9 SIGNS TO SHOW THAT YOU ARE GOING TO BE EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESSFUL

1. You find happiness in the success of others.

Great business teams win because their most talented members are willing to sacrifice to make others happy. Great teams are made up of employees who help one another, know their roles, set aside personal goals, and value team success over everything else.

Where does that attitude come from?

You.

Every successful person answers the question, "Can you make the choice that your happiness will come from the success of others?" with a resounding "Yes!"

2. You relentlessly seek new experiences.

Novelty seeking — getting bored easily and throwing yourself into new pursuits or activities is often linked to gambling, drug abuse, attention deficit disorder, and leaping out of perfectly good airplanes without a parachute.

But according to Dr. Robert Cloninger, "Novelty seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age ... If you combine adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it's not all about you, then you get the creativity that benefits society as a whole."

As Cloninger says, "To succeed, you want to be able to regulate your impulses while also having the imagination to see what the future would be like if you tried something new."

Sounds like every successful person I know.

So go ahead. Embrace your inner novelty seeker. You'll be healthier, you'll have more friends, and you'll be generally more satisfied with life.

3. You don't think work-life balance — you just think life.

Symbolic work-life boundaries are almost impossible to maintain. Why? You are your business. Your business is your life, just like your life is your business — which is also true for family, friends, and interests — so there is no separation because all those things make you who you are.

Incredibly successful people find ways to include family instead of ways to exclude work. They find ways to include interests, hobbies, passions, and personal values in their daily business lives. If you can't, you're not living — you're just working.

4. You're incredibly empathetic.

Unless you create something entirely new — which is really hard to do — your business or profession is based on fulfilling an existing need or solving a problem.

It's impossible to identify a need or a problem without the ability to put yourself in another person's shoes. That's the mark of a successful businessperson.

But exceptionally successful leaders go a step further, regularly putting themselves in the shoes of their employees.

Success isn't a line trending upwards. Success is a circle, because no matter how high your business— and your ego — soars, success still comes back to your employees.

5. You have something to prove — to yourself.

Many people have a burning desire to prove other people wrong. That's a great motivator.

Incredibly successful people are driven by something deeper and more personal. True drive, commitment, and dedication spring from a desire to prove something to the most important person of all.

You.

6. You ignore the 40-hour-workweek hype. 

Studies show that working more than 40 hours a week decreases productivity.

OK ...

Successful people work smarter, sure, but they also outwork their competition. (Every successful entrepreneur I know who reads those stories probably thinks, "Cool. Hopefully my competitors will believe that crap.")

The author Richard North Patterson tells a great story about Robert Kennedy. Kennedy was seeking to indict Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa (who some still believe is hanging out in Argentina with Elvis and Jim Morrison).

One night, Kennedy worked on the Hoffa case until about 2 a.m. On his way home, he passed the Teamsters building and saw the lights were still on in Hoffa's office, so he turned around and went back to work.

There will always be people who are smarter and more talented than we are. Successful people simply want it more. They're ruthless — especially with themselves.

In short, they work smarter ... and they also work harder. That's the real secret of their success.

7. You see money as a responsibility, not a reward.

Many entrepreneurial cautionary tales involve buying 17 cars, loading up on pricey antiques, importing Christmas trees, and spending $40,000 a year for a personal masseuse.

Successful people don't see money solely as a personal reward; they see money as a way to grow a business, reward and develop employees, give back to the community ... in short, not just to make their own lives better but to improve the lives of other people, too.

And, most important, they do so without fanfare, because the true reward is always in the act, not the recognition.

8. You don't think you're special.

In a world of social media, everyone can be their own PR agent. It's incredibly easy for anyone to blow their own horn and bask in the glow of their insight and accomplishments.

Truly successful people don't. They accept their success is based on ambition, persistence, and execution ... but they also recognize that key mentors, remarkable employees, and a huge dose of luck also played a part.

Exceptionally successful people reap the rewards of humility, asking questions, seeking advice, and especially recognizing and praising others because ...

9. You realize that success is fleeting, but dignity and respect last forever.

Providing employees with higher pay, better benefits, and greater opportunities is certainly important. But no level of pay and benefits can overcome damage to self-esteem and self-worth.

The most important thing successful people provide their employees, customers, vendors — everyone they meet — is dignity.

And so should you ... because when you do, everything else follows.

7 WAYS TO BE PRODUCTIVE IN LIFE

Motivation is rather elusive, isn't it?

Some days you feel it, and other days you can't grab a measly corner of it no matter how hard you try. You stare at the computer screen, willing yourself to type, create, develop, and instead you find yourself simply going through the motions, barely caring about the work you're producing. Needless to say, you're totally uninspired, and you don't know how to make yourself feel otherwise.

