The most important Success Factor

What’s the real diff between success (in a career / business)  or average?

There is an on-going quest to figure out the real traits that lead to success; integrity, competence, emotional intelligence just to mention a few. No doubt these are important traits, however, there are many people who also have these traits and still do not enjoy success. And, let's face it, some people are successful without having integrity, or emotional intelligence.

So, it is fair to ask – What is the real difference? I argue it is ‘Persistent Goal-Orientated Action’. That means we must have an idea what we want to achieve on long-term. Focus our time and mind on developing, reviewing, adjusting but mainly – at least 80% - on DOING things that bring us closer to the goal. Persistently, all the time.

I haven’t met a successful person who does not display this ‘Persistent Goal-Orientated Action’.

Some philosophical notes on the subject.

- Goals are not chiselled in stone. Events, opportunities may require adjustments. Do so. Just continue to think big.

- One can lose many times and turn out a winner. Keep on learning from the defeats. Keep going.

 

- We can make many mistakes and recover. Ask yourself which mistakes you cannot make as they are unrecoverable. Avoid those.

- It is normal to feel defeated and miserable sometimes. Then just do that. Feel miserable for a while. It can be very cleansing for the soul. At some point you will realize that it didn’t solve anything. Back to action time.

- There is action that brings you closer to your goal and sometimes we are just doing things routinely. Habitually, see the difference between the two and focus on the first one.

- Most of us were put in front of a staircase, a few lucky ones on an escalator, i.e. most of us need to do the climbing ourselves. Success requires persistant hard work.

- There is a lot of unpleasant, boring stuff to be done but bring you closer to the goal. That is where persistence plays such an important part.

- There will be unfairness, adversity.  Again, that is where persistence is so import