Success is nothing more than building small habits that, added together, make the difference. What habits have been found in the most successful people? What habits of great entrepreneurs and millionaires can we copy starting today to replicate their success?
To be honest, though, success is not only about habits. A recent study lasting more than 30 years has also pointed to certain personality traits that influence success and that have been found in the most successful people: those who earn large sums of money or have become very rich.
At this link you can see the personality traits of self-made millionaires, from the most solid study carried out to date.
Many small habits that together are very powerful and make what follows inevitable.
Success is not down to an accident or chance, but it is probably not down to drinking a potion of inspiration or learning that gives us superhuman qualities either.
We have already looked at 7 habits found in every successful person, which are therefore a universal rule. Now let’s see which habits we need to work on as a whole to reach our goals.
The habits of success
1. Organisation: to succeed, we need to become organised people
Being organised is synonymous with success. In fact, whoever is organised at work is organised in life. Whoever is organised at home is organised in business. Organised people are organised in every area of their lives, and so they tend to be much more efficient than everyone else. Points in favour of success.
Being organised lets us focus on what really matters for as long as necessary, and at the same time clear up disorder at every level. That way we stop wasting time in chaos and focus on what matters to achieve success.
2. They are resilient: there is no success without resilience
On the road to success you will probably run into some failures. Some people sink when this happens. Successful people, on the other hand, draw lessons from failure. They take it as a learning experience and come back for more. That is resilience.
Truly successful people manage to stay optimistic when everything is falling apart. Most business successes were born and grew in times when everything was collapsing. (Read: Resilience: the keys to success when things get really ugly). Resilience also includes learning to master our emotions when it comes to panic or extreme optimism.
3. Persistence: can you succeed without being persistent? I doubt it
Success is proportional to stubbornness and the ability to insist and persist. Successful people learn not to give up in the face of difficulties. They know that someone else may succeed where we have thrown in the towel. Endurance, insistence and persistence are habits that help successful people. And if insisting doesn’t pay off the first few times, that is what resilience is for.
4. They listen to other people’s needs
Knowing people’s needs means knowing about problems that might have a solution. And that solution could be profitable for us. A great example of listening to the market is without doubt Richard Branson, who has created more than 400 companies in different sectors simply by looking at industries with unhappy customers. Industries where customers speak up, and where Branson believes he can provide the solution.
But if we drop down a league, to talk about succeeding within a company’s organisational chart, it is all about relationships.
Successful people really listen, and they make sure the other person knows they are really being listened to, which leads to much more honest and open relationships with others. After all, success comes from cultivating relationships.
5. They avoid procrastination: to succeed, you can’t keep putting things off
Many people say they are thinking about doing “something” and that they will do it next month. Delay is the main ingredient of failure, while decision and action are the ingredients of success. Successful people don’t say “I’m thinking about doing…”. They tell you: “Look what I’ve started doing.”
Will Smith made this very clear in his biography, where he talked about how decisions in Hollywood are made immediately, sometimes in a matter of hours. In fact, he won his role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in a couple of hours during a party with producers. The idea was thought up, tried out and the contract signed in a few hours.
See also: Lessons from Will Smith’s biography
6. Successful people know when to quit
Successful people are persistent, but not stupid. In fact, the secret of success also lies in knowing when to quit.
Part of the road to success consists of accepting a failure quickly in order to start on something else. They don’t stay in relationships with corpses, nor do they cling to their ego to avoid admitting a failure. If something doesn’t work, to hell with it, and on to the next thing.
Of course, for anyone, the hardest part is probably deciding whether to keep at it or whether the time has come to quit. Bearing in mind that if you want to succeed you have to go all in (and without doubts), when in doubt, perhaps the time has come to quit and move on to something else.
7. Successful people have a sense of humour
Among the habits of success is taking things with humour. Humour and a positive mindset matter for everything. When it comes to seduction, simply making someone laugh already gets you 50% of the way. You will notice that the most popular and acclaimed speakers have natural doses of humour in their talks.
The truth is that you will rarely be bored with someone like this. Not only because of everything positive they have to teach you, but because of their sense of humour and their knack for making an evening with them enjoyable and fun. In Spain, people make the mistake of thinking that if people laugh at a company, they are no longer taking their work seriously. It is as if it bothered people that others enjoy themselves.
