The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People – The Full List

We all want to be better, wiser, richer and hence, more successful. So the common sense thing to do would be to know and understand how successful people think and act. And the next common sense thing to do is to talk to them and read about them.

Successful people possess certain qualities and follow certain rules and that is why they’re able to achieve what they’ve set out to achieve. These are what separate them from everybody else.

The list below is not one that simply rolls out a bunch of feel good ideas. This is a list of the traits that highly successful people possess, which I’ve found out over the years after talking to many of the successful people I know and reading a multitude of books on success and successful people.

The reason of me compiling this list is that I thought it would be a good idea to clarify the lessons I’ve learnt about what it takes to be successful – clarity is power.

Also, I thought you might be interested to know what they are, or perhaps you already know but would think it’d be a good idea if someone sorted it out for you. So now I’m happily passing on to you all these important points with this huge list of success traits.

The list is in no particular order of importance. This is a seriously long post – nearly 7,000 words. It’ll probably take you about 30 minutes to read the entire post. So if you’re not ready to go through it all at once, I’ve previously split it up into a 5 – part series which you can start with Part 1 here.

Part 1-4 reveals 15 of the 77 success traits each, with Part 5 concluding with the last 17 traits. But if you’re ready tackle the giant at one go, then let’s get started.

The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People

1. Do What You Love

“When you’re happy doing what you love, you’ve already won.” – Jack Canfield

Highly successful people absolutely love what they do. They’re having so much fun doing what they do that it no longer seems like work to them anymore. And because they love what they do, they dedicate so much time to it that they naturally become an expert in it.

2. Take 100% Responsibility

They assume 100 percent responsibility for everything they experience in their lives. When things go wrong, they don’t make excuses; they don’t blame everyone and everything else; and they take actions to turn things around instead of complaining about it like most people would.

3. Take Actions

As mentioned above, successful people take actions. Not just actions, they take massive actions. They understand that things don’t get done by talking; things get done by doing. In essence, action is the key to greatness.

4. Expect the Best of Yourself

As for this, I think Michael Jordan says it best:

“I expect more from myself. More than anyone would ever dare to expect from me.”

You don’t have to be the best, but you have to be the best that you can be. You can fail everyone else, but never fail yourself by not giving your best shot. And to bring out the best in you, you need to benchmark yourself against the very best in your field.

5. Decide What You Want

The main reason why highly successful people get what they want in life is because they take the time and effort to seriously think about what exactly it is that they want.

They define their desires in clear and gripping detail. Another reason is they never settle for anything less. Once they’ve made up their mind on a goal, they charge ahead regardless of what other people say. They never allow anyone to steal their dreams.

6. Dream Big

“If you are going to think at all, you might as well think big.” – Donald Trump

Highly successful people choose to be the best that they can be and live the best life they can have. They never settle for anything less. So, they will only have big dreams because nobody makes it big by dreaming small. It doesn’t cost you a damn thing to dream. If you don’t even dare to dream, what do you dare to do?

There is no limit to what you can dream of. The only limit you have is the limit you put on yourself. You can be as big or as small as you make up your mind.

7. Believe in Yourself

Other people judge you based on what you have achieved. But you have to judge yourself based on what you believe you can achieve. Successful people follow their heart, trust their own instinct, and have absolute faith in themselves.

8. Believe It’s Possible

“Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” – George Bernard Shaw

It’s very common that people will ridicule your ideas as absurd or simply not workable. In fact, that appears to be a good sign to many of the successful people because they believe that when everybody is against your idea, you just might be on to something great.

9. Make Unfaltering Commitment to Your Goals

They are 100 percent committed to achieving their goals. They feel that they’d be betraying their own soul if they don’t make it a must to achieve their goals.

10. Be Absolutely Focused

They are always a master of something rather than a jack-of-all-trades. And to become a master, they are absolutely focused in doing what they’re doing because they understand that it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to excel in a particular field.

11. Stay Positive in the Face of Challenges

As the saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.” The reason why successful people are able to keep going when things seem to be falling apart is because they have a positive attitude. They never seem to worry too much. That is not to say they don’t give a hoot. They just have so much belief in themselves that they ‘know’ they will eventually get to where they want to be. They see challenges or obstacles as nothing more than a slight delay to their destination.

