100’s or even 1000’s of pages with example after example of real people who got to the top and made a boatload of money…

Because they decided to stick with something and work their face off until they succeeded.

The proof is in the pudding, mi amigo…

• You can get anything you desire, the life that others only dream about

Now we’re not talking only about money.

We’re talking about the whole package. You can have the cars, home, family, body…of your dreams, fame and all the success you desire.

You just need to work hard for these things, but you can have it all and also be happy.

There are way too many real life examples that prove that it can be done.

Now it’s your turn.

Well, I think you got the picture…

of what hard work is all about and what it can do for you.

But what if you want to work hard and you find yourself procrastinating and sabotaging your progress 100 times per day?

What do you do then?

I’ll probably write in the near future an in-depth article about how to crush procrastination for good.

But for now, just to help you with a small nudge in the right direction…

Here are a few

Things you need to do to motivate yourself to work hard on your goals:

• First you should get total clarity on what you want and write it down.

Don’t say you want a car.

Think exactly what kind of car you want, what color, how the interior should look like…etc

Be very specific.

Then you should write down your goal on paper and put a time limit on it.

Don’t worry about how you will get this for now.

Just write the goal down on a sheet of paper in the present tense and add the date on which you want this to become a reality above it, then write your name and sign yourself below it.

Written goals have been proven to have a huge impact on a person’s life.

Between 1979 and 1989 there was a study done at Harvard.

Graduates of the MBA program were asked this question:

“Have you set clear written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”

The results of the question were:

– 84% had no specific goals at all

– 13% had goals but not in writing

– Only 3% had written goals and plans

10 years later Harvard interviewed the members of that class again and discovered this:

1). The 13 percent of the class who had goals, but not in writing, were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.

2). The 3% who had clear, written goals were earning on average 10 times as much as the other 97% of graduates put together.

In addition to this, In 2007, Professor Gail Matthews in the Psychology Department of Dominican University of California have conducted a study on written goals.

Her study provided solid evidence for the effectiveness of three coaching tools: one of them being goals written down.

And lastly, I’m a walking example of the effectiveness of this strategy.

As soon as I write a goal down I start believing that I can reach it…

Writing it down makes it more real, more tangible.

The more I look at my written goal the more motivated I feel to hit it as fast as I can.

After 2 weeks or so from the moment I wrote a goal down I think non-stop about it.

And I ask myself continuously “How can I do this? How can I reach it even faster?”

With every day that passes my motivation to hit the goal and the belief in its realization is increasing.

And I’m not just motivated, I’m taking action daily!

So start writing your goals down on paper!

What do you have to lose?

• Step 2 is to make a plan of hitting your goal in the allotted time

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

Write down a plan of action for getting your new car or whatever you have as a goal.

Any plan is better than no plan. So, just do it.

You can change it later if you find it’s not the best plan for getting what you want.

• Step 3 is to write down the reasons of why you will not quit when the going gets tough and why the achieving of your goal is not negotiable?

Only you can know your reasons…maybe you are tired of your old car for example, or you just want to impress girls…or whatever.

Just write down the reasons on a sheet of paper.

• Step 4 is to think about what kind of person you need to become to get that car or goal?

What new skills and new habits this new you needs to have in order to hit your new goal?

Write those down on paper too.

• Last step is to put everything together.

Every day in the morning and in the evening write your goal down on paper and really think about it and visualize yourself already having that car or that goal.

The more you do this the more you impress this new reality on your subconscious mind.

And you force your brain to find a way to give you what you want.

Also visualize yourself having the skills and doing the things you need to do daily to reach that goal. 

Do this for a few minutes each day to install the mental software for the new beliefs and behaviours.

Besides that, do research, take notes and work to literally build those skills as quick as possible.

While you build these new beliefs/skills and habits and you morph into this new person, force yourself to start working daily on your goals.

In the beginning start with micro actions.

Watch the first 3.22 minutes of this video, the rest of it is irrelevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyNO8ttfHqk

Soon, from all those micro actions and all the visualization your expectancy to succeed will increase and this will get the ball rolling.

You will find yourself taking more and more action without feeling any internal friction.

The secret is to start something, no matter how small.

Anyway…

It takes a few weeks until your new beliefs and habits kick in.

So don’t beat yourself up if from time to time you find yourself procrastinating and doing other useless old activities.

Just read your goal and think about the reasons you wrote in Step 3 every time you don’t feel like working.

And look at your plan of action and force yourself to work on it as much as you can daily.

Besides thinking about your reasons for getting that goal…

It’s a wise thing to use any free or paid resource you can get your hands or eyes on to increase your motivation and the likelihood of you achieving that goal.

You can start by reading motivational and inspirational articles online and watching daily 1-2 videos that put some fire in your belly.

A few people that have some amazing motivational and inspirational content on their Youtube channels are: Eric Thomas, Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez, Peter Voogd…etc

I also recommend you to invest money in some products and programs that will give you the motivation you need to hit any goal you want.

The best investment you can do is in yourself.

This will give you the best ROI.

Start with some rock solid books like: The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure by Grant Cardone…

Add some audio in the mix too.

Hit you brain from all angles with nothing but the best fuel for success.

Two amazing products in audio format, that I personally bought and found to be very helpful are: 100 Ways to Stay Motivated by Grant Cardone and Ambition Is Priceless Mixtape Part I by Peter Voogd.You can get Ambition Is Priceless Mixtape Part II from here.

The last thing you should do is to put yourself into an environment that’s conducive to success.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to leave home…There are a few good programs online that can accomplish this…

One I recommend is Tai Lopez’s program – 67 Steps.

I’ve gone through these 67 steps and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that it changed my life.

This can help you reach any goal you want.

Each step of the program is a video in which Tai shares with you all types of ideas, tactics, and strategies for getting wealth, health, love, and happiness.

Tai’s Big on helping people to reach a state of eudaimonia or “the good life” as he calls it…

These 67 steps are “little” mental and behavioural shifts/changes that you can make to take 100% control of your life and hit any desired outcome.

All these strategies are from Tai’s real life and business experiences.

From books, from his millionaire partners and friends and also from billionaires and high achievers in different fields.

Tai is also known for reading a book a day…

He already read 5000 books or something like this, on business, finance, relationships, health and usually anything that can help a person become wealthy, successful and happy.

You can be sure he knows what is talking about.

With a program like 67 steps you get everything you need to succeed under one roof.

So, give this a shoot… (this program comes with a money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose).

It may be that one thing standing between you and all that your wonderful heart desire.

Ok, enough with this already…

If I continue to write, I fear I’ll transform this article in an e-book 🙂

So, let’s wrap this all up with some questions while we still feel good and ready to rock and roll and get some things done.

Ready?

Here you go…

What are your thoughts on hard work these days?

Do you think like most that only suckers work hard or have you got to the conclusion that Hard work pays off?