Success is a funny old thing. When you have it, achieving it seems the most obvious thing in the world, but when you don't have it, finding success seems to be a mountain far too steep to climb.

Other people can be successful - they are there to be seen - but can we do it too? And do we really want to?

After being tagged by my friend Becky Hagel in her blog - http://philomaths.blogspot.com/ - to come up with my top ten success tips, I thought hard before writing this down. I'm sure that there are a lot more than ten attributes that a successful person needs, but here are ten that I think are particularly important.


#1. My first thought was that a successful person needs honesty and integrity, but the truth is that a lot of people do manage to become successful without much of either of those traits. It is sad, but a lot of dishonest people do make it to the top. The rest of us end up voting for them!

Instead, I've made my first success factor 'Be true to your own character.'

Every single one of us carries around a set of personal ethics that we have grown up with. They come from our parents, our friends and our fundamental nature. Successful people use their own personalities to the best effect possible. There is an old saying that people can never be who they aren't. That means that whatever field we want to be successful in must 'gel' with our own nature. You have to feel comfortable with your chosen field at a basic level because as soon as self doubt creeps in, as it will if you are trying to live a lie, failure is just around the corner.

"Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success." Vanessa Redgrave.


#2. You must have an absolute desire to succeed.

Thinking that it would be nice is not enough. Success depends on your whole being becoming attuned to the idea of succeeding.

Many people fear success. Until they overcome that fear and embrace success as the most desired outcome in their lives, they are doomed before they start.

Other people start out on the right track, but fall down at the first hurdle.

Yet others change course at the first sign of difficulty and so can only ever experience a small taste of success in any field that they happen to be in today.

Successful people don't worry about failures, they don't get bored and change direction and they don't allow a single moment of fear to pollute their dream. They have such a strong desire to succeed that everything else is, by definition, secondary.

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill.


#3. Success is fueled by an unshakeable self-belief.

People who doubt their ability to succeed rarely do. 'The Secret' movie and book talks about the power of manifestation - that which you believe the most is the most likely to come true - and success is a prime example.

How many times have you ever heard about a person who became hugely successful by accident? Apart from the odd lottery winner, very, very few. Success is something that happens on purpose, and to people who believe they can and will succeed.

"Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can." Richard Bach.


#4. Ongoing education is vital.

I don't mean that you need to earn endless university degrees to be successful. Far from it. A good formal education is important, but by no means necessary to success. A great many successful people have little in the way of examination results. But what they almost all have is an innate desire to learn from the world around them.

Real success is dependent on the practical application of knowledge, as opposed to education.

If you look at any successful person I will lay money on the fact that they continuously study their chosen field. They have an insatiable appetite for the latest news and an unquenchable thirst for the most cutting-edge strategies and techniques. As individuals, successful people are usually eager to spend a considerable amount of their own money on keeping up-to-date by furthering their own education. And successful companies understand the importance to their vibrant futures of fostering an ongoing education policy amongst their staff.

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." Henry Ford.


#5. Putting it into action.

Action on its own is not enough. The only kind of action that leads to success is persistent action - action that builds on itself and becomes self-sustaining.

It is often said that you need to take massive action to succeed. That may be partly true, but if that massive action is just a one-off event, it is rarely enough to provide you with much more than a small and temporary victory.

Successful people often appear to be more dynamic than everyone else, but the fact is that they have simply developed the habit of taking action.

A small action taken every day is far more powerful that a massive action taken once in a blue moon.

"The secret of success is constancy to purpose." Benjamin Disraeli.


#6. Be a little bit better.

Success is often achieved by a very slim margin. The gap between being a huge success and being another also-ran is often just a few percentage points of difference.

5% may not sound like much, but it truly is the difference between being another drone and soaring like an eagle.

The good news is that you never need to perform more than one twentieth better than everyone else - a tiny increment.

I had to write a marketing report for a client. A marketing report is not brain surgery. It is pretty formulaic once you have the experience to do it right. I did a good job, but knew it wasn't any better than a report any marketing consultant could have produced. So I spent a while brainstorming ideas to lift the report out of the 'average' class into the 'great' category.

It didn't take long. I added a section at the end with 10 suggestions for that company to create more business. They weren't straight marketing ideas, and they certainly weren't all original. But the company didn't expect them from me and were blown away that I would do that for them. I achieved my aim of giving 105% of what they expected. And got a personal letter of thanks from the CEO.

