Successful people what are they like

Top 10 Qualities of Highly Successful People

What do you need to find and develop within yourself to be successful? The answer comes from looking at those who have created success in a variety of fields. These traits may sound simple, but they lead to remarkable results.

If you really want to bring success into your life, you should cultivate yourself just as you’d cultivate a garden for the best yield.

The attributes here are shared by successful people everywhere, but they don’t happen by accident or luck. They originate in habits, built a day at a time.

Remember: If you live your life as most people do, you will get what most people get. If you settle, you will get a settled life. If you give yourself your best, every day, your best will give back to you.

Here are the traits that the highly successful cultivate. How many do you have?

1. Drive

You have the determination to work harder than most and make sure things get done. You pride yourself on seeing things getting completed and you take charge when necessary. You drive yourself with purpose and align yourself with excellence.

2. Self-reliance

You can shoulder responsibilities and be accountable. You make hard decisions and stand by them. To think for yourself is to know yourself.

3. Willpower

You have the strength to see things through—you don’t vacillate or procrastinate. When you want it, you make it happen. The world’s greatest achievers are those who have stayed focused on their goals and been consistent in their efforts.

4. Patience

You are willing to be patient, and you understand that, in everything, there are failures and frustrations. To take them personally would be a detriment.

5. Integrity

This should not have to be said, but it’s seriously one of the most important attributes you can cultivate. Honesty is the best policy for everything you do; integrity creates character and defines who you are.

6. Passion

If you want to succeed, if you want to live, it’s not politeness but rather passion that will get you there. Life is 10 percent what you experience and 90 percent how you respond to it.

7. Connection

You can relate to others, which in turns makes everything reach further and deepen in importance.

8. Optimism

You know there is much to achieve and much good in this world, and you know what’s worth fighting for. Optimism is a strategy for making a better future—unless you believe that the future can be better, you’re unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

9. Self-confidence

You trust yourself. It’s as simple as that. And when you have that unshakeable trust in yourself, you’re already one step closer to success.

10. Communication

You work to communicate and pay attention to the communicators around you. Most important, you hear what isn’t being said. When communication is present, trust and respect follow.

No one plans on being mediocre; mediocrity happens when you don’t plan. If you want to succeed, learn the traits that will make you successful and plan on living them out every day.

Be humble and great. Courageous and determined. Faithful and fearless. That is who you are, and who you have always been.

How To Be A Successful Person (And What Makes One Unsuccessful)

Founder & CEO of Lifehack Read full profile

How would you define a successful person?

Perhaps it’s someone who’s ruthless, ambitious or intimidating? Perhaps it’s someone who’s business-minded, apathetic or controlling?

While on the outside, these traits may seem to play a part in what makes up a successful person, in truth it goes a lot deeper than this. There’s a sense of character that we rarely consider or synonymize with success, but it’s these intrinsic traits that are the true driving force behind a highly successful person.

So what are the differences between successful and unsuccessful people? And how to be a successful person?

This article will delve deeper into what qualities define success and failure so you can identify what’s needed for your own path to success.

1. Successful people compliment; unsuccessful people criticize.

Successful people look for positive aspects in others because they understand the importance of cultivating confidence and growth.

Feeling the need to criticize in a way that isn’t serving another constructively is showing a sense of disunity, disallowing the creative energy to flow and stalling success along the way.

2. Successful people learn to forgive; unsuccessful people hold on to grudges.

The art of forgiveness is the art of letting go. Successful people know that to forgive doesn’t mean condoning what someone has done, but rather releasing the negative emotion around it for their own peace of mind. Only then can they move past it and strive harder.

Unsuccessful people tend to hold on to grudges, causing the negative situation and energy to fester away and inevitably affect their success.

3. Successful people accept responsibility; unsuccessful people blame others.

To be successful, you have to accept that you’re responsible for your actions, your reactions and ultimately your success and failures. This creates a mindset of empowerment and control.

Good outcomes are easy to take responsibility for, but when you realize the bad outcomes are also down to you, you can swiftly redirect to a better path and grow from the experience.

Unsuccessful people throw the blame onto others when things don’t go to plan. By doing this, they are not identifying with their own power and fall into victim mode resulting in the inability to see the opportunities for creating personal growth and therefore creating more success.

4. Successful people follow through with their habits; unsuccessful people say they do but in reality don’t.

Success is down to consistent habits and successful people know this and stick to them. They create a positive morning routine, they may meditate, they may take time to journal or plan out goals. They do this every day.

