The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People

Richard Branson - Founder of Virgin Group

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

Finally, we’ve come to the final part of this series and I must say it’s been a joyful journey as I went through all the success traits to remind myself what it takes to become highly successful in life.

At the same time, I do hope that you’ve also enjoyed reading the series and gained some knowledge on what separates the winners from the losers.

So now let’s get down to the final part, and as usual, I hope you enjoy the read.

The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People – Part 5 (Trait 61 – 77)

61. Focus On Your Dreams, Not Regrets

“In life, we all have regrets, but beyond them there is always new hope, and definitely new dreams and a new future!” – Nanz Chong-Komo

Dreams are what motivate us, inspire us, and drive us forward. Dreams are what we strive to turn into reality to create a better life for our loved ones and ourselves. They empower us and they enliven us.

One of the biggest regrets you can have in life is the regret of not pursuing your dreams. Never allow other minuscule regrets to hold you back because if that happens, it will create one of the biggest regrets in your life.

62. Learn to Say No

To be successful, you have to focus your time and energy on activities and work that help you move forward in the right direction.

You can’t afford to take on work just because you feel bad or guilty by saying ‘no’. You have to learn how to say no to people’s requests that are nothing but distractions of your attention on what’s important. Highly successful people know how to say no without feeling guilty.

63. Trust Your Gut

Personally, I’m a big believer in trusting my own gut. There’d been a number of occasions that things turn out to be pretty positive when I trust my gut.

Sometimes, it’s all about how much faith you have in yourself. Of course, you still need to do your homework by conducting your research and seeking advice (see Trait 54 in Part 4) from other people in order to develop that gut feel.

64. Be Disciplined

The best definition of self-discipline is this: Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

65. Never Trade Time For Money

“Rich people prefer to get paid based on the results they produce, if not totally, then at least partially.” – T. Harv Eker

When you work for a fixed pay, you’re in essence trading time for money; and time is limited, meaning it’s extremely hard for you to scale up your returns.

But when you’re paid based on results produced, the sky’s the limit! Just look at the millionaire bankers, real estate agents, stockbrokers, network marketers, movie stars, sports celebrities, and the likes. They’re all paid based on performance.

66. Stay Healthy

According to a Forbes’ series of interviews done with 14 of the American billionaires in year 2006, it is noted that when asked about how often they exercise, every one of them replied that they exercise regularly, some even daily.

The following were their answers given during the interview:

How often do you exercise?

“Six days a week.” – Arthur Blank

“Every day.” – Tim Blixseth

“Daily.” – Franklin Otis Booth Jr.

“I try to do five times a week. Gauntlet, weights, basketball. ” – Mark Cuban

“Five times a week.” – Gerald Ford

“Three to five times a week. Playing pick-up basketball, weightlifting, elliptical machine.” – Danny Gilbert

“I’ve always been active and physically fit, but I just started working out at age 65.” – Kenneth Hendricks

“Three times a week.” – Wayne Huizenga

“Three to four times per week.” – George Kaiser

“I exercise three to five times per week.” – Michael Ilitch

“Try to every day.” – William Moncrief

“Three times a week.” – Phillip Ruffin

“Tennis four times a week and trainer three times a week, when I am in town.” – Jorge Perez

“At 85, every day I still do 90 push-ups and jog one mile.” – James Sorenson

67. Blow Your Own Trumpet

“If you don’t tell people about your success, they probably won’t know about it.” – Donald Trump

A lot of people have an issue with selling, especially when it comes to selling themselves or promoting themselves. The truth is, if you don’t sell, promote or market yourself, you’re not going to get anywhere.

If you don’t tell people what’s so great about you, why would they want to do business with you or hire you?

68. Keep a Keen Eye On Opportunities

Have you ever noticed that when you’re thinking of buying a certain make or model of car, you suddenly see them everywhere on the roads?

Did they just appear because you were thinking of buying one? Of course not! They were there all along. But once you focus your mind on it, they start appearing within your sights.

Opportunities are just the same. Once we start to focus on them, they’ll appear all around us. Hence, you need to be vigilant, always stay alert, and keep a look out for opportunities for they might be grabbed by someone else when you’re not attentive.

