Steve Harvey: 12 Principles that will Guarantee Success

Steve Harvey is one of America’s top comedians, talk show hosts, and life coaches. Yes, he’s all of those and very successful at that. One would easily imagine how he has been able to balance his life to achieve that much success in a single lifetime.

His talk shows Celebrity Family Feud, Family Feud, Little Big Shots, The Steve Harvey Show and Steve Harvey Morning Show reaches millions of people across the world every single day.

His books are Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Expanded Edition: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment, Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success: Discovering Your Gift and the Way to Life’s Riches,  and   Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep and Understand a Man and other coaching resources have helped thousands of people reposition themselves to achieve real success in their career, family, health, and emotional/spiritual lives.

Ever thought of the possibility of achieving success regardless of where you are from? Steve Harvey is a perfect example. Ever wondered how to achieve success in all the major areas of your life? Steve Harvey is also a perfect example.

Ever wondered how to stay at the top consistently? Steve Harvey is yet another example.

In this article, we are going to consider twelve principles for success using Steve Harvey as an example:

1. It all starts with your mindset.

Success is first a mindset before it becomes a reality. You see, we operate from the inside-out. You first become on the inside what you want to be on the outside. This is how true success works.

Life will not hand over success to you when you don’t believe deep within you that you are a success. It doesn’t matter where you are from. Steve Harvey grew up in Ohio. Who would have thought someone with that little a beginning can achieve all that he has achieved today?

He knew he would be successful, regardless of his environment. His mind was made up and he could literally see himself on the path of success. If you must accomplish anything in life or fulfill your dreams in life, this is the type of mindset that would set you up for it.

Yes, the environment may not be friendly, but let your mind be set on the bigger picture. Know that your environment does not define who you will become. Let Steve Harvey inspire you.

2. Write down your dreams.

One of the first major steps to success is to write down your dreams? What is your career/financial dream? Write down your health, family dreams, and your emotional/spiritual dream.

You need to write down your dreams on each of these four main areas of your life. Achieving a balanced life demands that these areas are all factored in. You cannot be called successful when all you have is a financial success; how about your health, relationship, emotional life?

Dreams are powerful! They give you a sense of purpose; a purpose of fighting for, a purpose to live, a purpose to succeed. At the end, you will notice all that mattered was the courage to dream.

Steve Harvey would always say, and I quote, “I never would have thought, as a little boy being born in West Virginia and grew up in Ohio, that my dreams of being on television and my dream of speaking to millions on a daily basis would ever come true! And it all started with a dream.”

3. Create your vision board.

Dreams are great, but how about a pictorial version of your dream? That is what a vision board is. It represents how clear you are about your dreams.

It shows and keeps you in constant reminder of where you are headed. A vision board helps to keep that image in your mind and guide you against unnecessary distractions.

Steve Harvey would always talk about how his vision board helped him achieve success. He recommends you get your vision board, divide it into four quadrants, representing the four major areas of your life – career/financial, family, health, and emotional/spiritual areas you want to achieve success in.

Scan through magazines and websites, then cut and paste pictures of these specific areas you’d like to achieve on your vision board. You won’t know how powerful this is until you actually start doing it.

If you want to achieve success in any of these areas, getting a vision board is definitely something you should do.

4. Set appropriate goals you want to achieve.

Isn’t it a fact that if you must shoot towards something, you need to have a clear target to which you can aim? You bet it is. This is what goals are for.

Goals would give life to your dreams and visions. No, nothing happens spontaneously, if you don’t make it happen. Life doesn’t just hand you your dream or everything on your vision board; you have to create a realistic goal towards achieving it.

Imagine if Steve Harvey had just settled on his dream and only keep gazing at his vision board every day without doing anything, would he have gotten the success he has today? I doubt.

That is exactly how it is for everybody. Using your dreams and vision board as an inspiration, draw up goals for each of the four major quadrants. This is one sure step towards achieving them. It might take a while, but as Steve would say, “inch by inch everything is a cinch”.

5. Focus on your dream.

It is one thing to have a dream, create a vision board, and write your goals towards achieving them. It is entirely another thing to Follow On Course Until Successful (FOCUS). Life throws stones at us from time to time.

We get hit off course every so often, but your ability to focus on the bigger picture is what determines whether you will achieve success or not.

Focusing on your dreams could mean many things to many people. For Steve Harvey, he has this to say, “When I decided that I wanted to be a standup comedian, I focused on that goal.

For me, that meant leaving my job.  It meant going out on the road.  It meant putting all of my energy into being the type of successful comedian I wanted to be.”

Focus requires that you stick to the goals you developed in the previous point, and like Steve, it could mean leaving that 9-5 job to dedicate more time to your goal.

