When you think of people who are successful names like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet may come to the front of your mind.  What is it that has propelled them to achieve greatness.  Are they built different? Do have a special ingredient or different DNA than other people? There are many qualities that define or separate someone who has achieved or will achieve greatness.  What you are about to read will focus on three characteristics that these people have with one key difference, success people do what unsuccessful people won’t do.  That is the key difference.

Goal Setting

Everyone who is successful sets goals.  I’m sure you have heard this a million times. Do you have a goal for where you want to be in a year or five years? What will be different about your life next year and how will you make it happen? Successful people set goals but the way they handle goal setting enables them to actually reach and surpass what they want to do.  Let’s take a one year time frame for example.  You set a goal, an attainable goal for yourself for a year from now.  A year is a long way away so in order to allow your mind to take you there you must break this one year down into a month and then a week and then a day.  If you map out what you have to do in a day you can measure success after a week.   How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  That is the same way to approach your goals.  Another tip is to write your one year goal on a small piece of paper.  Figure out what you need to do each month and each day to meet this goal and write it below your one year goal.  Laminate this and carry in your pocket everywhere you go.  Make sure it is the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing you see before your head hits your pillow at night. 

Clear Vision and Focus

If you have ever watched Tiger Woods play golf you will see focus on a whole different level. It’s scary.  His competitors can feel it and it can become very intimidating.  He makes clutch putts that not only determine if he will win a major but also determine the difference in tens of thousands of dollars.  Could you imagine standing over a golf ball with ten thousand people behind you.  If you make it you win the Master’s and earn an additional $50,000 and you will be the top play on Sportscenter the next day.  But if you miss you will be nothing and remember that moment for the rest of your life.  He has practiced that situation so much that it doesn’t faze him when the real thing is right in front of his face.  More times than not he makes that putt. 

They Take Action And Are Not Afraid To Fail

Whether right or wrong successful people take action and do. They don’t sit around and wait on anything they get after it and take action.  They are decision makers.  One thing that makes someone successful at sports or business is that they get right back up if they have been beat down and failed at something.  Michael Jordan was cut from the basketball team his freshman year of high school.  That didn’t cause him to quit, that made him want to work harder to prove his coach wrong the next year.  He went on to win 6 NBA titles, 5 MVPs, 6 finals MVPs, 2 Olympic gold metals, NCAA player of the year and a national champion.  He never quit when the chips were down. He got right back up and went to work again. 

Donald Trump filed bankruptcy twice.  Many people would have given up and thrown in the towel on the first one.  Donald knew he would overcome this hardship and he did. In 2007 he made $32 million and at that time his net worth was $1.6 billion. He continued to take action and now the Trump Empire is everywhere you turn.  Mary Pickford has a famous quote that describes both Michael Jordan and Donald Trump. It says, “This thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.”

To sum it all up, successful people are not genetic phenomenons.  It’s not in their DNA or their genes.  They don’t have anything different about them than you.  What separates them from the average person is that they set goals, have a clear vision, and most importantly, they take action and do rather than watch someone else succeed.  Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Become someone great so that someday your name will be used in the article.