Getting into good habits is a step towards greatness in any area – sport, work, healthy living, you name it. If you can hardwire yourself to get out of bed and head straight to the gym or read for half an hour, you’ll feel good about your start to the day and the positivity this brings, even when times are tough, is not to be underestimated.

I like to think about people who could be classed as ‘masters’ at what they do and try and think about the things they have become so masterful at. I ask myself how they have gained these skills and what I can do to mirror their training and apply it to my own life.

At the end of the day, these are people who live and breathe the same way that you and I do and so it can’t be all that hard to be as good as them, right? Well, yes, but, in practice, it’s all about the effort we are all prepared to make to attain the levels that these people have achieved and this is the true test.

I read a lot, as much as I can find, about those who are on my ‘masters’ list and there a lot of common traits they all share:

• hard, hard work from the moment they decided that they wanted to do whatever they did for ever more
• discipline and focus to levels that others would consider to be strange and not worth the effort
• determination to succeed in the face of doubters – colleagues, family, the press and media, etc.
• high quality outputs at all times from them or their teams or people that they lead
• political skills in order to handle difficulties that they come across as they navigate their work/non-work lives
• failures on many levels in home and work life – lost opportunities, mistakes, bad decisions, misjudgments, loss of friends, divorce and so on.

So, what’s there to learn here? To me, it’s all about learning as much as possible from the biographical stories of these people’s lives and trying to make use of the positive aspects in our own lives. Hard work, discipline and focus are always key determinants of anyone considered to be a success of some kind so these should be the starting point of focus. Give it a try for yourself by making a ‘masters’ list and see what you can learn along the way.