However, ensure you have a smart exit plan before leaving your job. Focus is what differentiates the successful from the failures in life.

6. Get some skills.

Your goals may be great. Your focus may be commendable, but chances are you don’t know all that is to achieving your dreams. This is why getting trained or an education is very important.

The fact that you have a great dream and a perfect vision and goals for your life doesn’t automatically translate to having all the skills you need to achieve them.

For instance, to be a successful standup comedian like Steve Harvey, you need to get some public speaking skills. Yes, you may be born with an enviable oratorical prowess, but there are things you must know about a carriage, composure, and delivery.

These skills don’t come naturally; you acquire them through training. Training will help you become more confident about your gifts and achieving your goals and dreams. Especially when you learn from the best, you feel you can replicate their success, which is a great mindset to have.

7. Get around people of like minds.

Success is built around people. No one achieves anything alone. There are times you need just a word of encouragement, and that could mean everything; from sustaining your focus to staying true to yourself while moving forward to achieving the goal at the end of the day. The journey of life is not meant to be traveled alone; you need people – we all do.

Steve Harvey has this to say about that, “No one achieves success on their own. No one is an island. We both have surrounded ourselves with people that empower us, lift us up, support us and help us.

People that not only advocate for us but who also tell us the truth and hold our visions with the same conviction as if they are their own. These are the types of people you want to have in your community, in your circle of influence.”

At the end of the day, what matters are the people you allow in your circle of influence. They are those who have the same passion as you. Those whose dream you believe as much as they believe yours.

8. Trump your fears.

Everything might be going great for you along your path to success until you hit a stumbling block. And then another, and yet another, until those negative experiences begin to form a pattern of fear in you.

To achieve success in life, you need to stay the course regardless of how fearful it looks ahead. It may look bleak and terrifying, but let the light at the end of the tunnel help you stay courageous to move on.

Steve Harvey said and I quote, “In order to gain any amount of success in your life you first have to get over your fear and take the biggest JUMP off your life.”

That biggest jump might be to leave your job. It might be to start a new business in an entirely new niche no one has ever done before. It might be to make the decision to marry; settle down and have a family.

No matter how terrifying these things might look, you need to trump your fears and focus on achieving success.

9. Learn to accept failure.

No one has had a plain and easy route to success. Every great mind would tell you “it wasn’t easy”. Yes, the road to achieving your dreams may not be easy, it may be filled with failures and setbacks, but what do you do?

Try as much as possible to disregard them? No! You need to be able to accept that you failed, and then let the reasons for your failure be the lessons that’d guide you towards avoiding the next failure.

Imagine when Steve Harvey recently had what was known as the biggest fail in the Miss Universe history. What happened? He accepted his failure and sincerely apologized.

Though the apology didn’t do much to Gutierrez, and Steve Harvey literally became the face of many hilarious memes around the web, he was live on his show the following day, doing what he knew how to do best.

If you allow failure, it will pull you down and draw you miles behind your journey of success, and as Steve Harvey would say, “Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you’ve got something to share.”

10. Pray about it.

Steve Harvey has always made known his stand about life and God. One of his famous quotes said, “If you pray about it don’t worry about it. If you’re going to worry about it don’t pray about it.” Many things will happen along your journey to success that would call for worrying. Why not pray about it instead?

You see, God knows your path more than you know it yourself, and when you pray about it, He definitely will give you answers for your worries. So instead of worrying about that roadblock, pray about it!

Ask for divine insight and wisdom to understand the times and seasons of your life. This will help you stay the course.

11. Take calculated risks.

Life, they said is a risk. So at every point in time, we are presented with varied options that may seem risky and put our lives on the line. Should you accept every challenge that comes and risks your life in the process? Not exactly.

How about you weight your options; write your pros and cons regarding that situation and then take a calculated risk? Sounds better, yea?

At the time when it was never convenient, Steve Harvey quit his day job. He risked his temporary comfort for the gains and success of tomorrow. Was it a good risk? You know already!

12. Celebrate your little successes.

You know, sometimes we focus so much on the big picture that we forget to celebrate little successes. We forget that success is not a destination, rather a progressive realization of your goals. You do not land at success; you succeed as you live every single day. These little successes deserve some celebration.

As Steve Harvey would advise, “It’s time to get back to celebrating ourselves on a frequent basis.  Small parties, one on one parties, personal acknowledgments – choose any way you can to celebrate and honor you.”

Becoming a success is not rocket science. Everyone can become successful. There is enough space in the sky for every one of us to achieve our goals to the fullest and live the kind of lives we deserve. I believe these twelve principles will bless your life as it did mine.