Unsuccessful people also know the importance of positive habits but they just don’t stick to them in a consistent way. They don’t make them a priority, create a lack of dedication, or just simply believe they’ll be successful without them.

5. Successful people want others to succeed; unsuccessful people want others to fail.

Highly successful people know that other people’s success doesn’t diminish their own. They look at people’s achievements and celebrate them because it’s about focusing on the element of thriving which ultimately benefits everyone.

Sometimes people don’t outwardly say they want someone to fail and may even seem to celebrate another’s success. But deep-down there is an element of jealousy or hope for failure. This comes from a lack mentality, triggering self-limiting beliefs about their ability to succeed and playing the comparison game.

6. Successful people keep a ‘to-be’ list; unsuccessful people don’t know what they want to be.

Successful people focus, not just on what they want to do, but also how they want to be. This stems from knowing the importance of personal growth within the journey to success and becoming a person capable of achieving that success.

Unsuccessful people tend to focus on the end goal without giving much thought to the person they want to become to get there. Dismissing this crucial part of success can be one of the major downfalls as working on yourself is paramount to creating a successful life.

7. Successful people focus on themselves; unsuccessful people focus on others.

While successful people focus on their personal growth and concentrate on their responsibility for success, unsuccessful people spend much of their time focusing on what others are doing.

They compare themselves to others in a detrimental way and use it to create the energy of lack and low self-worth within themselves.

8. Successful people set goals; unsuccessful people just go with the flow.

Everyone knows that to be successful, you have to set yourself goals.

Thinking big and believing you can achieve them gives you something to strive for. It creates structure and it creates a game plan no matter how small the goals are.

Unsuccessful people don’t set goals, which means, they may have a great idea but constantly feel lost trying to achieve them and causing them to give up more easily.

9. Successful people focus on the positive; unsuccessful people focus on the negative.

It’s really simple; a positive mindset sends you on the direction of success and a negative mindset can only steer you towards failure.

When you’re in a positive state (even when facing a particular challenge), you attract more positive opportunities. When you only see the negative, you literally blind yourself from seeing answers to problems because you’re usually so fixated on the problems.

10. Successful people embrace change; unsuccessful people fear change.

Everything is temporary and change is inevitable. Successful people realize this and know that change is a necessary part of success. And so they’re willing to embrace change.

Unsuccessful people want change but fear it happening or find it hard to embrace the change that inevitably needs to happen. This just slows it all down and makes the process harder than it needs to be.

Choose to see all change as positive and always serving you on your road to success.

11. Successful people share information; unsuccessful people horde information.

Sharing is a concept that successful people understand and implement. It comes from an abundance mindset and the want to help others succeed around you.

Keeping information to yourself when you know it’ll benefit others comes from a lackful and fearful mindset. When you feel you have to act in order to benefit yourself and no one else, it will only take your success so far.

12. Successful people read everyday; unsuccessful people watch TV everyday.

This ties in with having consistent positive habits. When they have downtime, successful people will fill their mind with motivational books and know the benefits of focusing the mind to read.

When your relaxation time consists of sitting on the sofa and binge watching TV, while it’s okay to a point, it’s choosing a less stimulating path and dodging a more productive way to use your spare time.

Successful people use this time wisely and implement it into their desire to succeed.

13. Successful people show gratitude; unsuccessful people show entitlement.

The attitude of gratitude is the secret weapon for every successful person.

Whether it’s gratitude for where they are no matter what stage they’re at, for the people around them and even the challenges they face, appreciation for everything brings more things to be grateful for (and therefore success) into their lives. In fact, there’re a lot you can be grateful for: 60 Things To Be Thankful For In Life

Unsuccessful people usually feel like the world owes them their eventual success. They don’t fully appreciate the opportunities, the lessons or the people that help steer them on the path.

As a result, progress feels much slower and harder to reach simply because they’re not in a state of appreciating the ins and outs of the journey.

14. Successful people talk about ideas; unsuccessful people talk about people.

Successful people focus on creativity and the different ways they can achieve success. In other words, they’re more focused on solving the problem by creating inspired ideas and this is what they talk about.

Unsuccessful people tend to focus on external sources, usually other people. They rely on others for ideas, or they focus more on what other people are or aren’t doing. This goes back to pushing the blame or responsibility to the people around them rather than taking responsibility.

