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.
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