12. Be a Person of Value

Nobody pays you for the job you get done. They pay you for the value you’ve created with the job you get done. Successful people understand that it is value that people are paying for so they always seek to create a lot of value.

13. Embrace Failures

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford

Successful people don’t believe in failure. They only believe in feedback. To them, failure is simply life’s way of telling you that you’re not doing things quite correctly, so go do it again. Real failure occurs only when you give up.

14. See Problems as Opportunities

The best metaphor to this would be ‘make lemonade out of lemons’. Problems may be an opportunity to learn a big lesson, or an opportunity to make big money. Either way, you get to gain in a big way.

15. Be Honest

Lies and dishonesty will be exposed over time. When exposed, you’ll lose your credibility and put a stigma on your reputation, which it will be extremely difficult for you to restore. Being honest will help you gain support, respect, and credibility, which are some of the crucial elements that will determine your success.

16. Talk to Yourself Like a Winner

We all talk to ourselves. However, average people speak in negativity while successful people speak to themselves like winners. They always tell themselves that nothing is ever too far fetch for them and that they’re capable of doing great things.

17. Be Decisive

Highly successful people can almost always make a decision within seconds. This is due to their ability to absorb and digest information quickly. And they’re never afraid of making a mistake. Any decision is better than no decision. And any action is better than no action. Decisiveness can make or break your business.

18. Be Well Prepared

Being well prepared is one of the ways to help you be decisive and make a quick decision. Be prepared with the right information, right knowledge and the right resources. And when opportunities come your way, you will be well equipped to grab it right away.

19. Be Courageous

“Courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the conquering of fear.” – Donald Trump

There’s no way to avoid fear. Everybody has it. This is just human nature. Fear is meant to protect us from harm, but human beings have conditioned one another to allow fear to limit ourselves.

The most common fear is the fear of failure. Successful people have learnt to conquer this fear. They have learnt to act in spite of fear. Their greatest fear is not the fear of failure; it’s the fear of regret – regret of not having tried.

20. Do It Now

As mentioned in Trait 8, highly successful people are extremely committed to their goals. Hence, they tend to be very impatient when it comes to taking actions because they know that the sooner they start doing what they must do, the sooner they will reach where they want to be.

And they also know that obstacles along the way are inevitable. And those obstacles will slow down their journey. So, the sooner they face and overcome those obstacles, the sooner they will arrive.

Sometimes, being impatient can do you good rather than harm. Seek to be impatient when dealing with procrastination.

21. Welcome the Unknown

Perhaps you have already heard this: “The only thing constant in life is change itself”. Most people are afraid of change because along with it comes the unknown. But since nobody can avoid change, successful people choose to embrace change and welcome the unknown that follows wholeheartedly. They look upon change as an opportunity to grow and seek ways to use changes to make their life better, richer, and more fulfilling.

22. Take Small Action Steps

In order not to overwhelm themselves with the size of the task they’re undertaking, successful people break it down into smaller and more manageable individual action steps using a powerful process called Mind Mapping.

With mind mapping, they’re able to chunk down large goals or tasks into daily action items, which they’ll then work on the most important item first and slowly move on to other items on the list.

23. Just Get Going

This is something I just can’t emphasise enough.

“You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.” – Mike Litman

Too many people are crippled by analysis paralysis. They’re always waiting for things to be perfect before they start taking actions.

The truth is, things will never be perfect. There’s always room for improvement. And you need not be perfect to offer real value to people. Most of the times, what you have on hands is already good enough.

If perfection were required, iPhone would never have been launched because the first batch of iPhones was infested with numerous shortcomings.

24. Ask For What You Want

“Whatever it is you want from any other person, just ask for it.” – Source Unknown

Asking for what you want and/or need is one of the most powerful tools for success in the world. Many people are afraid to ask because they don’t want to look stupid or ignorant.

However, it’s better to ask and be deemed a fool for that one moment than to not ask and be a fool for the rest of your life.

Also, people don’t ask because they’re afraid of rejection. Rejection is a form of risk – risk of losing face and hurting one’s pride.

