Dwayne Johnson, or famously known as “The Rock”, is a Hollywood actor, a producer, and also a professional wrestler. He started his career as a football player for the University of Miami, which led him into the world of wrestling. Johnson shot himself to stardom in the wrestling industry and got the name “The Rock”.
Johnson first involved in the filming industry in 2002 where he took the lead role in the movie, The Scorpion King. Today, he is a very successful and famous actor who has starred in “The Fast And The Furious” franchise and “San Andreas”. Forbes listed Johnson #25 in the Top 100 Most Powerful Celebrities and Muscle & Fitness named Johnson their “Man of the Century” in 2015.
When it comes to being charismatic and hard-working, Dwayne Johnson is the guy everyone should look up to.
In this article, you will discover the top 10 success principles from people’s champion, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
1. Be Electrifying and Charismatic
One of the most important factors that contributed Johnson’s success is that he is very charismatic in the public. He electrifies the room and the audience like no other. When he was in his wrestling career, The Rock often referred to himself as “The Great One” and “The most electrifying man in all of sports”, and he became what he believed.
If you want to achieve the celebrity status in your industry, you must portrait yourself as someone unique in your own way. Look at all the highly successful people such as Barrack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs, they all wear certain clothes and they often portrait themselves as someone unique than others.
You have probably watched Steve Jobs delivered one of his stunning presentations during new Apple product launches. Besides getting known for his visionary and innovation, he was also known for his unvarying signature look. The man who created Apple was often seen in his black turtleneck shirt, blue jeans and New Balance sneakers.
As a celebrity, you have to position and portrait yourself in the public because you are the product. In business, your products have to be consistent and be on the same theme. And if you want to be a celebrity, you will become your product and you must make yourself charismatic in your own unique way. This is how The Rock managed to breakthrough ordinary and becomes successful.
2. Know What You Want
Ever since a very young age, Dwayne Johnson knew what he wanted to be when he grows up. He always wanted to entertain others. When he was still a kid, he was inspired by successful actors such as Chuck Norris, Harrison Ford, and Sylvester Stallone. He watched the movie, “Indiana Jones” and he remembered he liked to be like Harrison Ford one day and became a hero in a movie, which he did.
So what are your dreams? Do you know who you want to be in the future? It does not matter how old are you right now, as long as you know exactly what you want out of your life and who you want to be, you can achieve that.
The same story was told by another famous Hollywood actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When Arnold was 15, he found a poster of in a storeroom window displaying the new Hercules movie, starring Reg Park. And immediately, Arnold knew that he wanted to be like Reg Park. Ever since, he modeled Reg Park and became his admirer. From that moment on, Arnold changed his life and committed to a decision that he too, wanted to be a bodybuilder and an actor.
Therefore, find out what you want to do with your life. What do you want to achieve in the future? Who do you want to be? These are important waypoints that will determine your success in the future.
3. Be Absolutely Committed to Your Work
Johnson is also famous for his extreme and incredible work ethic. He told the audience in an interview that he used to wake up at 3AM if he needs to start work at 7AM. He will get up 4 hours earlier than his morning shooting to hit the gym for his intense workout session, have breakfast and then get to work. He also said that he gets about 5 hours of sleep a day on average.
This is the difference between a higher achiever and someone unsuccessful. Unsuccessful people are not willing to put in the extra hours of work and they are not willing to wake up early to work for their dreams. They choose to be convenient and stay in their comfortable bed.
In 1999, the Chinese billionaire Jack Ma who founded Alibaba invited 17 friends to his apartment to discuss his business idea. He told his friends that it was going to be tough work, very challenging and not to expect the usual 9 to 5 work. He told the 17 others that if they expect what a normal working person would expect, they’d better do something else.
In a nutshell, success comes with a price. If you are willing to work hard and sacrifice your leisure time to pay the price, you will get the results you want.
4. Be Yourself
One of the most important turning points in Dwayne Johnson’s life was when he was in his wrestling career. He did not start as the “people’s champion” right off the bat and there were many times, the fans were booing him. One day, he faced the fans and told them, “Rocky might be a lot of things, but suck isn’t one of them.” From that moment on, The Rock was born. Johnson started to face himself and be himself. He realized that it was not him, personally, that the audience did not like. It was that he wasn’t being him. He noticed he was not being himself.
So be you. This is what Johnson said in his own words, “Whether it is in entertainment or out in the public, the most powerful thing you can be is yourself.” A lot of people are not being themselves. They are influenced by others and they try to be what others wanted them to be. If this is describing you, you should stop and follow your heart.
