What are The REAL Secrets of Successful People? Traits and Characteristics

Successful people aren’t born. They are made. They try, fail, struggle, suffer, and, eventually, their personalities are molded, strengthened, and they adapt certain traits and characteristics.

Everyone is different, and this applies to successful people as well. Some are extroverted go-getters; others are introverted opportunists. But if you look close enough, you’ll find a number of similar characteristics that exist in most successful people, including:

An Unwavering Self Belief

Successful people are confident in their abilities and tend to be very self-assured individuals.

I know what you’re thinking, “I know someone who is very successful, and they are anxious, shy, and uncertain.” It’s true, and I know people who are exactly the same. But I’m not talking generalities here; I’m talking about the specifics.

For example, a friend of mine is a very talented entrepreneur. She’s introverted and not very confident. If you were to meet her at a party, you would leave thinking she was a very anxious, awkward, shy, and unconfident person. In fact, she would admit to being all of those things.

But when it comes to her specialist subject, she’s the most confident person in the room. If you broach the subject, the anxiety will switch off, and she’ll talk with the fluidity and confidence of an extrovert. There’s no anxiety when dealing with clients because she believes in herself and is confident in her own abilities.

That’s the level of self-belief that you need. It’s one that you’ll often find in writers, designers, and artists who have been working for many years. It comes from the countless rejections and setbacks; the endless praise and criticism. It’s not work, it’s not a creative outlet — it’s what they were born to do.

They Take Calculated Risks

Entrepreneurs are not gamblers. They don’t risk everything on a game of chance. They do take risks, but they are?calculated?risks.

Imagine business as a game of poker. On the one hand, you have Player A. He’s had a little too much to drink, he doesn’t really know how to play the game, and he hasn’t even looked at his cards.

On the other hand, you have Player B, an experienced poker player who has been playing the game for years, has a good read on the other players, and is confident he has the best hand.

Both players bet everything on the River and so both are taking a risk, but it’s fair to say that Player B has the best chance of success.

Player B is the entrepreneur; Player A is the image that everyone has in their heads when they think of entrepreneurs.

Yes, they are gamblers; yes, they take risks, but only because they know what they are doing. It all harks back to what I said above — they are so confident in their abilities that they will back themselves financially.

They are Optimistic

You won’t get anywhere as an entrepreneur if you are eternally pessimistic. Entrepreneurs are so confident in their abilities that they will remain optimistic even if things are going wrong.

However, there is a difference between optimism and denial.

Optimism is when you launch a new business, the sales don’t flood in, and you keep doing what you’re doing, confident that your ideas and hard work will pay off.

Denial is when you have invested $200,000 in a failing restaurant, you don’t have customers, everyone hates your food, and you tell yourself that “things will get better” and that all bad reviews come from other competitors trying to sabotage you.

They Embrace Criticism and Failure

There is no such thing as an entrepreneur who never fails, just as there is no such thing as a sports team that never loses. Everyone fails, everyone suffers a defeat, but what makes good people great is that they learn from their losses and keep going.

Failure will teach you more than success, just as criticism will teach you more than baseless praise.

Not everyone has the ability to absorb criticism and embrace failure, and most entrepreneurs develop it over time. Some, however, just don’t have what it takes and likely never will.

For example, an old friend of mine once invested heavily in a new business, only for the product to be criticized during the testing phase. He had invested a lot of time and money into it. It was a very personal thing, but he understood that it needed to change, and so he went back to the drawing board.

The next launch was the same, only as he targeted more people, it was even crueler and harder to take. But still, he went back, he worked at it, and he tried again. Eventually, he scrapped that idea, but only because his research pointed him toward a more lucrative idea.

All that criticism gave him invaluable insights into a certain demographic of consumers, and he used that to develop what is now a massively successful product.

That criticism hurt him. He’s not made of stone. But he knew that it was essential to the process and so he regrouped, cleared his head, and tried again.

If you’re the sort of person who would collapse under the weight of that initial criticism, then entrepreneurship probably isn’t for you. It means there is no room for growth, no room for discovery, and you’ll constantly be on edge, worrying that people will trash your product.

Learn More About Entrepreneurs

Ready to learn more about the traits of successful entrepreneurs? Take a look at?This Week With Sabir , a business series that I created with help from the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. You can learn about the habits and methods of?entrepreneurs like Shay Berman , who founded his own digital agency, and Neil Patel, a world-renowned SEO expert.