Quora users have been there, and they have real and practical solutions for digging up that lost motivation and getting a job not just done — but completed with a sense of passion. Read on for seven tips and tricks that'll get you motivated in no time.

1. Don't think about it as hard work. 

There is only one way for me to motivate myself to work hard: I don't think about it as hard work. I think about it as part of making myself into who I want to be. Once I've made the choice to do something, I try not to think so much about how difficult or frustrating or impossible that might be; I just think about how good it must feel to be that, or how proud I might be to have done that. Make hard look easy. 

Marie Stein: "Think about it: If the project you're faced with isn't viewed as drudgery, but rather as a piece of the puzzle that's helping you along your career path, then perhaps the energy required to do it will be easier to come by."  

2. Create small, bite-sized goals.

There's a reason donut holes are so lovable. They're easy to eat. Before you know it, you've eaten a dozen of them. This is how goals should be too. Of course you should have a really big, audacious goal. But make sure you break down that goal into bite-sized, consumable goals. This way you'll feel like you're making progress in your journey and you'll also feel a sense of accomplishment when you complete the smaller goals. A feeling of progress and achievement is a beautiful combination.

Nelson Wang: "You've no doubt heard this advice before, but have you applied it to motivation? Completing a large project is daunting when you don't know where to begin. How can you finish if you don't even know where you're starting? So, rather than focusing on a large, scary goal, take one thing at a time, and break the big goal into ideas you can digest one at a time." 

Successful people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk say reading helped them reach their goals.

3

. Read daily.

Make sure you carve out time in your day to read. (I recommend the early mornings before everyone is awake.) Read for at least one hour a day. If that's too much, start with 20 minutes [a day] and do it for one month (habit). Develop a belief that reading is the quickest way to success. It will make reading a breeze, and extremely fun/rewarding (if you're driven by success). The most successful people in the world attribute their success to reading a lot of books (Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Elon Musk). 

Curtis Blackmore: "Although it may sound counter-productive to set aside reading time when really what you're looking for is motivation to work hard, sometimes it's necessary to do something seemingly unrelated to tackle the task at hand. Developing a daily reading habit is one thing that's likely to have a long-lasting impact on your thought processes, ultimately inspiring you in all areas of your life." 

4. Stop caring about the things that don't matter.

Doing things that don't mean anything costs [us] a ton of mental energy. Look at your aggregated to-do list, find things you know that you don't care about, and get rid of as many of these activities as possible. You will stay more consistently motivated if you're working on activities that are inherently meaningful or are part of a larger mission.

Nick Miller: "Look very carefully and closely at your list, and shave off anything that's both truly demotivating and unnecessary for you to do. It's not always best to finish what you started if, down the line, you can't even remember the reason you started something in the first place."

You need time to completely disconnect from work responsibilities.

5. Set a quit time.

Entrepreneurs tend to stray from the typical 8 to 5 workday, and global accessibility through emails and Skype makes it more than easy to have a 24-hour workday. But it's important to recognize when enough is enough. Set a realistic quitting time for yourself, and stick to it most days of the week. Stop answering emails after 8 PM, or take Sundays off. You'll feel more refreshed and more productive when you allow yourself some down time.

Matt Holmes: "Raise your hand if you're motivated 24/7! I didn't think I'd see any hands. It's unrealistic to feel energized all the time, to want to plow through tasks all the time. You need to give yourself a rest, and if that means giving yourself a specified set time to unplug or turn away from the demands of your job, then do it. It's likely to help you perform harder and smarter in the hours that you do allot for work." 

6. Just do it.

To get motivated to start doing something, from my own experience, the most effective trick for me is to just do it (sounds trite, but it works). As soon as you think something needs to be done, jump into it, doing it immediately (of course, provided the conditions are feasible). You must not think about anything else, suppressing all other thoughts, keeping your mind blank, acting like a robot. Yes, it sounds weird, but it does work! Otherwise, you will debate whether you should do it now or there were too many issues with doing it, or there are other more pleasurable and exciting things to do over this boring task. 

Bob Win: "Now here's some worthwhile advice: Instead of waiting around, willing yourself to feel motivated, what if you just went ahead and started doing the work you know you need to do? Dive into the project and trust that the focus will be what you need." 

7. Celebrate wins.

Start acknowledging all the good you are doing. Don't discount the little things. I mean, how many times do you scold yourself for doing something small that wasn't perfect? How often do you think the good things such as being on time, or signing a new client is simply how it's meant to be? They need celebrating. You need more wins in your life. This will motivate you, encourage you, and help you see how brilliant you truly are.

Kai Ashley: "If you're constantly waiting for a long-term payoff, you forget how crucial all the little wins are. And it can be challenging to stay motivated and on top of things if there's no reward in sight. Treat yourself with small things and don't underestimate how gratifying it can feel to recognize tiny advancements."