But highly successful people is more than willing to take this risk because they understand one simple principle, which is: If they get a ‘no’, they’re in no way any worse off than before they ask. But if they get a ‘yes’, they’d be a lot better off.

25. Hang Around With Other Successful People

Successful people like to hang out with other successful people. This is because they know that they will very likely become like the people they spend the most time with. And they can learn from one another and support each other.

If you have yet to find any successful or positive people to hang around with, seek them out in seminars, books and audio programmes. Even if you have to participate in all these activities alone, you’d still be better off than spending time with negative people who’ll hold you back and suck the life energy out of you.

26. Acknowledge That You Can’t Please Everybody

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby

Nobody has ever achieved pleasing everybody – not Jesus Christ, not Muhammad, not Buddha. There’s always going to be people who love you, and people who hate you. This is the reality of life which you have to accept. Don’t beat yourself up just because not everybody loves you or you realise there are people who dislike or even hate you. The most important thing is to love, respect, and accept yourself for who you are.

27. Leverage

If you want to achieve more success and achieve it faster, you need to capitalise on the power of leverage. Highly successful people are constantly looking for leverage to expedite and/or multiply their efforts.

According to Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen in their best-selling book, The One Minute Millionaire, leverage is the power to control a lot with just a little. In the business world, there are 5 kinds of leverage:

• Other People’s Money

• Other People’s Experience

• Other People’s Ideas

• Other People’s Time

• Other People’s Work

And also, there are 6 forms of leverage:

1. Mentors

2. Teams

3. Networks

4. Infinite Networks

5. Tools and Skills

6. Systems

28. Never Give Up

“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” – John D. Rockefeller

One of the guarantees in life is that the universe will certainly put you through multiple challenges and obstacles to test your self-belief and your commitment to your goals.

The choice of the majority is to give up because that’s an easier way out. But highly successful people will always find ways to get around, over, or through the obstacles and persevere until they succeed.

29. Exceed Expectations

Doing more than expected is something that highly successful people are naturally inclined to do. They do not need to consciously remind themselves that exceeding expectations is what is required to achieve greatness. It is in their blood. As a result, they’re always the ones closing the deals, receiving promotions, earning extra benefits, and so on.

30. Be Proactive

There are 2 kinds of people – People who make things happen and people who wait for things to happen to them.

Highly successful people are proactive people who make things happen by going out there to find opportunities when they’re not presented with any. If they can’t find any, they will create their own opportunities.

People who wait for things to happen to them are reactive people. When they’re not presented with any opportunity, they carry on waiting and hoping that some day opportunities will just fall from the sky onto their lap.

31. Plan to Live Your Dream

As the saying goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Dreams don’t turn into reality by chance. Dreams require a combination of good planning and massive actions to take life.

Successful people don’t do things randomly to become successful. They always plan a few steps ahead so that they have a good sense of the direction they should be taking in order to get to where they want to be.

32. Determine Your First Major Milestone

You can’t plan without knowing where you want to go. However, you don’t only plan how to achieve what you want to achieve in the next few years. You should set your first major milestone at least ten years down the road. Subsequently, you break it up into smaller yearly, quarterly and monthly milestones.

Once you’ve achieved your first major milestone, then you can set your second major milestone another ten years down the road and plan how to get there.

33. Visualise

Visualisation is another great success tool which highly successful people constantly utilise to help accelerate their achievement of any success. This is an activity which a lot of athletes are told to perform by their peak performance trainers on a daily basis and just before a match.

Visualising your goals has two main benefits:

One is that, when you visualise your goals, it will help you to fire up your burning desire so that you’ll be motivated to go all out and do your utmost to turn your goals into reality.

Secondly, when you visualise what you want, your subconscious mind will be activated to start noticing everything that is available to help you achieve your goals and create solutions for achieving them.

34. Fake It Till You Make It

This does not mean to lie about what you do or who you are. It simply means to imagine as if you’re already where you want to be, doing what you want to do.

Before they’re successful, highly successful people already think, talk, dress, and act like they have already made it in life. This follows the theory of Be Do Have, where you first be the successful person you strive to be; do what a successful person will do; and then you’ll eventually get what you long to have.