15. Successful people give the credit to others; unsuccessful people take the credit for themselves.

If the success is a team effort, even if most of the work was done by you, you give credit to others and share in the celebration. Acknowledging the contributions of others is a common trait in successful people.

On the other end of the spectrum, those that take all the noteworthy credit for themselves, despite not being the only one who worked towards the goal, is on a surefire route to some degree of failure in the long term.

Final Thoughts

Successful people definitely have a different perspectives on success to those that try and fail.

A mindset of gratitude, teamwork and putting more emphasis on the journey rather than the destination are all key elements when it comes to success.

Learning and emulating these characteristics and traits of highly successful people from a space of growth and self-improvement will help you achieve the success you’re dreaming of.

10 Beliefs of Highly Successful People

Success seems like an unobtainable goal. When you see someone like Jay-Z standing over a musical empire while you’re rapping in a Baskin Robbins parking lot, it’s easy to blame illuminati. The reality is you’re not on your grind like Hov. They make not walk the same path to success, but highly successful people take the same steps with the same beliefs.

1. They believe in creating their own opportunities

Opportunity never knocks. It never calls, and it never stays the night. If you want a seat at the table, you have to hunt down every opportunity yourself. You’re not entitled to anything.

When I started blogging, I did what everyone else does. I found a place to host it, and I wrote the best blog post I could. Just like every other blog, nobody read it – they had no reason to, and they couldn’t find it within the avalanche of blogs on the Internet even if they wanted to. Instead of waiting around, I started sending pitches to other blogs. I’m a professional blogger not because of the blogs I write, but because of the emails.

2. They believe it’s better to be best rather than first

If you watch the Hollywood version of success, you can easily get duped into thinking you have to be the first to hit the market in order to win. That’s true if you’re a reporter and want credit for breaking a story. Otherwise keep in mind Myspace predates Facebook.

The first person out the gate may get the competitive advantage and land early sales, but when the honeymoon phase is over, people want quality. So long as you focus on creating quality, you’ll always have something to offer.

3. They believe in serving others over themselves

Back in the 1970s when the U.S. started attacking the tobacco industry, Phillip Morris and R.J. Reynolds responded in two very different ways. R.J. Reynolds executives backed off their product – they didn’t believe in what they were selling. Phillip Morris executives, on the other hand, brazenly lit up in their board rooms and defended the benefits they provide to people.

I realize tobacco companies are a strange way to illustrate the point of serving others, but, regardless of your personal feelings about cigarettes, they exist and people want them. When the public backlash against the industry began, Philip Morris stood by their commitment to provide products to its customers while R.J. Reynolds backed off. Because of this, when you walk into any gas station, convenience store, smoke shop, or Walmart to buy cigarettes, Marlboro and the other Phillip Morris brands are much more prominent than Camels and the other R.J. Reynolds brands.

4. They believe quality is important

A truly successful person isn’t successful because of their position in life. It doesn’t matter if you’re a janitor or a CEO – success is defined by how content you are with where you are. Kevin O’Leary will tell you success means being rich, while Gandhi successfully led a revolution and freed both India and Pakistan while living poor.

The quality of life you live isn’t defined by what you own or how high up the ladder you’ve climbed. It’s defined by your satisfaction with what you have. No matter where you are in your life, strive to create quality experiences for those around you.

5. They believe execution trumps ideas

Everyone has great ideas. There should be a website where people can socialize online – I just invented Facebook. It’d be cool if you could shop online – now I’ve invented Amazon. Lennon and McCartney’s best songs use a handful of basic chords. Those names didn’t rise to prominence because they thought of something no one else did.

They took action and accomplished something no one else did, and most of them continue doing so to this day. Ideas are important, but anyone can come up with ideas. Backing those thoughts with action is how you create success.

6. They believe respect is something you earn

The advice I’ve heard the most in my life – at home, in school, in the military, in corporate America – is that respect is something that’s earned. You’re not entitled to respect. You’re entitled to common courtesy and politeness, but you have to prove yourself worthy of peoples’ respect. It doesn’t come from a title; it comes from your daily actions and attitude. Respect everyone’s time, act ethically, and always follow through. People will respect that.

7. They believe in their place in history

A successful person knows their place and they’re comfortable with it. Whether or not you’ve made a blip in the history books they teach out of in school, you have your own history, a family history, and a history in your community. With time comes memory. People remember your actions in the past, and they judge you in the present based on them. If you understand your place in history, you’ll be prepared for successful results.

