The habits of successful people.

My life coach recently asked me to research and discover for myself what the attributes are that make a person successful. I hope I don't come of as arrogant as these are just some views of mine put plainly. I am definitely not saying I have these attributes but what I am saying it that they were the most obvious character traits of successful people and I would like to adopt them as I become a better equipped adult.

What is success?

If you want to know what the habits of successful people you first have to find out what success is. The definition of success is an event that meets its intended purpose. Notice that it isn't a value or attribute of only certain people but a measurable effort on the part of an individual and has two parts. Firstly if you do not know what your intended purpose is then how will you ever know when you have become successful? Secondly an individual has to constantly check if their actions and plans are meeting the criteria they choose are successes and whether their plan of action is working in a way that will help them achieve these successes.

Over the last few days I have researched and scoured the internet for the different means and attributes that apparently lead to success. This has included reading various articles, essays and watching over a 100 motivational speeches and presentations by a variety of different successful individuals.

I have compiled a short list of what I felt where the most common behaviours that ran throughout most of the information I collected and they are as follows.

Attitude

Attitude refers to the means an individuals deals with different obstacles and achievements. It works on different levels and over a broad spectrum of applicable scenario's. Firstly dealing with obstacles. There are two approaches individuals take when faced with obstacles. Firstly to give in to self-doubt or pity and give up. The second is to understand fully what happened, choose to grieve the situation and choose to move on, even if you are not ready emotionally. The famous quip “fake it till you make it” fits in perfectly with this idea. It is important to realize that you are not hiding away from pain or rationalizing behaviour but facing it, accepting it and choosing to move on.

The second is complacency or over-confidence. These deter from success in undermining what has already been achieved by allowing an individual to decide that they have either done enough or do not need to move further. You need to reward yourself without getting in the trap of thinking that you have now done your best. There is always a next step or opportunity to improve and grow and you constantly have to strive for these.

Acceptance of current conditions.

Far too often individuals assume that events are out of their control. This happens when you limit your world-view so that it only includes you at the centre. If everything is observed with you in mind then the world looks very small, towns just outside your city never become viable markets or barriers are never overcome because you simply feel there is no way around them. There is always a way and there is never anything stopping you from accepting failure, grieving and moving on.

Awareness

This attribute is the ability to notice all the opportunities available to you. This is an intrinsic skill that people develop over years of hard work but it is also an active process of investigation and understanding. If you never take chances or get to know people intimately you won't be aware of the opportunities they may provide or you may provide them. Get to know what the issues are and solve them, not just for yourself but for others. The more important you are to an individual or organisation the more likely they are to offer you opportunities

Authenticity

Authenticity comes in two packages self-authenticity and social-authenticity. Self authenticity is the ability to know yourself, your ambitions, your likes and dislikes, your strengths and weaknesses and to proudly show those to the world. Never present a version of yourself that is unture as this leads to an inability to deliver and a lack of trust with yourself. It is also the ability to know when your actions are going against your own moral code and the ability to change this behaviour to make you a happier fuller individual. Always take chances but never break promises to yourself. The second is social-authenticity which is the common assumption amongst your peers that you are the individual you claim to be. This allows individuals the ability to trust their own opinions of you but more importantly the opinions others have of you.

Ambition

Ambition is the vision required to achieve your full potential. You should never assume you cannot complete a task based on self-doubt or the doubt of others. People whether consciously or not will try to limit your ambitions in order to protect you or themselves from the pain of failure. Trust in your own abilities and the drive to take advantage of every opportunity provided to you even if it is not clear how they might benefit you

Rebelliousness

This is structured dissent of given opinions or attitudes. This is not an excuse to be hard-headed or stubborn but is an ability to understand that all accepted practices are shifting paradigms and humanity is constantly moving towards a better understanding of ourselves and the forces that make a society work. We would never have the technological or ethical progress seen over the last few hundred years if individuals did not have the inner strength to question the beliefs that surrounded them and accomplish what was thought to be impossible. Also recognize that experts are valuable commodities but make mistakes and are only leaders of understanding as it stands today. Up until the 1970's almost all psychiatrists viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder resulting in the destruction and false imprisonment of thousands of individuals. It is now almost universally accepted that homosexuality is a biological construct of evolution that poses absolutely no threat to society but it only became this way because of a handful of individuals that were able to question the moral codes of their times.

Passion

This is a tricky attribute because it is more inherent and unchangeable than the others. An individual may control their passions by the situations or careers they place themselves in. An interesting trend I saw when viewing the speeches is that successful people rarely set out to become rich or gain status but work according to a passion that envelops themselves and their lives. The money simply follows.

Leadership

Leadership is the ability to control and influence groups of individuals to carry out a common goal.