35. Take a Break

Although successful people enjoy what they do, they still get burnt out if they do nothing else but work. Breaks from work are good for recharging oneself and reflect on what needs to be improved to make things better. It clears your mind and prepares you for the journey ahead.

36. Admit Your Mistakes

Subdue your ego. Be brave to admit your mistakes.

“Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement” – Henry Ford

By admitting your own mistakes, you’re able to develop a clearer perspective on the issue at hands that needs to be resolved and hence, helping you to come up with a viable solution to make things work.

37. Set Your Goals

After you’ve decided what you want (see Trait 5), you need to turn them into specific and measurable goals and write them down in details. Vague goals produce vague results, which is why your goals need to be as specific as possible and there must be a way of measurement so that you know very well if you have achieved your goals.

It is important to write them down in details because writing them down will send stronger signals to your subconscious mind and trigger it to seek out opportunities and solutions to help you achieve your goals.

38. Think Long-Term

Highly successful people don’t sacrifice long-term advantage for short-term gains. For example, they’d rather forgo a sale than risk tarnishing their credibility and reputation if the sale is not conducted in their clients’ best interest. They understand high credibility and good reputation are what will bring them the most benefits in terms of repeat businesses over the long-term.

39. Speak to Win

If you want to achieve great success, you have to learn how to win friends and influence other people.

Highly successful people are great in motivating and impelling people to think, feel, and act accordingly with the mere use of words.

It may or may not be a skill they’re born with. But whether they possess it naturally or not, they will seek to pick up or further enhance this highly valuable skill.

40. Put in the Sweat

Most people are too lazy to be successful. They may already be working hard at work, but they’re not willing to make sacrifices after their work hours to learn, study, and pick up extra skills that are helpful in propelling them to higher achievement.

Highly successful people often start their day early, work long hours, take short breaks, and they’ll always dedicate time to learn something new to grow themselves. They understand they have to put in the sweat before they can reap the dividends.

41. Establish Good Relationships

I’ve mentioned on my blog before that no millionaire is self-made. Every millionaire makes his/her million(s) with the help of someone else – family, friends, partners, etc.

Everybody needs help every now and then. Highly successful people are always not afraid or embarrassed to ask for help (Trait 24 – Ask For What You Want). But you can only get help if you’ve established good relationships with the people you’re seeking help with.

42. Give to Receive

If you want to receive, you must first give. If you want help from other people, you first be willing to help them. You must first volunteer to help without asking anything in return. Be genuine in wanting to help.

This goes the same for everything in life, be it money, happiness, love, care, attention, or anything else. You must first give to receive.

43. Stretch Yourself

If we keep living within our own comfort zone, we’ll only be trapping our own potential to achieve something great and remain stuck in the rut.

Highly successful people believe that they’d have accomplished nothing if they had not stepped out of their comfort zone.

They’re always ready to do what they’re unfamiliar and uncomfortable with, and are prepared to face whatever comes along as challenges to help them grow to become better, wiser and richer.

44. Increase Your Financial IQ

Highly successful people became successful and remain successful because they’re financially educated.

Robert Kiyosaki has said, “It’s financial education that enables people to process financial information and turn it into knowledge… and most people don’t have the financial education they need to take charge of their lives.”

Highly successful people don’t simply follow other people’s advice blindly no matter how professional they are. They will seek professional advice, do their own analysis, make their own judgments, and then make their decisions. By doing so, they become educated and increasing their financial IQ in the process.

45. Be a Risk Taker

The greatest risk in life is to take no risk at all. If you don’t take the risk, you have zero percent chance of getting what you want. But when you take the risk, you’ll have at least 50 percent chance. In other words, taking a risk means giving yourself a chance or hope. If you don’t take it, you’re simply depriving yourself a chance and give yourself nothing to hope for.

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).

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 of 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, etc.

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.

Well, there you have it. Congratulations for coming through all the way! These are all the important success lessons I’ve learnt and I’ve condensed them into a not too short post here… Ok ok, its a long post. But it’s shorter than a book.

I may have missed out a couple of success traits which I may not be aware of. If so, please feel free to add one or as many as you can think of to the list in the comment section. Otherwise, just leave a feedback. I’d love to hear from you!

Cheers~

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