We all desire success. Any rational person wants to be successful; be it in academics, career, entrepreneurship or life. With this in mind, what are some of the important things to consider?
1. Pay attention To Facts, Not Stories
Stories create emotions, which cause us to react, and those reactions are based on conclusions drawn from incomplete information at times. To be successful, it will require that you be able to break the storytelling habit that’s happening in your head. Instead, separate the facts from the stories, and make decisions based on what you know for sure.
2. Question the Norm – Always!
For the most part, what you believe about anything has been firmly implanted in you by others throughout your lifetime. But if you will achieve anything worthwhile, you must question every belief you have.
Take Steve Jobs, founder of Apple as an example, he didn’t believe that a phone could just be a phone. He believed it could be a computer, a camera and a music player. One of the hardest habits to break is believing what you have been groomed to believe your entire life.
If you can break this habit, there’s no telling where your inquisitive mind will take you!
3. See Criticisms For What They Are – An Avenue For Growth
To take criticisms lightly on the chin, you require a very healthy ego. This is what will help you take criticisms apart, identify the good points you need to work on and act on them. To be successful at whatever you do, you need to believe that you can be, do and have anything that you put your mind to.
That being said, one of the hardest habits to break is believing you are better than you are. When someone tells you something about yourself that you do not like, it’s easy to become defensive and try to defend yourself or your work. But you shouldn’t do this even when you think the criticism is unnecessarily harsh or borne out of envy. You show high self-confidence when you do not see yourself through the eyes of others, yet are not deaf to their opinions about you.
So, if you can break the habit of ignoring criticism, there’s a good chance that there’s more to learn in one bad review than in the other 500 good ones combined.
This post was adapted from Stacey Alcorn of entrepreneur.com
