The world is a highly competitive place nowadays. In order to be the kind of individual that stands out among the crowd, you must develop traits that will consistently allow you to be successful. This means that you have to be willing to go above and beyond most individuals are normally prepared to do. Here are five key traits of successful people:
1. They aren’t afraid to fail
It is impossible to learn anything unless you are willing to make mistakes. You will hear the mantra of top athletes and business people is “no risk, no reward.” Translated, this means that they are willing to have less than positive results until they get it right. It also shows perseverance that employers respect and don’t find in the majority of people. This shows someone that you are committed to succeeding and just going at something by playing it safe and going through the motions of the task at hand, but you are really committed to going beyond what is normally expected and seeing how well you can do the job.
2. They live in a “no excuses” zone
One thing that a person who usually succeeds understands is that there is no room to make excuses for results that they are less than happy with. The most common thing that someone who is never successful does is to immediately find a scapegoat for their actions or why something may not have worked the way it was planned. Some people even go as far as to blame entities such as the government or the economy or on a smaller scale, co-workers, their supervisors, or even spouses and family members for their lack of success in completing a task or achieving a goal.
People may not say it, but when excuses become your explanation for an unsuccessful outcome, they make mental notes about not relying on you in the future for other tasks. You then become the person justifies your actions with excuses alone. But, a successful person takes responsibility for their actions even if excuses could be a valid reason for an outcome. The outcome for taking responsibility is usually that those around will forget about the outcome and remember your integrity for taking the responsibility firmly on your shoulders.
3. They don’t work to live, they work to succeed
Work, to someone who is inherently successful, is not a burden that they carry Monday through Friday and find relief in not doing on the weekend. Instead, work to a successful individual is something they set goals to achieve on a daily basis. They don’t put in their eight hours and just go through the motions of assignments. People who are usually unsuccessful in their goals tend to see work in a negative way. They comment on assignments as being “overwhelming” or a burden that keeps them in the office instead of “doing their own thing.”
Successful individuals, on the other hand, don’t separate their own wants and needs from their responsibilities at the workplace. They look for value in their work and how it will affect whomever it is being done for and not how it will necessarily be good for them. Knowing that just simply doing their best work will have a positive and effective outcome for themselves in the long run.
4. Goals are a focus, not just a to-do list
When a person is committed to success, they literally write down their goals. Long-term goals might be where they see themselves in five years. This means they have to be realistic about what they need to accomplish in that time frame to successfully complete the goals they have chosen by setting deadlines, showing discipline, and understanding their purpose for the goals.
Short-term goals could mean a daily list or agenda that a person sets for their personal life as well as their work environment. Organization of their goals also gives a successful individual a greater ability to commit to completing tasks and achieving goals more easily. Also, when something can be physically seen like a vision board or a list of goals, it is more apt to be a reality instead of just a pipe dream.
5. They develop drive
Drive is not necessarily something that we are born with, but successful people develop it with each task that they tackle and complete. Many individuals will start a task and then lose interest or drive to complete it. Some will run into a difficult part of the process and give up trying to figure it out on their own. They also might become frustrated with spending so much time with a long-term project and just do as little as possible just to complete it instead of doing their utmost to make it right.
Successful people do just the opposite. Even though a task may have difficult stages during the process or take a long time to complete, they muster the drive on a daily basis to put more than enough effort into doing it to the best of their ability and for the optimal outcome. Their idea of sacrifice doesn’t mean they are missing out on something; instead, sacrifice to a successful individual means learning from the process and feeling the satisfaction of completing a difficult task and knowing that it is one step closer to their goals.
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Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who focuses on personal finance and other money matters. She currently writes for Checkworks.com, where you can get personal checks and business checks.
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