69. Outsource and Delegate

Nobody has the time and capabilities to accomplish all things required to achieve success. All of us are good in only one or a few areas, where we should dedicate all our time and effort in to produce the optimal results.

Outsourcing and delegating will free up your time to focus on what you enjoy and/or are good at (see Trait 52 in Part 4), and at the same time, let other more qualified talents handle what you suck at and/or simply hate doing.

70. Respect and Love Money

To a lot pf people, it is a taboo to talk about money. To most of them, it seems to be sinful or embarrassing to love money.

Of course I’m not saying to love money to the extent that you become a slave to it, but love money for the fact that you can put it to good use for you, your loved ones, and people who need help.

There’s nothing so evil about loving money unless you’re an evil person by nature and money will only bring out that characteristic of you because money only wears the character of its owner.

So if you want to be financially successful, you have to root out all your negative money beliefs and recondition yourself with positive money beliefs to enjoy all the wealth you rightly deserve.

71. Keep Track of Your Money

Just like how a business would keep track of their finances with their financial statements, you as an individual would also need to compute your own financial statements in order to track your own financial health.

You will need your ‘Personal Income Statement’ and ‘Personal Balance Sheet’ to keep track of all your income, expenses, cashflow, assets, liabilities, and net worth.

Your financial statements will help you to identify whether you’re on track to your financial goals, and if you’re not, it will help to identify where is going wrong.

72. Pay Yourself First

Highly successful people adopt the ‘earn, save and spend’ habit. This is also called the Pay Yourself First habit.

They never fail to put aside 10% – 20% of their income and live off the rest of the 80% – 90%. Some of them even put aside 50% or more of their income for savings and/or investment!

Owing to the power of compound interest, many people have built their fortunes by paying themselves first.

73. Control Your Urge to Splurge

Have you ever realised that no matter how much money you earn, you always seem to be running out of money?

Well, that’s because when you make more money, you simply spend more money! And the reason you spend more is because you think you deserve a better lifestyle since you’re making more money now!

Controlling impulse spending is crucial to building wealth and staying out of debt. No matter how much money you’re making, if you’re spending more than you earn, debt will be an assured result.

74. Spend Wisely

Besides controlling your spending, you need to be smart with how you spend your money. And to spend smart, you need to plan your purchases – both big-ticket items and daily necessities.

And also, to be smart in your spending, you may need to alter your consumption habits such as using energy saving bulbs, buy only during a sale, buy only house brands, ask for a discount, compare prices, buy only what you need, and so on.

75. Grow Your Money

In today’s society, it’s no longer enough to simply work hard for your money. You also need to make your money work hard for you.

However, leaving your money in your bank account earning the mediocre interest is far from the ideal way of growing your money. If you do that, you’re only assured of losing out to inflation over time.

To really grow your money, you need to put it in some sorts of investment vehicles such as stocks, property, REITs, index funds, and so on. The onus is to not depend on anyone else but yourself when it comes to investing.

When it comes to taking care of your money, nobody will care more about it than you.

76. Use Debt to Your Advantage

There are two types of debt: good debt and bad debt. Good debt makes you richer, while bad debt makes you poorer.

For example, if you want to grow your money by investing in real estate, it only makes sense to leverage (see Trait 27 in Part 2) on the bank’s money by getting a loan. That is good debt, if you get someone (a tenant) to pay off the loan for you.

On the other hand, if you use debt (credit cards, home equity loan) to fund your indulgences, you’ll only be headed toward a life of financial ruin.

77. Protect Your Money

There will always be financial predators trying to put their hands into your pockets to take away your money. And they come in all shapes, sizes and forms.

The single biggest financial predator is the taxman, who acts on behalf of the government. Robert Kiyosaki said, “A bureaucrat’s job is to get their hands deeper into your pockets – legally – and your job is to have them take as little as possible – legally.”

In order to keep financial predators’ hands out of your pockets, you need to learn the rules and play the rules to your advantage.

Cheers~

(Update: Read The Full List here)

P.S. If you’ve missed Part 1, 2, 3, and/or 4, 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

The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People – Part 4/5

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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