5. Have Faith and Follow Your Heart
Whenever you are down or feeling depressed, remember that you are not the first one to go through the pain nor will you be the last one. There will be someone out there who has gone through what you are going through right now. So have faith and follow your heart.
That is what exactly Johnson did when he faced depressions and setbacks in his life. He told in the Oprah Master Class that he holds on to the faith and believes that something good will turn out every time when he faces difficulties in life.
Johnson said that he remembered one of his darkest moments vividly when he was on the football team. He was depressed and can’t seem to find a way out. One day, his head coach called him and asked him to go back to the team, but he took the leap of faith and decided to quit football to go into the wrestling industry. His father was surprised by his decision but disagreed with him saying that it was a mistake. Johnson took a deep breath and replied his father, “Maybe I’ll be no good, but I feel like in my heart I have to do this.” Eventually, his father accepted his decision and trained him as a wrestler.
6. Improve Yourself
A very important success principle you should learn from Johnson is to always improve and work on yourself. Johnson is famous for his action movies with his huge and muscular movie. However, his goal is to be a better actor. This is why he took the opportunity to act in different movies such as a family movie, comedy movie, action comedy, mixed drama, and so on. He wanted to explore more and to learn to become a better actor.
In fact, if you study all the highly successful people out there, you will discover that they are always working on themselves to improve their skills and knowledge. Actors like Dwayne Johnson will want to explore other roles in different movie genres. An investor like Warren Buffett has a strong desire to study the market and understands the economy. Do you know that Buffett spends most of his time reading? And he said that he reads as much as 6 newspapers in the morning to equip himself and to make sure he is up to date.
7. Never be Afraid to Fail
Failure is a very normal event and experience that everyone will face in their lives. If you have never failed before, it simply means that you have not tried hard enough. When Johnson ended his football career and hit rock bottom, he was forced to move back and stay with his parents. He spent over 10 years in his football career, but his life ended up in shambles. This event taught him to work even harder and never be afraid to fail.
When SpaceX test launched its rockets, they experienced failure and some of their rockets blown up. However, this did not make Elon Musk quit or stop him from improving his work. He did not give up on his dream because of failures, but rather, he used his setback as the stepping stones to learn and to get better. And this is exactly what you must learn too. Never be afraid to fail because you can always bounce back from your fall.
8. You Need a Coach
When Dwayne Johnson was still a high school kid, he was arrested a couple of times for his misbehavior and wrongdoings. One day, he met someone who totally changed his life. And this man was his football coach named Jody Cwik. It was Jody who brought Johnson into his football team and started to nurture him to become a better person in life.
Johnson said that Jody was like a father-figure and also a mentor to him. Without his football coach, he would never amount to anything today. And after Johnson learned so much from Jody, his grades in school improved and he did a very good job in football. Eventually, he became famous in football and started to think about his goals, his future and what he wanted to be. And the rest was history.
If you are serious about becoming successful in what you do, you need a coach or a mentor. Every successful athlete has a coach and every successful entrepreneur has a mentor. Warren Buffett learned from Benjamin Graham and Jack Canfield learned his success principles from W. Clement Stone, the best-selling author of “The Success System That Never Fails”. So find your mentor or get a coach to guide you.
9. Be With a Great Team
Dwayne Johnson dedicated much of his success to his good friends and teams. Deciding to be with great people changed his life dramatically, and if he continues to stay with the wrong crowd, he won’t be living the successful life he is enjoying right now.
He told the audience in a movie launching event that he was able to accomplish so much more, work up to 14 hours a day and wake up at 3AM in the morning all thanks to his great team. When he was training and working out in the gym, it was his team who filmed and helped him uploaded the recordings to Instagram. And just like what Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
10. Be Playful and Enjoy Life
Being a great celebrity, Dwayne Johnson is someone who is very entertaining. Whether it is his radiant smile or the “people’s eyebrow”, he always finds ways to engage with his audiences and make them happy. One of the main reasons Johnson is so popular and liked by many is due to his entertaining and joyful characters. It is just like what the billionaire Richard Branson said, “My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ’Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’”
Most people have the wrong perspective by thinking that they will be happy and are able to enjoy life when they are successful. This is not true at all. The truth is that when you are happy and enjoying what you do, success will come to you, not the other round. So be open, learn to be playful and enjoy what life has to offer.
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