3 Qualities Essential For Success

I’ve been coaching for about five years now, and in this time, I’ve been lucky enough to meet or coach hundreds and hundreds of people. Some of them were extremely successful, whether personally or professionally. CEOs, millionaires, and celebrities. But there were also many people who were yet to accomplish their version of success. What this gave me was understanding and insight into what it takes to be successful, to accomplish something out of the ordinary, and to create a life that is fulfilling and exciting, and includes everything that we wish for.

What I’ve noticed was, that there were certain qualities that were present amongst people who were successful, but were missing or not as developed among the people who were not successful.

EXTRAORDINARY COMMITMENT

So the first quality that all the successful people had was an extraordinary commitment to their goals, to the results, to their vision, but also to the process that they had to go through to get to that point.

See, sticking to something when it’s easy when it’s comfortable, and when it comes naturally to you, that’s not really the commitment I’m talking about. I’m talking about determination and sometimes even almost obsession because this is what will push you through the tough times when it becomes extremely difficult when you feel like you want to quit, you want to give up, ’cause that’s what’s necessary to accomplish something extraordinary.

If you are struggling to stay committed to your goals, if you have a tendency to quit when it becomes challenging and difficult, then the good news is you can develop your commitment. You can become someone who is really committed and stays committed through the tough times. I want to share with you two little tips that you can start working on and applying to increase your level of commitment.

The first one is your WHY. Why do you want that goal? Why do you want to accomplish that? Because without a strong why, without a strong reason to actually work extremely hard sometimes to achieve something, it will be very difficult in your mind to justify the hard work. I’m sure that your goals are definitely worth working on, but maybe you haven’t really explored the why. Maybe you haven’t really massaged out the reasons why do you really want that. So, the tip that I have for you is to sit down and ask yourself all those questions.

“Why do I want that? How would it impact my life if I achieved that? How would it impact my personal life? Professional life? My relationships? My finances? My health?”

Just really explore and brainstorm all the ideas and all the ways achieving the goal would impact your life. Because when you know, when you’re consciously aware of how much it would help you and how much it would positively affect your life, it will become easier, I’m not saying easy, I’m saying easier, to stick to the process and follow through when it becomes difficult.

The next area you need to work on is your identity. It’s who you are, how you see yourself, because if you see yourself as someone who tends to quit when it becomes difficult, when it becomes challenging, then that belief, that identity is giving you permission to quit when it becomes difficult, and that act alone just reinforce the identity even more. So we need to break the pattern. I need you to start rebuilding a new, better identity of someone who is pushing through when it becomes difficult, someone who is committed. And how do you do that?

Unfortunately, you cannot meditate yourself to it. The only way is to get there through action. My tip for you is to start setting for yourself tiny little goals, and you can be increasing the difficulty over time. But what’s important that every day you set yourself a little goal that you accomplish.

What’s important, that it’s always a tiny bit challenging, whether it’s in sports, whether it’s at work, whether it’s in your personal life, that doesn’t matter. What’s important that you become someone, on a daily basis, who is up against some challenge, whether large or small and is pushing till the end to make it done. That action will start feeding into your new beliefs about yourself and will start creating this new identity that will become extremely useful, because it will push you through the challenging times when it really comes to accomplishing something meaningful and something extraordinary.

CONSISTENCY

The second quality that all the successful people had was consistency. Consistency in taking action, taking steps forward towards that goal until it got accomplished.

I’m a big believer in the power of taking smaller steps every single day rather than taking a massive action once a week, once a month, because that’s something that is hard to maintain, something that is hard to be consistent with.

What people don’t realise is how much progress they could make if they committed just one hour every single day to work on that goal for one year. Imagine that you want to learn a new language and you commit one hour a day to it. That’s 365 hours in a year. If you divide it by 8, which is the number of working hours in a day, you get somewhere around 45. That’s 45 working days worth of time that you would accumulate in one year. That’s two and a half months full time job worth of time. How far do you think you would get with learning a new language if you didn’t have to go to work for two and a half months, instead you would go to a library and you studied for eight hours?

You would make amazing progress. And that’s what could happen in one year if you commit just one hour. Sometimes I hear people saying, “Yeah, Tomas, but a year is a long time. I don’t know if I want to work on this for a year.” So here is a thing, let’s say you’re 30 years old. You most likely have 50 plus years of your life ahead of you. Wouldn’t it be worth it to invest even two or three, or even five years of hard work to work on yourself, to work on your career, to work on your business if it could secure 45 years of much better quality of life, much happier life, much more fulfilling life?

This is a question you need to ask yourself.

WILLINGNESS TO RISK YOUR…

Now the third quality, one I’m really excited about and one you probably don’t expect, is the willingness to risk your ego, is the willingness to look silly, to be laughed at, to be disapproved of.

I want to share with you a quick story. I recently returned from a trip back home. I’m originally from the Czech Republic, and I spoke to someone who’s been studying English for quite a few years now, yet she never spoke to anyone in English. And when I asked her why, she told me that she wouldn’t speak to anyone in English because she’s scared that she would look silly.

That’s just crazy! And you may think it’s crazy as well, but I want to ask you this.

What is it for you that you are scared to do that you would love to try, or attempt, or pursue, but you don’t because you’re afraid that someone would not agree with that, that someone would not like it and someone would laugh at you?

You see, we all want to be liked, admired, approved of, and agreed with. And we’re scared of being disapproved of, laughed at, and so on. But it’s almost as if we’re assuming that everyone likes us already. That no one is laughing at us, that no one is disapproving of what we do or how we live our life. And it couldn’t be further from the truth. Even the most liked, admired and loved person in the world is disapproved and is not agreed by thousands and thousands of people.

So if you’re playing it safe because you’re trying to avoid some of that discomfort and disapproval, I would like you to open your eyes to the reality, because there are definitely people who don’t agree with you.

It’s very common when we try to break away from the social norm of our social circle, our community, that there are people who are trying to discourage us from starting a business, becoming fitter, or travelling the world. What you need to keep in mind is that they think differently than you. They don’t know what you know. They don’t understand why you want to accomplish that. But it shouldn’t be something that would stop you, because at the end of the day, it’s your life and it’s your happiness, and only you are responsible for that. And you shouldn’t sacrifice your happiness just for being liked.

So this is it for the day, I hope it’s been useful. I highly encourage you to start working on these three qualities; your commitment, your consistency, and your willingness to risk your ego.

If you have any comments or questions, just leave it in the comment section. I will find time to answer them.

If you need a support of a life coach, you’re always welcome to contact me and let’s find out if we’d be the right match. 

Take care until next time.