8. They believe quitting is the only failure

Last night I had a conversation with a friend of mine. We dated briefly a few years back. Although the timing wasn’t right, we remained friends. She knew me back when I started my whistleblower journey and is aware of some of the obstacles I’ve struggled with over the years. When we talked last night, she shared some words of wisdom. The phrase that’s stuck in my head at the moment is “keep swimming.”

Some people talk about treading water or keeping your head above, but that’s only enough to remain in the same spot. In order to actually reach your goal, you can’t tread water, you have to keep swimming. If I only kept my head above water, I’d be in the same place I was back then. While my struggle against the banks hasn’t gotten any easier, I’ve come so much further since then. I’ve made progress I can only see by looking back and forward, but it gives me the confidence to keep swimming.

9. They believe success is about more than money

Money does have its uses. While it may be the root of all evil, it’s also a resource that can be used to enact good change. If you define your worth by how much money you have, you’ve a ways to go before you’re as valuable as anyone on Forbes’ billionaire list. You’ll also never reach that billionaire list, because it takes a belief in your own value to reach that level. Which brings me to the final point.

10. They believe in themselves

Successful people think they’re successful – it’s what makes them successful. Perspective is everything in life, and the only way to reach success is to move with a successful perspective. You become what you think. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.

Top 10 Qualities of Highly Successful People

If you really want to bring success into your life, you should cultivate yourself just as you’d cultivate a garden for the best yield.

The attributes here are shared by successful people everywhere, but they don’t happen by accident or luck. They originate in habits, built a day at a time.

Remember: If you live your life as most people do, you will get what most people get. If you settle, you will get a settled life. If you give yourself your best, every day, your best will give back to you.

Here are the traits that the highly successful cultivate. How many do you have?

You have the determination to work harder than most and make sure things get done. You pride yourself on seeing things getting completed and you take charge when necessary. You drive yourself with purpose and align yourself with excellence.

2. Self-reliance

You can shoulder responsibilities and be accountable. You make hard decisions and stand by them. To think for yourself is to know yourself.

3. Willpower

You have the strength to see things through–you don’t vacillate or procrastinate. When you want it, you make it happen. The world’s greatest achievers are those who have stayed focused on their goals and been consistent in their efforts.

4. Patience

You are willing to be patient, and you understand that, in everything, there are failures and frustrations. To take them personally would be a detriment.

5. Integrity

This should not have to be said, but it’s seriously one of the most important attributes you can cultivate. Honesty is the best policy for everything you do; integrity creates character and defines who you are.

6. Passion

If you want to succeed, if you want to live, it’s not politeness but rather passion that will get you there. Life is 10 percent what you experience and 90 percent how you respond to it.

7. Connection

You can relate to others, which in turns makes everything reach further and deepen in importance.

8. Optimism

You know there is much to achieve and much good in this world, and you know what’s worth fighting for. Optimism is a strategy for making a better future–unless you believe that the future can be better, you’re unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

9. Self-confidence

You trust yourself. It’s as simple as that. And when you have that unshakeable trust in yourself, you’re already one step closer to success.

10. Communication

You work to communicate and pay attention to the communicators around you. Most important, you hear what isn’t being said. When communication is present, trust and respect follow.

No one plans on being mediocre; mediocrity happens when you don’t plan. If you want to succeed, learn the traits that will make you successful and plan on living them out every day.

Be humble and great. Courageous and determined. Faithful and fearless. That is who you are, and who you have always been.

N A T I O N A L B E S T S E L L E R

THE LEADERSHIP GAP

What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

After decades of coaching powerful executives around the world, Lolly Daskal has observed that leaders rise to their positions relying on a specific set of values and traits. But in time, every executive reaches a point when their performance suffers and failure persists. Very few understand why or how to prevent it.

Additional Reading you might enjoy:

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Lolly Daskal is one of the most sought-after executive leadership coaches in the world. Her extensive cross-cultural expertise spans 14 countries, six languages and hundreds of companies. As founder and CEO of Lead From Within, her proprietary leadership program is engineered to be a catalyst for leaders who want to enhance performance and make a meaningful difference in their companies, their lives, and the world.

What Makes Successful People Successful? The 5 Common Traits

What makes successful people successful? What are the common traits?

When it comes to living a successful life, everyone seems to want a piece of it. Nobody wants to live a mediocre life, everyone wants to be successful.

Unfortunately, those who have truly accomplished remarkable results in life are rare. And this is what makes being successful something even more precious.