There is a modern misunderstanding of leadership as something that is divinely imposed on a “chosen” individual who then fulfils his role in humanity. Leadership is far from this and is rather a collective effort with you at the head. It is unglamorous, socially difficult to navigate and continuous. Leadership is voluntary and one speaker put it as an uninvited ability to achieve your goals using the social currency available to you at the time.

Workafrolics

To be good at something you have to practice, practice and practice. There are no short cuts and no training or education more valuable than experience. You have to work, and be the hardest worker to be taken most seriously.

Focus

Focus is the ability to remove all the distractions or obstacles that stand in your way of achieving your prescribed goals. Many people try to do too many things at once and the end result is mediocrity and an overspread of financial, emotional or technical resources that limit an individuals ability to be the best at their chosen goal.

Push, persistence and perseverance.

This is linked with attitude and is the ability to constructively deal with obstacles as they happen. C.R.A.P or criticism, rejection, ass-holes and pressure are all tools that should be used to identify shortcomings and learn from mistakes but should never be taken at face value. They are the largest barriers between you and success as it is extremely easy to believe and accept other interpretations of yourself. The ability to move on from disappointment and failure and try again is the single most common attribute of successful people. You also have to push through shyness and self-doubt to be a confident business person. Shyness will get you absolutely nowhere.

Service

People have come to assume that they should be the purpose of effort in their lives. We are told constantly to not be a doormat or be taken advantage of but this is short-sighted and selfish. When you transform your service to yourself into a service of others you are giving them incentive and reason to look after you and your career. Most people are not selfish or lazy but genuinely appreciate hard work and help. After all Jesus did say that if somebody forces you to walk a mile, walk an extra mile with them. Secondly offering people something of genuine value that fulfils a real world need is the best way to ensure success

Creativity

Creativity is the ability to form new ideas with value. People get confused by the word creativity when they assume it means novelty without course. Creativity is achieved when you understand a subject or environment so well that your are able to picture the overlapping mechanisms and spot the loopholes. It is also the ability to try new approaches and objectively judge their effectiveness.

Ability to overcome disengagement.

This I added not because it was common but because it struck a chord with me personally. Often we are unaware of the mechanisms we can use to get involved in organisations because they have evolved systems that actively exclude people who are not already part of the process. This is evident in the current political atmosphere of our country where young people are not involved in politics not because they are lazy, selfish or apathetic. We often have extremely passionate political discussions however we are actively disengaged from the political process because we have no idea how the mechanisms work. This problem is two-fold. Firstly we are not aware that it is happening or ambitious enough to find out and secondly we are actively excluded by the process in order for it to be more efficient. Decisions in organizations are easier to make when there are less parties involved. It is up to you to find out how you can contribute in a meaningful way.

Measurement of success.

This is a attribute that is actively taught in schools but in a haphazard and unfulfilling way. Without measuring success, how are you able to determine if what you are doing is creating the opportunities you need to move forward? This is a difficult process because it requires contemplation and an continuous admittance of failure. People do not like to admit failure and many would rather carry on, hoping for the best than changing strategies.

Tom Chatfield, an author and journalist, gave an inspiring speech on how modern video games have essentially created an excellent model of motivation and measurement that propels their uses to spend considerable time, money and effort and how this model can be used in real life applications.

This is how he views how we or organizations should motivate and measure ourselves.

Firstly you need multiple short term and long term goals to break life up into easy defined “quests”. These are flexible and continually changing but need to be numerous and span many different time periods. Each “quest” should then be broken up into continous goals that are measured in regards to a time frame. This allows an individual to measure themselves in continual and small increments that eventually add up to a completed goal. All completed goals should be rewarded with something that is worth working towards. Failure should never be punished unless it was purposeful or malicious. All completed goals should be reviewed as to whether they achieved their desired outcome and changed to better fit the long term “quests.” Lastly and most importantly the element of uncertainty should always be acknowledged. These “quests” are not rigid and an individual should be able to change them at will in order to progress at the desired speed and in the desired direction.

Motivation

This is the most important to me as I have been struggling to determine the reason why everybody is working so hard and sacrificing so much. Although I still don't know what motivates people or why they do the things they do I can outline what I want to motivate me and change my interpretation of it. Firstly and this is something that was evident during the talks is money should never be a motivating factor in a persons life, comfort maybe but money never. Money is limitless and unrewarding so you will just end up working towards a goal that moves further and further away from you leaving you disillusioned and unhappy. My motivation will be firstly happiness and secondly to work and collaborate with as many people as I can to fulfil my life goals as I set them. My motivation will therefore be experience. I would like to experience as much as possible and learn as much from these experiences as I can in my short existence.