We need to start distinguishing between being serious about your work and looking serious, because looking serious is often mistaken for bitterness, and bitterness is not among the habits of success. What’s more, walking around with a face like thunder isn’t healthy, even for you.
Something you will find in successful people who practise the habit of humour is that they can sometimes give you entirely constructive criticism with a touch of humour, so that you get the message without feeling offended. If you deliver the same criticism with a face like thunder, the result may be very different.
A sense of humour opens many doors, while an unfriendly character closes them.
8. One of the most important habits of success: they are not afraid of taking risks
Taking risks is absolutely necessary to succeed in any field. This habit was also among the personality traits of self-made millionaires. Life is risk, and although it is hard to turn risk into your comfort zone, for successful people it is their natural habitat.
They feel fear, but they act in spite of it. They know they could fail or that the risk they have taken could go wrong, but they accept that possibility and stick with the decision. But careful: taking risks is one thing and acting like a madman is another. There is a huge difference.
To give an example: building wooden wings with the idea of selling them is taking a risk in product development. Testing them by jumping off a cliff without any kind of safety measures is acting like a madman.
9. But they keep risk under control
They like risk, but they are not kamikazes. They take on high risk, but they try to study the possible consequences as thoroughly as they can, always imagining the worst-case scenario.
So they are not scared of taking the risk, because they have already worked out what would happen in the worst case. And they are willing to take the gamble even if the outcome would be the worst possible should things not go their way. They have fears like everyone else, they know they cannot get rid of that fear, and they have no choice but to face it.
10. There is no real success without respect and good manners: they are respectful and polite
As we have said more than once, you can tell what kind of person you are dealing with just by seeing how they treat their subordinates or people supposedly below their level.
Successful people have made this a habit, whatever people may think. We explained this in our article This is what self-made millionaires are like.
They are gracious in their dealings, polite to everyone and respectful of anyone regardless of their social or cultural position. In fact, nobody really has any reason to be rude to someone they don’t know.
That kind behaviour means they receive the same in return, because you get back what you project, and that is why practically everyone treats them well. They are hard to forget once you have met them.
11. The habit of habits: tenacity. Successful people are tenacious
You can be insistent and persistent and achieve nothing. Tenacity is a quality that successful people have developed. Perhaps that is why they have achieved so much in life. When we talked about the difference between persistence and tenacity, it was Seth Godin himself who gave a clear example, roughly along these lines:
Companies that phone you every day while you are eating or sleeping to try to sell you something are persistent and insistent. But Zara is tenacious.
12. They give praise: knowing how to praise is one of the habits of success
They recognise someone else’s good work in private and in public, whether it is their secretary or an employee who has just closed a deal. Not everyone knows how important it is to recognise the work of someone who is doing a good job. They do. And so they not only win over that person, who is enormously grateful for the praise, but that person will keep working much harder knowing their work is recognised.
Here we could give the example of Warren Buffett, who uses every talk and every interview to praise someone at his company, whether it is his business partner or a young fund manager. He has done it with his secretary too. Greatness shows in small details like these.
13. They can change the mood of an entire company
And they do it in a very simple way: just by saying a few magic phrases that radically change the atmosphere. They tend to be motivating, and their speeches make the people in the company feel that what they do has a purpose.
The prize here would go to Steve Jobs (not for creating a good atmosphere as such, since his character did not lend itself to that). Jobs was clear about it: they were not making electronic devices, they were changing the world.
In another article we gave some tips on things to say every day to the people at your company that can make a difference if you build them into your habits.
Read: 9 simple, extraordinary things to say to the people at your company every day.
Few people take the time for something as simple as this, and it makes a remarkable difference.
Other habits you should adopt to succeed
14. They say yes to almost everything when they are starting out
They probably achieved success because they said yes to every challenge, every business opportunity, every project. They know that success sometimes consists of 14 failures and one win. You only have to succeed once, while the failures count as part of the journey.
As the old saying goes: to succeed, you only have to be right once. In the early days, “YES” should be among your habits.
15. They know how to say NO firmly and decisively
By the same token, when the time comes, they don’t say YES just to please someone if they really don’t want to do something. They say no to a distraction and they say NO to a bad proposal. And they leave no room for negotiation. It is NO, full stop.
