Contents
The common traits of people who always succeed
personal development
The expert in leadership and motivation, Francisco Alcaide, brings together in «Learning from the best» some of the reflections of successful people capable of inspiring and pushing us to fight for our goals and challenges
«The results do not lie. If your life is not as you would like it to be, either you don’t know something or you are not doing something right. This phrase by the expert in leadership and motivation, Francisco Alcaide, is one of those verbal darts that invite you to question yourself by appealing to the “Self-responsibility”, a word that, in his opinion, can be a synonym of success, especially in this context of pandemic and uncertainty in which there is a tendency to “blame” other people or the circumstances in which we are living for what we do not like or that does not go well for us.
Alcaide has spent nearly twenty years studying why some people (and some companies) achieve their goals and
others stay halfway. He has just published «Learning from the best 3», a compendium of knowledge for the elaboration of which he has studied (and in some cases has interviewed) hundreds of leading personalities from the world of business, sports, fashion, science and technology. economics or personal development with one goal: to show that our ability to learn is our main asset and that the best way to learn is one of the best.
Something that can make a difference in a person’s life is if they decide to go victim or protagonist Well, as Alcaide argues, in life there are only two options: either accept the existing conditions or accept the responsibility of changing them. And this, in the context of a pandemic, is not a trivial question because it is tempting to blame the context and the circumstances for what is going wrong or what is not going as we would have liked.
Circumstances have an influence, yes, but the truth is that they do not determine and, as Alcaide points out, those circumstances that sometimes serve as an excuse “not to do”, “not to choose” or “not to decide” can tell us where to start but not where we end up. In fact, history is full of cases of successful people who went very far in their professions or in their lives, even though they did not always start from the most favorable circumstances, neither economic, nor personal, nor family nor academic. And that “triumph despite everything” has a lot to do with three issues on which the author has a special influence: the attitude determination and eagerness to learn. «If you respond to everything that happens to you by complaining, denying it and rejecting it instead of accepting it and learning from it, the results will be very different and the same happens if you show determination (do whatever it takes for as long as it takes) and ability to learn, because these aspects will make the difference between where you are and where you want to be, “he argues.
10 common traits of successful people
Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel; athletes like Rafa Nadal or Pau Gasol; thinkers like Daniel Pink or Simon Sinek; stories of self-improvement like those of Ernest Shackleton or Viktor Frankl; experts in positive psychology such as Tal Ben-Shahar or Sonja Lyubomirsky; Political leaders such as Winston Churchill or Benjamin Franklin or activists such as Martin Luther King or Maya Angelou are some of the personalities whose reflections Francisco Alcaide analyzes in this third installment of «Learning from the best».
What is it that distinguishes these people from the rest of the mortals? Throughout his research, the expert managed to find patterns of behavior or, rather, he managed to identify some of the traits that are repeated when one analyzes life and the reflections of people who succeed or who have succeeded in life. And this is how Francisco Alcaide sums them up:
1. Clarity of goals. “The main reason why a person does not get what he wants is because he does not know what he wants,” he clarifies.
2 Action. “If you decide to do something but don’t act, you haven’t really decided anything,” he explains. This point is also linked to overcoming the fears that slow us down or paralyze us because to achieve things you have to do things and to do things you have to be brave.
3 Discipline. This point implies “doing what has to be done even if it doesn’t feel like it” and it is more important than it seems because, as Alcaide points out, the difficult thing is not knowing what to do, the difficult thing is to do it. And that also has to do with habits.
4. Focus. What experience says is that when a successful person comes to mind it is because they are an expert in something or in a subject and for this it is important to focus one hundred percent because the day has 24 hours, but the usual thing is that we Let’s scatter “Being good at something requires an accumulation of experience and knowledge with a focus on it. But focusing implies saying no to many things, choosing and discarding and being excellent at something implies discarding many things and that costs, “he argues.
5. Patience. It is a fundamental value because it is frequent that we give up when we do not see results. However, the Warden explains that it is not that people fail, what happens rather is that they leave because they do not see results in the short term. “It is difficult for us to work with a medium and long-term vision and that vision is important to remain constant and not give up,” he clarifies.
6. Self-responsibility. This does not mean that everything depends on oneself. What it really means is, according to the Warden, that that person focuses on solutions and not on excuses. Although there are many things that are not our responsibility and do not depend on us, what does depend on us is to find a solution. “Excuses are easy, they make us live and sleep peacefully, but they don’t solve anything,” he says.
7 Determination. This value implies that that person “will do what it takes, as long as it takes” to get something.
8. Control mental. The usual thing is that our mind tends towards the negative and our thoughts incite us to think “that we are not capable”, “that we are not good at something” and that we are not going to achieve it. That is why for the Warden, mind control is a basic tool to silence that inner noise that takes us away from our objectives.
9. Suitable environments. The American speaker Jim Rohn said that life is an average of the five people with whom we interact. That is why for Alcaide the environment is basic because not only does it drag us towards a certain way of thinking, feeling and acting but it also does it without realizing it. «You cannot be in an environment of mediocrity and be excellent. You must be with people who reflect who we would like to be and who are better than us. If you are in a place where you are the one you know the most, you are in the wrong place, ”he advises.
10. Attitude of continuous improvement. When you relax, when you think you’ve got what you want, that’s when you take a step back. And that is something that, according to Alcaide, has always been clear to Amancio Ortega for whom complacency is one of the worst attitudes you can have when you want to achieve something great.
And as a dressing for all these “ingredients necessary to cook success” the expert proposes the creativity, that infinite capacity to invent answers that has been responsible for the great advances that we have known throughout history, especially in moments of crisis like the one we are experiencing.
Phrases about success … to remember
Jim Rohn said that “frustration is trying to have an extraordinary life without becoming extraordinary people” and that is the message behind the philosophy of “Learning from the best” summarized in one sentence: your personal development is your destiny, that is , who you become is reflected in what you get. Here are some excerpts from the book referring to success.
Success is not accidental; failure either. Success (failure) is rarely produced by a specific event, but is usually achieved by the accumulation of small virtuous actions (defective) sustained over time that end up leading to a certain favorable (unfavorable) result. Nobody succeeds (fails) by chance. We live in a world of cause and effect, and to change the effects you have to attack the causes. Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, put it this way: “If someone wants to be healthy, we must first ask him if he is willing to eliminate the cause of his illness. Only then is it possible to obtain it.
Success consists of overcoming fears. Fear is not just a matter of cowards, it concerns us all; the difference is that the brave face fears and the cowards flee from them. You will never be as safe as you would like. There is only one option: pull forward. Seth Godin reminds us like this: ‘Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person. ‘ Without courage there can be no success (or happiness). Fortune favors the brave (fortune smiles on the brave).
Success is the fruit of passion. The secret to uncorking your true potential is to do what excites you. ‘Passion is energy,’ Oprah Winfrey reminds us. Feel in you the power that comes from doing what you are passionate about. ‘ Otherwise, it is difficult to leave a mark.
Everything begins and ends with oneself. It is not the direction of the wind but the position of the sails that indicates where we are going. A ship does not sink because of the water that surrounds it, but because of the water that enters its interior. The older you grow, the less power your environment and circumstances have over you. Jim Kwik, author of ‘Limitless’ puts it this way: If an egg breaks from the outside; the terina life; if it breaks from within, life begins. Great things always start from the inside.