“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be” ` George Sheehan
I had my first experience networking towards the end of 2008. I wanted to build my coaching and hypnotherapy practice. A few months later I ventured on line. From time to time, I’ll organize my paper work from my offline networking and I usually find something to share on my blog.
Today is no exception. I found this hand out that lists 21 habits of successful people and I’m going to share them with you.
For your inspiration and motivation: 21 habits of successful people. I give credit to the unknown author
Dream big dreams.
BIG is a relative term, if you feel your dream is small, don’t allow the word big to stop you from dreaming. Dream your dreams, big and small and take action to make them real.
Do what you love
Sometimes what we love can’t be monetized. Jennifer White, in her book, Work Less Make More, suggests designing your life and business around what you do best not what you love. Some of us are fortunate enough that what we love and what we do best are the same, with the added bonus of being able to make a living doing it.
If you’re not one of the fortunate, follow Jennifer’s advice and build your life and business around what you do best.
Focus on your strengths
I say yes, yes, yes. Most employers force their employees to strengthen their weaknesses. That is a colossal mistake. If you have a boss who’s making this mistake, it’s time to become an entrepreneur. If you don’t care for entrepreneurship, buy this book, Strength Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath and send it to your boss incognito.
If you’re an entrepreneur, start leveraging your time by outsourcing or delegating those projects/tasks that take too much of your time. You don’t have to prove you can everything. Stop wasting precious time. Focus on your strengths and become even better at what you do. You’ll get more done in a shorter period of time.
Accept Responsibility and Accountability
It’s simple, accept responsibility for your life and hold yourself accountable for the results from your action. If you don’t, you’re putting someone else in the driver’s seat of your life. If you’re waiting for someone to change your situation, tick, tock, keep waiting, no one is coming. You’re going to remain stuck.
Don’t use the word failure
Don’t use the word failure as a reason to give up. Failure is the signal that tells you to STOP, rethink, regroup and try something new.
Have goals and direction
It’s OK to be spontaneous and adventurous; however, if you leave port without charting your course: you’ll be unprepared for inclement weather. You may not have enough food and water to get you to the other port. Without a map you could be lost at sea.
Be passionate about what you do
Successful people aren’t workaholics who get their self-worth from working. What they have is a passion to achieve their goals. And they’re willing to work and work some more for their success.
Here’s what Will Smith had to say about this and you may get a better understanding of what this means:
“I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented, where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. While the other guy is sleeping, I’m working. While the other guy is eating, I’m working.”
“If you don’t dedicate yourself to becoming better every single day, you will never be able to communicate with people the way that you want.”
Get around the right people
Some of us are afraid of implementing this strategy for our success. We’re afraid of being labeled as a “sell out” or being accused of abandoning our friends. If you go fishing with someone and neither one of you have the equipment to catch fish or the creativity to make one, you’ll not be bringing home any fish.
Be teachable
To be teachable, one needs to listen without being defensive. Are YOU teachable? If you think you know it all, you’re not teachable. If you’re in love with your own voice to the exclusion of others, you’re not teachable. If you’re too busy thinking about what to say, instead of listening, when someone is speaking to you, you’re not teachable.
Successful people, listen, learn and implement.
Calculated risks
Successful people understand they’ll conquer their fears by taking calculated risks. Calculated risks doesn’t mean waiting for the perfect opportunity, it means to have a vision, followed by planning and execution.
Resilience
Imitate the rubber ball: the harder it hits the ground the higher it bounces. When the going gets tough, resilient people keep on going. They remain confident and courageous in spite of challenges.
When you’re resilient, if plan A fails, you’ll create plan B out of thin air.
Inborn Creativity
We’re innately creative. However, if you don’t use it, it will become dormant like a volcano. Goals, focused intentions, curiosity, courage and confidence will release and amplify your inborn creativity.
Poster by Motivational & Inspirational at AllPosters
Personal Development
Having a successful business is not enough for happiness and fulfillment. You need to also grow yourself. Personal development has to do with developing all of you. Unlike self-help and self-development, personal development includes helping others to develop themselves.
Here are some key areas for your personal development from Wikipedia:
- improving self-awareness
- improving self-knowledge
- building or renewing identity
- developing strengths or talents
- improving wealth
- spiritual development
- identifying or improving potential
- building employability or human capital
- enhancing lifestyle or the quality of life
- improving health
- fulfilling aspirations
- initiating a life enterprise or personal autonomy
- defining and executing personal development plans
- improving social abilities
Unshakable Optimist
An unshakable optimist re-frames negative experiences to see something positive. Optimism keeps you moving forward when everything is stacked against you. Neuroscientist, Tali Sharot, at Ted talks, shares her research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side — and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial.
