“The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there” – Vince Lombardi.
Achieving success is not just a matter of luck, if you really want to attain success in your life, you should cultivate yourself as you would cultivate a garden. It means you take the time to learn the qualities to achieve your goals, apply your knowledge and stick with them through times of adversity and potential failure.
Attributes of successful people are shared everywhere these days and they don’t happen by accident or luck. They originate in habits built with time. So if you cultivate these traits and make them a part of your daily habits, there are high chances you will see improvement in yourself and in achieving success in your own life and career.
- Burning Desire:
Have you heard the expression “burn the boats”? During the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Spanish commander Hernán Cortés scuttled his ships so that his men would have to conquer or die. He basically created a point of no return for himself and his men because he wanted to make sure that the remainder of his men were completely committed to his mission and quest for riches. He somehow did something that seemed completely insane. This sent a clear message to his men that there was no turning back.
If you have a burning desire to do something, you have the strength to see things through and don’t vacillate or procrastinate. You make it happen no matter what because you want it really bad. The greatest achievers are those who have stayed focused and have their drive and willpower to achieved their burning desires.
- Thinking Big
We tend to have trouble coming out of a mindset that is comforting to us. People find it hard to break their old habits they have been used to and try not to think beyond the picture. Thinking beyond the picture is thinking bigger, better and becoming the best.
So how do we conquer this and create a mindset that thinks big? First of all, take that burning desire you have to build your confidence in it and destroy the fear. Believe it can be done and so will your mind find many ways to do it. Believe that a solution pays the way to solution and once you change your thinking from ‘this might be done’ to ‘how do I accomplish it?’ then your mind immediately goes to figure out ways to accomplish your mission.
- Ignore Negativity:
There’s a difference between constructive criticism and negative haters. People who give constructive criticism are people who gives you helpful feedback that provides specific, actionable suggestions. Whereas, negative haters are people who will never be pleased with your work, no matter how many improvements or changes you make. Their criticism will often include insults, personal nitpicks, generalizations, and challenges.
Some ways you can deal with these kind of people are:
- Ignore it. Walk away.
- Block them.
- Don’t react, be grateful.
- Remember that successful people don’t need to put others down
- A hater’s negative reaction comes from their own internal issues, so being kind and respectful to even haters will remind you that they are a reflection of their own negativity and not you.
- Keep Your Circle Clean:
While you are in a mission to create an image of yourself, it’s best to surround yourself with like-minded people. When you surround yourself with like-minded people, you’re more likely to adopt empowering beliefs and see life as happening for you instead of to you.
Once you ignore and clean the toxicity, you keep your circle clean and benefit with people who you can relate to giving you positive reinforcements and making you happy. Sometimes you may come across people who are in the same mission as you are and become rivals in the game. In these cases, it’s best to learn to befriend them and benefit from each other since you both take the same path. If they do not cooperate, then don’t hesitate to keep them in your “ignore negativity” list.
- Don’t Stop Educating Yourself:
One of the most important traits of successful people is a genuine desire and willingness to learn. Being successful doesn’t mean you know it all. It’s best to keep an open mind and educate yourself from everyone and every situation you face. If you want to grow you should remember that every experience offers an opportunity to do so.
Immersing yourself in knowledge, helps your career go to incredible places. This means learning is lifelong and be constantly exposed to new ideas and inspirations.
Some ideas to educate yourself are:
- Read good books.
- Get a mentor.
- Learn from your mistakes.
- Sign up for related courses
- Research what you need
- Listen to people who give you good advice.
- Practice what you’ve learned
- Over deliver
When we talked about thinking big, we talked about thinking beyond our comfort zone. Once you are doing that already, learning to over deliver than what people are expecting of you wouldn’t be a problem. The habit of doing more than what you are paid for will teach you to take advantage of increasing returns, which will eventually insure money that returns far out of proportion to the service you render. Becoming a real leader without practicing to over deliver wouldn’t take you any further in the walk of life.
6. Accurate Thinking:
Thinking accurate teaches you how to organize known facts into classes that are important and unimportant. Learning this will help you distinguish facts from mere information and teaches you to build definite working plans in the pursuit of important facts. You will learn to focus your attention upon that one subject at a time until you have worked out practical plans for mastering that subject.
This way of thinking will teach you how to ally yourself with in such a manner that you may have the use of their entire knowledge to back you up in your own plans and purposes.
7. Money Makes More Money:
One thing that isn’t said enough that separates a successful person from the rest is to understand that money makes money. If you’ve earned a certain amount of money, should learn to pay yourself first. This means the money that you pay yourself will go into investments, funds or something that will make you more money.
This is a huge secret millionaires use that they have money working for them to pay their expenses and luxuries. Therefore, adopting this trait is very important to becoming successful in life.
8. Division of time:
Everyone in the world has the same amount of time during the day. If you can use it efficiently, you can use every minute of the day to do something worthwhile in building yourself, your job or your business. Without division of time, it is wasted. So try to divide your time and control it as best as possible and make the most use of it.
9. Be consistent:
No matter what you do in life, the above traits of becoming successful wouldn’t work without consistency. If you are regular and steady with what you do and put in the work, you will definitely see the results sooner or later.
The best technique for being consistent is to have a routine and change it with your progress (Division of Time). If you have a time table set everyday knowing what to do and the areas you need to focus on, then it’s easy to start your day and get straight into the important sectors. This will help you become consistent and help you progress every day.
