What are the characteristics of success, what are they composed of and how are they acquired? How can someone that believes they don’t have said characteristics develop them? How can you be armed with these characteristics in order to position yourself for success? Simple; you need to be able and willing to self-evaluate or work with someone you believe that can help you do so. I believe that step one, in mainly all situations begins with awareness. Knowing is half the battle, which becomes apparent when you are able to evaluate yourself or work with someone that can.
Let’s start with Self-Awareness. Do you know you? Do you know what your strengths and weaknesses are? Are you conscious of your mis-steps and correct steps in life? Are you mindful of yourself and others? Do you have positive character traits that are beneficial to your ascent in life? Are you willing to do what it takes to correct or improve your knowledge of awareness? These are all things which make up self-awareness in a person.
Following is Self Regulation. Do you have a mentality catered towards creating boundaries and guidelines for which you personally need to act within? On the journey towards your destination there are rest stops, exits you can take which will distract you from getting to where you want to be and unplanned detours. One must be willing to referee self and make sacrifices. It takes discipline. You need to have blinders on and be able to identify if something is adding to the attainment of your goals or taking from it. Lastly, relating to self regulation is prudence (common sense), which is having the ability to make wise decisions in practical affairs.
A Growth Mindset is one led by information (knowledge), determination, and action. Ambition, goals, vision and focus are all extensions of a mindset focused on growing. The scale of a growth mindset you have (abundance or scarcity) determines the magnitude of each of the correlated items mentioned above that you possess. Ignorance, laziness and no vision or goals will lead to no progress. Those that prosper, those that thrive, those that succeed have a mindset of constant growth.
Persistence is one of the most overlooked characteristics on the road to improvement, winning and success. Failure is 100% guaranteed (at some point), it’s the most certain of all events to occur whenever you set a goal and have an end in mind. Failure is also the thing that assists us most in the attainment of that identified goal. Most people simply don’t understand that. Those that do embrace failure and run to it, because lessons come from it. Resilience, endurance, and dedication are essential to persistence. You must be steadfast in your approach. You must be willing to work hard and be patient en route to your destination. Results will not be immediate, but they will eventually be had, if you persist.
Next, is Drive. This is the great separator. Having a great deal of drive is what I like to call having that “Michael Jordan ‘Sh*t’”. For those of you that watched the docu-series, “The Last Dance”, this is what separated Michael Jordan from everyone else; drive. Passion and desire make up drive. The more passion and desire you have for something the more driven you are to attain or retain it. The more driven you are the more persistent you will be. Everything’s connected but drive is a differentiating factor in success among people. “How bad do you want it?” is the essential question. The amount of drive you have and display is the answer.
Empathy is essential for life success because it provides the ability to effectively communicate with others, be a part of a team and improve your skills as a leader. Being empathetic is an emotional skill developed through understanding others. One of the best ways to improve your empathetic awareness is by interacting with people from different backgrounds. This will allow you to gain varying perspectives, which may be difficult for you to do in your normal environment because we typically hang around our friends. Our long time friends tend to have the same point of view as we do (which typically won’t help us expand). Simply put, the more empathetic you are, the more expansive your outlook is on the world.
Being an Explorer is critical to success. How open are you to experiences? Are you enthusiastically curious? The more you know, the more you’ll grow. You’ll only come to know more when you’re willing to learn, experience and expand yourself past your normal. Trial and error is a great teacher. With exploration comes failure. Failure builds character but it also teaches lots of lessons. The lessons found in failure is the foundation for which your success is built on.
Last is Social Skills, which includes being an active listener, having an aura of optimism and cooperation. People more times than not want to work with people they like. No one wants to be around someone that is not personable for an extended period of time. Social skills are used to communicate and interact with others, and provide the abilities (verbal, non verbal, and body language) necessary to get along with others and to create and maintain satisfying relationships. The better your social skills are, the more connected you can become with other people, the higher the quality of the social connections you’re able to make and as a result, the more enriched your life becomes.
The higher degree of each of these characteristics you possess the more likely it is that your ascent to success is inevitable. Analyze and evaluate these items and ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 where you fall for each and what you may need to work on. Remember, if you continue to do and act in manners which you always have, you’ll continue to get more of what you already got. Different actions create different results. Just something to think about and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading. Persist Until Success Happens. PUSH.
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