If you want to be successful, no matter whether it is in your career, in your business, investment, financially, spiritually or in as a family member, you must first make the decision that you want it.

Most people are not committed and they did not dare to make the decision to strive for what they want in life.

Success will come to you only when you are fully committed and decided that you will go for it no matter what.

So what makes successful people successful? What do they do differently than ordinary people that lead them to live an amazing life?

5 Common Traits that Separate the Extraordinary from the Normal

1. Successful People Have Big Dreams

Yes, I know you have heard this at least a million times. However, I just wanted to remind you once more, successful people dream big.

Most people who are not living their dreams because they do not dare to dream big. In fact, most people dream small. They aim for paying the bills, they just want to get by, they just want to be happy, etc, etc.

When you aim for the stars, you will at least hit the moon. Sadly, most people are not even aiming for the ceiling, no wonder why they are not producing remarkable results in life.

If you are serious about living a successful life, the first step you need to do is to get yourself out of ordinary and get into the extraordinary. And the only way to do this is to start by thinking big.

You have to start from your thought. Your thinking will shape your life. If you think about success all the time, you will achieve it. However, if you think about failure and defeat all the time, you will live in mediocrity. You will live your thoughts.

2. Successful People Are Always On The Move

Do know that besides thinking big, successful people are also always on the move? They are proactive people who go and make things happen rather than waiting for things to happen.

You have to be the same. Take action and make your dreams a reality. A lot of people want to be successful but they are not willing to take the action to make their dreams come true.

They will tell you that they want to be rich, they want to build a successful business, they want to own the big house and drive the luxury car, but they are not willing to work hard on their goals.

Never let that happen to you. We all know that it is not easy to live an extraordinary life, but that is what separates the successful from the normal.

So commit to taking at least 5 small actions that will move you toward your goals each day. If you can take only 5 small actions a day, within a year, you will be achieving 1825 small victories.

And this will definitely bring you result you want. Success requires consistency. So be consistent and take action every day.

3. Successful People Will Never Give Up

When you study successful people who have created amazing result in life, people such as Walt Disney, Colonel Sanders, Richard Branson, Michael Jordan, Jack Ma, etc, you will see that they simply refuse to quit.

The journey to success is tough and you will go through a lot of failures and setbacks. However, never let them get you down.

You need to have the confidence to move on and to turn failures into learning lessons.

Walt Disney has been fired by a newspaper editor saying that he has no creative imagination, but Disney never gave up and continued on to pursue his dreams. This is how we have Disneyland today.

When Jack Ma started Alibaba, nobody believed that he can succeed and everyone said that he was crazy and refuse to venture along with him. And because he never gave up, he went to build one of the biggest e-commerce websites in the world.

The same goes for Michael Jordan and the rest. Michael Jordan was not born with outstanding basketball skill; he trained himself to be talented with it!

Great people will never quit and they will never give up on their dreams. They will hold on and continue to work hard even when every other people tell them it is impossible.

4. Successful People Always Expect Positive Things

After reading success stories from great people around the world, I found that successful people are always positive and they expect positive things to happen in the future.

Think about it, do you think Steve Jobs will go on and launched iPhone or iPad if he did not have any confidence that his products can sell?

Do you think Richard Branson will start an airline if he is always negative and thinks that the market and the economy are bad?

Of course not, they expect that their business and their services can sell and they have high confident with what they do. This is what makes them go on and put in extraordinary effort into their business.

You have to be the same. Always think positive and always expect the best. It does not matter even if you are not successful right now, what matters most is where you would want to go and are you willing to work for it.

5. Successful People Believe In Their Dreams

Do you believe in yourself and your dreams? If you don’t believe in your dreams, who else would?

It is your dream and you have to protect it. Never let anyone says that it is impossible or it cannot be done. The Wright Brothers invented the airplanes when people told them that it was impossible.

Arnold Schwarzenegger works hard and ended up being a movie star when people told him that it was not possible for him to act because his body was too big and his name was difficult to pronounce. Can you imagine that?

You have to believe in your dreams and yourself. You have to trust that somehow things will work out for you. And you must always prepare yourself and work on your dreams.

Conclusion

Always dream big, take consistent action, never give up, think positively and most importantly, believe in yourself and your dreams.

If you are serious about achieving outstanding success in life, read, study and learn from successful people. Learn from both their failures and their successes.

Do what they do that make them successful and avoid making the same mistakes they have made. Take massive action and never quit until you reached your goals.

So do you know what you need to do to be successful right now?