How Can You Become One of the Successful Types?

I once interviewed a woman who told me about how she turned her life around, moved from a dead-end job into a fulfilling life of helping other people. As I spoke with her I was struck with the similarities in stories that I’ve heard from a number of successful people. “I had to break away from my old friends and coworkers because to them, this was life. There was no other. And I knew that my life was a whole lot more than waiting tables in a little cafe.” Successful people are very different from unsuccessful people. People who are stuck in their rut tend to repeat the same things over and over. Successful people avoid saying these things at all cost.

1. “Not Possible.” This is the battle cry of the unsuccessful. The believe that if they can’t do it, then no one can. On the contrary, successful people haven’t met a challenge they aren’t willing to meet. The successful person has a never-ending “can-do” attitude that carries them from one success to the next.

2. “I’ll Do it Alone.” This is what people say when they don’t trust anyone else to do what they believe they’re best at doing. They can’t delegate. They can’t see the whole picture objective. In the end they will wind up slowing down the entire project and leaving you in a lurch because you needed their input last week and they won’t be done until next week.

3. “The Devil’s in the Details.” Another description for a nitpicker. This is the person who has an ax to grind, or a pet peeve they need to vent about, usually in as public a forum as possible. They have no intention of furthering the project, they want, even need the limelight on themselves in order to feel important. And the more they do it the more they need it because they couldn’t declare how unsuccessful they were any better.

4. “My Idea is Better.” Working as a team, to have one individual continually insist that their idea is the only one that will work says you either have a genius in your midst or you’re working with a chronic failure. The team member who believes that their idea is the only one that will work is short-sighted and a potential problem. No one is able to consider all possibilities, which makes working as a team a successful proposition.

5. “I know. I know.” When you’re a know-it-all, you proclaim to the world that you don’t. It means you’ve stopped growing, stopped learning and this is as far as you are going to go. You believe that you’re showing everyone how smart you are, but the real message to other successful people is that you have your own agenda and that is it.

Check yourself for any of these self-limiting behaviors. In order to be continually successful, you need to be open to the ideas of others and willing to see where you might have made a mistake. It’s OK, everyone makes them. Only successful people admit and learn from it.

Photo Credit: Interview Questions via Matthew Hurst at Flickr