The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People

Ingvar Kamprad - Founder of Ikea Furniture

*This blog post is Part 4 of a 5-part series on ‘The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People‘.

I hope you’ve learnt some great lessons from Part 1-3 of this series so far. The traits listed in this series are what have made highly successful people the superachievers they are.

In this post, I’m going to hand to you Part 4 of the series. Once again, I hope you’ll enjoy the read.

The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People – Part 4 (Trait 46 – 60)

46. Be Inquisitive

To be inquisitive, you’ve got to be curious. Forget about the saying, “Curiosity kills the cat.” Highly successful people are always asking a lot of ‘whys’.

They’re constantly seeking out answers and feedback. They’re always interested to know more and to find ways to improve either themselves or their works.

You’ve got to have a genuine interest in life and in your field of work to be truly successful.

47. Be Analytical

Highly successful people are also problem solvers. They create a lot of value by solving problems and therefore, they’re highly sought after and highly compensated.

To be able to solve problems, you’ve got to be analytical. This skill allows you to break things down into their constituent elements in order to examine them, draw conclusions, and hence provide solutions.

48. Be Discriminate

Highly successful people possess the ability to pay attention to subtle differences and exercise sound judgment, which explains why they’re winners in life because a sound judgment will lead you to make a sound decision, which will in turn lead you to achieve the desired result.

For example, investors who make their investment decisions based on what their friends, relatives or money managers say are investing based on opinions. This will usually lead to investment failures. Unfortunately, that’s how most investors invest.

On the other hand, smart investors are able to discriminate between facts and opinions. They will analyse (see Trait 47) both facts and opinions, form their own judgments, and then make their decisions.

49. Challenge Conventions

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

Challenging and defying conventions can be a trying experience because after all, you’re doing something or saying something that goes against the majority of people.

It can also be a lonely journey as nobody around you would understand your ideology or intention.

Nevertheless, highly successful people are unfazed. They understand that in order to stand out, you have to dare to do things differently, or simply do different things. Sameness will only stamp you out.

50. Be Self-Aware

“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.” – Lao Tzu

Raising your self-awareness allows you to better understand why you’re feeling the way you feel, and why you’re behaving the way you behave, which in turn will open your eyes to things you’d like to change about yourself and create the life you desire.

51. Commit to Constant Improvement

“He who stops being better stops being good.” – Oliver Cromwell

To be successful in any field, you need to learn to ask yourself, “How can I do this better, more efficiently, and/or more profitably?”

But you need to first acknowledge the fact that significant improvements take time. Don’t expect to achieve that overnight. They don’t happen.

Instead, begin with baby steps that are more manageable and achievable so that you won’t be overwhelmed. And the key to becoming excellent in something is simply to practise, practise, practise!

52. Maximise Your Time

In Trait 12, I mentioned that you need to create value because that’s ultimately what people are paying for.

And in order to increase your value output, you’d have to increase the amount of time you spend creating value.

The best way to do that is to focus more of your time on activities that create the greatest value. This is called the 80/20 Rule.

The essence of the 80/20 Rule is that, only 20 percent of your daily tasks are of high value that will produce 80 percent of the desired results. And you should spend 80 percent of your time engaging in the 20 percent of high valued tasks.

53. Be Generous

No, I’m not talking about being generous with your money, though that would be good if you would contribute a part of it to the charities or pay your employees well.

What I’m talking about here is to be generous in helping other people. The more you help people to succeed, the more they will help you to succeed.

Besides monetary contributions, one of the greatest ways to help other people is to share and impart your knowledge to them.

When you do so, you’d have empowered those people to fulfil their full potential and manifest their true destiny. And while you’re empowering others, you’d also be empowering yourself at the same time.

54. Seek Opinions, Advice and Feedback

You can’t know it all yourself. Other people’s opinions and advice allow you to see things from different perspectives which you’d most likely have missed and it helps you to make a better or more informed decision. Sometimes they may even be able to point out your mistakes, saving you time and money.

Feedback can be very important source of information. It allows you to look into which aspects of your life are not in order so that you can work on them, and also which aspects are in good shape so you can keep doing the same thing or fine tune slightly to make them better.

55. Don’t Envy, Don’t Resent, Don’t Get Jealous

It’s very common to hear people boast about other people’s successes, especially when they personally know that successful person they’re boasting about. These people are always full of envy for those highly successful people.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that’s all about what they do. Besides boasting of people’s successes and envying them, they don’t seek to work on their own success.

Highly successful people don’t envy other people’s successes. Instead, they admire them. They’re inspired and motivated by them.

The difference between the two is envy leads to jealousy and resentment, which are disempowering, while admiration leads to motivation and inspiration, which are empowering.

56. Don’t Eat Your Words

A promise is a promise. An agreement made is an agreement meant to be kept. Failing to deliver on your promise or keep to the agreement will make you lose trust, respect, and credibility with other people.

Integrity and credibility are two characteristics that could land you a million dollar deal. Heck, maybe even a multi-million dollar deal!

So, seek to make a promise or agreement only if you’re 100% confident of keeping, and write down all of your agreements somewhere so you won’t forget any.

57. Learn to Sell

If you want to get what you want in life, you have to learn how to sell. You have to learn to sell to your boss why you deserve a pay increment, you have to sell to your potential employer why you should be given the job, you have to sell to your clients on why you’d do a better job than anyone else, etc.

All highly successful people are great in selling two things – vision and ideas. That is why some of the greatest salespeople in the world are politicians and CEOs.

58. Keep an Open Mind

It’s good to be sceptical because it protects you from frauds and lies. However, it’s not good to be too sceptical because that will shut you off from genuine opportunities.

When presented with an opportunity – learning opportunity, moneymaking opportunity, relationship opportunity, etc – always approach it with an open mind. Always probe or investigate before drawing a conclusion.

59. Commit to Lifelong Learning

“If I am through learning, I am through.” – John Wooden

Nobody is ever great enough to stop learning. Even people with the greatest minds never stop to learn and keep growing themselves. They know that the moment you stop, you start to rot.

60. Model Other Successful People

Highly successful people are excellent in modelling and replicating the success blueprints of other successful people before them.

There are successful people in any field you can possibly think of whom you can choose to model after. And you can study about them in books, online resources, manuals, audio and video programmes, seminars, etc.

Another way is simply to seek out your role model to be your mentor if possible. Offer to be a volunteer or assistant for free, or pay him/her a fee to be your personal mentor. All you need to do is ‘Ask’ (see Trait 24 in Part 2).

That concludes Part 4 of the 5-part series. In the next post, you’ll get the list of Trait 61 – 77, which is also the last list of the series. So stay tuned.

Cheers~

(Update: Read Part 5 here)

P.S. If you’ve missed Part 1, 2 and/or 3, please click on the respective links below to go through them.

The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People – Part 1/5

The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People – Part 2/5

The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People – Part 3/5

P.P.S. If you have any views or comments, or if you have more traits to add to the list, I’d love to hear from you!

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