In short, most of the time someone who is doing things well can fall into distractions. If you are working towards something you want to succeed at, you probably can’t keep up with the lifestyle of other people who only think about getting drunk and partying. Unfortunately, you will have to learn to say NO to many plans like that. It is what is called sacrificing immediate rewards for future rewards.
16. They make their own luck. Yes, luck is a habit too
Even to be lucky you have to be on the right path for luck to find you. Thanks to their kindness, their good manners, their outgoing nature and the pleasant moments they create, people like this naturally widen their network of contacts. They naturally end up stumbling on opportunities.
People talk to them, people recommend them, and so their good reputation gives them more chances and opportunities than other people.
In other words, luck didn’t find them; they built it every day.
There is a fundamental rule here: the more effort you put in and the harder you work, the luckier you will notice you become.
17. Positive thinking should be a habit
Most people think positive thinking is something spiritual or magical, but the truth is that the power of positive thinking is backed not only by logic but also by science.
Barbara Fredrickson’s study ended up showing that people with negative thinking end up making a self-fulfilling prophecy and destroying themselves, while people with positive thinking tended to achieve what they set out to do.
In the end, you will achieve what you believe you can achieve, and your worth will be whatever worth you choose to give yourself.
In other words, if you believe you are worth a lot, that is your worth. If you believe you are worth nothing, that is your worth too.
18. The most productive habit: reading. Successful people are voracious readers
It is often said that, when it comes to success, people who don’t read have absolutely no advantage over people who can’t read. Think about it carefully.
There is only one way to learn, and that is by acquiring knowledge and ideas from other people. That is why successful people tend to be voracious readers. But they go for productive reading, not entertainment.
In other words, you will increase your chances of success more by reading the biographies of successful people or the best business books than by reading crime novels.
19. They don’t lose their heads
A big mistake made by many people who came close to success and ended up failing was celebrating their success too soon.
Success went to their heads and they thought it was time to show the world what they had achieved. They forgot something. Success is not reaching a finish line.
Sometimes it is about staying at the top, and sometimes staying there is harder than getting there. Especially if you lose your head along the way. That is where it becomes clear whether you succeeded through luck or through your own merit, built on good habits.
Recommended: Donald Trump: it is easier to succeed than to stay successful.
20. Successful people don’t waste time
However many habits you build into your life, there is one thing you will never be able to do, and that is make a day longer. The day has 24 hours, and nobody has an advantage here. We all have the same time. The only difference is how we divide up those hours.
Successful people know their time is very valuable, so they try not to waste it on things that bring them nothing, let alone on people who don’t deserve that time.
They are always busy because they keep an organised schedule. They always know what they are going to do at each hour of the day, because they already planned it in their diary the day or the week before.
21. They stay motivated
Motivation is essential. When motivation fails, it is time to stop and analyse what is going wrong.
And they won’t hesitate to change or drop what they are doing if they feel it is draining their energy and vitality without their feeling rewarded.
22. They get up early
This is one of their competitive advantages. For them, the day starts earlier than for everyone else, and they have already been productive while the rest are still waking up. (Read: 5 reasons to get up earlier and how to do it)
But here we want to make it clear that adopting the habit of getting up at 5 in the morning doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It depends on what you do with that time. Sometimes you have to question many of the habits people try to sell us without any kind of evidence.
23. No excuses
Everyone tends to make excuses for a mistake they have made. Successful people own it, because someone who cannot admit a mistake cannot learn from it, and is therefore more likely to fail again.
Rafa Nadal’s uncle taught him this lesson, roughly: when you lose to an opponent, it is not because of the clay, the wind or the racket. The other player was better, full stop. Next time, work harder.
24. They find a purpose for their lives
Most people fail simply because they could not possibly succeed: they didn’t know where they wanted to get to. You can’t succeed if you don’t know what you want to achieve or what you want to fight for. All a successful person needs is a goal and to start taking steps towards it. Find yours.
25. They ask for advice
Sadly, I have seen people very close to me fall simply because they did not ask for advice from experts in subjects they had not mastered.
We all have weak spots, and there is no reason to try to fill them all. There are people who have devoted their whole lives to being the best at something. And they are there to help you be the best at what you do.
In my case, I am good at many things, but tax and law are not among them, so I would be an idiot if I didn’t take my tax questions to a tax adviser.
See also: How to get rich: Felix Dennis’s 8 tips for becoming a millionaire
Featured image: Frédéric de Villamil, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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