Jordan Belfort's (Wolf of Wall Street) 4 Keys to Success
Jordan Belfort, whose life story was adopted in The Wolf of Wall Street, did not accidentally get rich.
His success was the result of his views of himself and the world around him. I've watched a few interviews where he shares his perspective and took note of his proverbial "keys to success."
A lot of what he talks about is similar to Tony Robins "Unleash the Power from Within" audio book.
Anyways, let's get to it.
First key - Develop the ability to create a clear and compelling vision for the future
According to Belfort, you shouldn’t merely set goals. You need something greater than goals.
You need a vision.
A goal is something you accomplish. A vision is something you see. It is an entirely new world you're striving for.
To create a vision, you must “step into [whatever goal it is that you've set] and ask what your world is going to be like.”
Ask yourself what your world will look like.
What will the world look like for yourself, your family, and your friends.
If you make a million dollars (a goal), how will your mother’s or father’s medical care improve (this is the vision)?
Belfort used Nelson Mandella and Ghadi as examples of visionaries. Mandella and Ghandi didn’t merely set goals.
They saw entirely new worlds. They then worked towards creating those worlds.
So what vision of the future will you craft for yourself?
I talk about something similar in pulling yourself out of a rut. We get too stuck into living life on repeat.
Instead, have a vision. Part of that vision needs to include who you need to start showing up as.
It's not enough to think about what you want, it's more about who do you need to become and what does that world and life look like for that new, 2.0 version of you.
Edge of David
Second success key - The ability to manage your state: The way you feel in the moment
Your state is how you feel. It’s what most of us call our mood. (See, Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within for more on the importance of state.)
Being in the right state “allows you to access the resources you have. If you’re angry and negative and unresourceful, you can’t do anything well.”
The higher your state, the greater your resources.
The lower your state, the scarcer your resources.
Belfort asks you to think about a bad day where you’ve said to yourself, ”I can’t believe I said that, I can’t believe I did that.”
On other days you say to yourself, “That was amazing! I got so much done!”
One day you’re prefect, one day you suck.
That’s because of your state.
Your state is something you can learn to control. You can put yourself into a resourceful state at will. Being able to control your state is what separates successful people from average to below average people.
Manage the way you feel in the moment. Find the most resourceful state. For parents the most resourceful state is patience and for traders it’s certainty. Fear is a killer.
3 states you need to master
1. Certainty – to be certain about that you’re doing.
2. Clarity – to be clear and not overwhelmed.
3. Courage – to have a conviction and not let fear stop you.
Rich people act in the face of fear where poor people run away during fear.
For more on this - How to fix that lost feeling, that lack of interest
Edge of David
Third success key - Manage your beliefs and eliminate limiting beliefs.
Your beliefs act like your foot on the gas pedal or break pedal on a car. A limiting belief is like putting your foot down on the break pedal.
It slows you down, It stops you from charging forward when you should move forward, and it causes you to move backwards when you should be moving forward.
Parents and teachers spoon feed us limiting beliefs. Most of them meant well.
They gave us limiting beliefs because they were afraid. They didn’t want us to believe in ourselves too much.
What if we failed? We become a burden to everyone.
What if we succeeded? Like I wrote about here:
Your family and friends care about you, they want you to succeed… but on their terms, not yours. You see, in reality, no one believes in you. Not for any other reason that they fear your ambition.
Fear that you may grow broke and damage yourself and your future. That you may be unable to live a happy and fulfilling life, or worse…you may actually pull it off
Allowing you to live a life that shines a spotlight on the timid way they have chosen to live their life. Upsetting the dynamic of the relationship that they have become accustomed to.
Belfort would constantly remove the limiting beliefs from his employees’ heads by holding two meetings a day.
He’d tell his employees, “The moment you walked through this door, the past falls off. You’re start acting like a CEO when you sit behind this desk.”
You are Not Your Past.
Most of our limiting beliefs come from our past experiences.
Befort takes a triumphant view on traumatic past life experiences:
You are not your past, you are the resources and capabilities you glean for it. That is the basis for all change. If you survived the worst of the worse and are still breathing, you can learn from that.
The more crap from your life that you survived, the more likely that you will become great. You must change the way you look at your past.
Reverse the angle.
You will find so much power, passion, and internal fortitude from your past if you look at all the horrible things that have happened to you as training for what you must become now.
View the past as a prelude to your vision for the future.
Edge of David
Fourth success key - Adopt the right strategy.
You must have the right strategy.
Jordan says when you model someone else you turn "decades into days" as that person has been doing what they are doing for years and years.
You can just take what works based on others and throw away the rst.
His concept is very similar to the idea that success leaves clues.
When you do something that works, it might be luck. But if you do something twice, three times and you have success then you're onto something.
So to adopt the right strategy look at what is working for others and model it for yourself.
Your approach and strategy is everything when it comes to success.
For example, with my main YouTube channel I noticed these things working:
1 - Running paid ads to specific videos and monetizing with affiliate marketing.
2 - Driving traffic to an email list to promote your own products.
These concepts are working for others and make sense for me to adopt them into my business as well.
Raise Your Standards.
To become wildly successful, you must raise your standards. You will not settle for less than what your standards are.
Raise you standards. Decide to never settle for settle for average. Bigger goals in fact require higher standards.
If you want to dive deeper into this topic, then Unleash the Power from Within is a great starting point. I'm not big into Tony Robins in all honesty, but I found this particular audio book helpful.
Maybe you will too?