Service (bring value to others)
Value – the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchanged or in terms of some medium of exchange.(dictionary.com)
The more value you bring to your personal relationships, the easier and more fulfilling they’ll be. Professionally, more value, brings more loyal customers/clients and more money.
Dependability
People do business with those who are dependable. People enjoy relationships with those who are dependable. Dependability is a stress reliever. Those who are depending on you are free from anticipatory stress; they know you’re going to come through. You’ll be stress free because you’re making people happy.
Danielle LaPorte, reveals the secret to success: it’s a simple, easy to follow formula: “do what you say you’re going to do.” That, my friend, defines dependability.
Honesty
Being honest makes your life easier. People will trust, like and believe in you. They’ll buy your products and service with confidence. And they’ll be happy to call you friend.
Single Minded
Multitasking is over-romanticized. Successful people, more often than not, focus on the task at hand, even if they don’t like doing it.
Decisiveness
There’s an episode of I Love Lucy where Ethel, Fred, Ricky and Lucy were out to lunch and Lucy couldn’t make up her mind what to order. It was hilarious. Her indecisiveness made great comedy but in real life indecisiveness is a success crusher.
Stop second guessing yourself. Do what successful people do – make a decision and live with it. If it turns out to be the wrong decision, learn from it and move on.
Persistence
As you travel along the path of success, from time to time, you’ll fall into the pot holes of life. Rude drivers will cut you off. Cash flow can be an issue, even for gas. Your car could die or be stolen. Entrepreneurs, can you relate? However, with persistence, you’ll find the resource to get you to the finish line.
Self-Discipline
Without Self-discipline all other good habits become null and void. Self-discipline puts you in control of those emotions and impulses that could prevent you from achieving your results. Self-discipline is honoring your commitments to yourself. It’s foregoing immediate pleasure for the more rewarding satisfaction that comes from achieving a long term goal.
It’s a wrap
These aren’t the only habits of successful people but it’s a good place to start. They say success leaves a foot print – find the foot print of the successful person you admire and study it.
Your turn
What are your habits for success?
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OMG This is such a GREAT post Adalia!! Favorites in this list are Focus on Strengths, Accept Responsibility, Failure being the STOP and regroup signal – TOTALLY brilliant advice – Thank you so much for sharing!
Hello Amethyst,
Those are some of my faves as well. I appreciate your comment.
Good post that I shared with my tribe. The section about working with your strengths truly is a good one for a couple of reasons.
Successful people do grow. And, they drive from their natural gifts. This means that they delegate what they do not do well to people who are strong in the areas they are not. Too, often, people who are not successful are always trying to improve themselves by working on their weaknesses. If the weakness would improve relationships then by all means work on that. If the weakness, however, is sales and marketing, hire people who thrive and are very successful with sales and maketing. They are doing what they love, which frees you up to drive forward again using your strengths. Good post.
Thanks Dianne for stopping by, commenting and sharing this post with your tribe. I’m glad that you and others are getting some value from this post that is my ultimate goal …helping others to transform their lives.
Adalia, what a great, all-inclusive blog post. The resources you’ve supplied are terrific and so helpful (even the “I Love Lucy” episode). Having the right mindset is the key, and you’ve provided a multitude of suggestions for the reader. I’m sure this will help lots of people 🙂
Thanks for your comment love Kate. This post happened because I organized my paperwork. It’s getting a lot of love.
Awesome.
I’ve been on the internet a couple of years and I learned not to add my web links within the comment. Comment luv will share your website.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing.
Adalia, thanks for the tips. It’s a great reminder to keep me on track with my goals.
Hello Expert Marketing Coach,
I appreciate your visit. I’m pleased that these tips reminded you to stay on track with your goals.
Great post Adalia! We have similar philosophies in empowering others by focusing on their strengths.
Hi Vanessa, welcome. It’s frustrating when a boss focuses on an employee’s weakness and tragic when parents and teachers do this to children. And it’s dis-empowering when we do it to ourselves.
wow this is great advice! and wonderfully put ! thank you for sharing
My pleasure Yolanda. I appreciate your visit.
-Focus on your strengths
-Dont use the word failure
-Be pasionate about what you do
-Decisiveness
Really liked the sections listed above. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Timkeydia,
Those are some of my faves but I appreciate all of them and practice many of them on a regular basis.
Hi Adalia,
Indeed it is positive habits like the ones that you mentioned that make the difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Of course there are more than 21 habits, but I would say if you have most of those habits you can be sure you will be quite successful 🙂
I agree that successful people have habits that are not mentioned in this post. But, in general, these 21 habits are a good gauge as whether or not you’ll be successful. As a matter of fact, even if you have only a few of these habits you’re ten times better of than someone who has none.
Thanks for stopping by Nikolas. Hope to hear from you again.