Anyone can do this in business. And the great news is that all those 5 percents are cumulative.

If you make a concerted attempt to put an extra 5% into your work or your life every week, people's perceptions of you will grow at an incredible rate. This is because every week you set a new baseline that is 5% higher than the last. Pushing you higher and higher above the crowd.

In a year the cumulative effect means that you end up not one-twentieth better then everyone else, but 12 times better! Now that, by anyone's measure, is success.

Once you get into the habit of delivering excellence it is a roller-coaster that you can't get off. And why would you want to? The view is so much better.

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." Vincent T. Lomardi.


#7. You can't be successful until you know what success is.

Success is a vague term. My understanding of it is not the same as yours. We each have a different starting point and different needs and desires. So to be truly successful, in your own terms, you have to define what your personal goalpost is before you start your journey.

Goals are vital to success. Without them we are floundering in the dark, lurching from day to day in the unfocused hope that something will turn out right. But if we don't even know what 'right' is, how will we recognize it when it comes?

When you get in a car to start a journey, you know what a successful outcome is going to be. It is the safe arrival at a predetermined destination. You know where you are going and so can follow an appropriate route to get there. Your journey to success must be conducted in the same way. Always know where the destination is. Write it down in great detail. Set yourself a vivid goal that you can taste, touch, feel, hear and smell. The more real you make your success goal, the more likely you are to find a route to get there.

"Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk." J.C. Penney.


#8. Behind every successful person ...

... is a strong support network.

Success abhors a vacuum. It is incredibly difficult to be a successful loner. Almost all successful people that you can observe have strong networks behind them. Those networks may be formal arrangements or they may simply be loose collections of contacts. But be assured, the more success you desire, the more you'll need.

"But I don't know anyone!" This is so often the cry of people who don't know how to even begin their journey to success. They have not yet learned that everyone who aspires to succeed needs to first associate with other like-minded folks.

It isn't just to scratch each other's back. Mixing with success-minded people makes connections in your mind and keeps your enthusiasm primed. And scratching each other's backs doesn't hurt either!

In almost any field you will find people looking enviously at those they perceive to be more successful than they are and saying such things as 'its okay for them - they're part of the inner circle'. And you know what? It's true. They are part of an elite. But it isn't an exclusive club that rejects outsiders. Most of the time, these groups will welcome you into their membership with open arms - if you satisfy the joining criteria. Almost always, the only requirement needed to join in with the successful people is to show that you think on the same wavelength as they do.

Cultivate your success mind, hang out in the success places - forums, seminars, networking groups - and very soon you will be part of the elite without even trying.

"It is important that you recognize your progress and take pride in your accomplishments. Share your achievements with others. Brag a little. The recognition and support of those around you is nurturing." Rosemarie Rossetti.


#9. Have willing people to sell to.

The obvious thing is that if you want to be successful you have to be able to consistently sell a lot of stuff to a lot of people, but it's not just the traditional definition of selling that I'm talking about. You may not even be in the selling game. Your success strategy may be something else entirely. But the chances are that you'll still need willing people to sell to. In that case, you need to sell yourself.

Success is dependent on someone, somewhere, believing that you are better than someone else. And to get that degree of belief you will have had to sell - whether it is a product, a message, an opinion, an idea or just plain old you.

People do business with people they know and like, so success is, to a great degree, dependent on your reputation as someone to do business with.

You build your reputation one brick at a time by consistently behaving in a manner that attracts like-minded people towards you.

When you treat people better than they expect - by the great service you give or by the great person you are - they remember it. More often than not they'll tell others that you are a person who should be taken seriously. And that is selling.

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." Warren Buffett.


#10. The power three.

My tenth success factor is three rolled into one: humility, courtesy and charity.

None of them are absolute requirements to forging a successful life for yourself. There are many successful people who are anything but humble. There are many who are far from courteous to others. There are many for whom charity begins and ends at home.

But I know who I prefer to have dealings with, and it is the people who make efforts in their lives to be polite to others, who are rarely full of themselves and who understand the importance of 'paying it forward' that I like to lend my support to.

Success is about a whole lot more than just making a financial killing. It is about achievement on all kinds of levels.

It is about character.

"If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day." Alex Noble.

I hope that you've enjoyed this article and that it helps you to focus your thoughts on the success you can, and deserve, to achieve.

by Martin Avis
http://www.kickstartdaily.com/blog/

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