Thirteen key skills to success
15.04.2019.
To me, success is an ongoing process of striving to become more. It is an opportunity to continually grow emotionally, socially, spiritually, intellectually, physiologically and financially, while contributing in some positive way to the others. The point of this post is simple – by developing and applying the following skills you will be successful and you will be able to change not only the way how you feel about yourself, but also your results. Maybe we are not born with all of them – but one is sure, you can learn and develop by practicing.
1. Clarity
Clarity is the starting point of all success. Without a clear vision what we would like to achieve and accomplish goal, we fail. Clarity is the ability to determine exactly what it is that you want to be, have or do in life. Clarity is the key – be clear about what you want, be clear about what you have to do to get it, speak, walk, talk and act with clarity.
2. Decisiveness
Be decisive to develop the characteristic and quality of decisiveness. Be able to make decision quickly and confidently. When you are decisive you can:
- Make decisions even in ambiguous and time-pressed situations
- Select a course of action despite lack of full information
- Understand that making no decision still has consequences
We can be talented, intelligent and ambitious, but if we can readily make hard decisions in our life, we will always work for the people who make decisions readily. So, the thing about decisions is to make one and if it doesn’t work to make another. If that one still doesn’t work, try making another decision and so on until you get it correctly.
3. Vision
You have to have a vision for yourself and your life. The key to have a vision is to have a dream – you have to get a dream if you want your dream to come true. Vision should turn you on, so dream free and dream big!!!
4. Results
Be result-oriented, not activity-oriented. Be a person who is focused on the end-result of any task assigned. Practice willingness and the ability to discipline yourself to be clear what it is that you want, to be clear where are you going, to be clear about the results. Work only on those results that have the ability to discipline yourself.
5. Competencies
Commitment to become excellent is your working field or your interest. There is no person who is successful and is not excellent at what they do. The success is predictable if you commit yourself to becoming excellent. This will change everything about you. You must commit yourself to excellence, read a book, go on seminars, listen to every single tape, watch every single video and spend every single hour with successful people. Learn what they needed to know to become successful. The main point is simple – do your best every time and strive to do better!
6. Concentration
Practice the ability to focus and concentrate on what you want to accomplish and the ability to concentrate single-mindedly without distraction and diversion. Those are the key factores to success. What most people do – they make a list of everything they have to do and then they start at the bottom of the list. In many cases, they work on the irrelevant things and at the end of the day they haven’t done anything. So, concentrate on top items! Always concentrate on the best use of your time!
7. Common sense
The first type of common sense, good sense, can be described as "The knack for seeing things as they are and doing things as they ought to be done." You can train your mind to use common sense, you can train your mind to think things through before acting. Some tips to develop common sense are – listen to your intuition, learn from your setbacks, try to develop general principles from each setback. Ask yourself: “What is the valuable lesson I can learn from this experience?”
8. Creativity
Every single human being is a creative genius. The curiosity is a first step towards creativity. So, ask questions, constantly ask questions. Never stop asking questions, be open and flexible. All changes in our life come with the input of new information. Creative people are always looking for faster, better, easier cheaper, newer ways to do things. Keep your mind flexible and open, ask questions, remember that one new idea is enough to start a fortune.
9. Consideration
Your success in life is determined by your relationships with other people. More precisely, how well you get along with other human beings affects your quality of interaction and determines your happiness, success, achievements, wealth etc. Practice and learn to be more effective with other people.
10. Consistency
Consistency means that dependable, steady, predictable work is always vastly superior with people who tend to be more successful than those who flash here and there. They can’t be counted on over the long term. Be a person that everybody can depend upon, let the people know that if you say something, you’ll do it.
11. Commitment
Commitment is one of the hardest things that human beings do but it’s definitely a key ingredient to success. Achieving career success through commitment and ownership is to always have the end goal on your mind. Whether it's your personal career goal or the goal of the organization you work for (or both), committing yourself to your job and taking personal ownership of your role will get you much closer to success.
So, it’s important to find work that lets you commit, it’s important to find a relationship you can commit to – commit yourself to your boss, commit yourself to your family, to your friends, commit yourself to your job, commit yourself to your relationship.
12. Courage
Courage is an outstanding quality of all leaders, which means that you have an ability, you have willingness to confront your fears. Most fears disappear when you confront them. Dare to go forward in your life, dare to go in the direction of fulfilling your potential. Always move forward, whenever you have a choice of either staying still and playing it safe or moving forward – choose to move forward, not because you will necessarily succeed, but cement a habit of moving forward. Courage is absolutely essential.
13. Confidence
Confidence comes to us as the result of everything else. If you are concentrated single-mindedly, if you are clear about your goal, if you practice courage, consistency and commitment and all the above mentioned skills, you will develop a level of self-confidence. You can build confidence by doing a certain thing over and over again. This action builds a foundation within your own mind that you can do whatever you need to be successful.
Ultimately, don’t forget that the road to success is always under construction – it’s a progressive course, not an end to be reached.