signs of success

“Success leaves clues,” so if you do what other successful people are doing, you too can be successful. While there is no guarantee that you will be 100% successful when you do what other successful people are doing, you can greatly increase your chances.

Just like baking a cake. If you have the right recipe with the right ingredient and if you bake it in the right method, highly likely, you are going to bake a great cake as similar to the ones from the recipe.

It is true that every individual is different, but if you study people who have gone on to achieve outstanding results in their lives, you can sense a series of tell-tale signs.

After all, the fundamental principles of success are the same. So how do you know if you can be successful in the future? Here are the 10 common signs of success you should take note on.

If you are showing these signs, continue to work on what you do. There’s a high chance that you can achieve your goals and live the life of your dream.

But if you are not, don’t worry too much about it. Try to develop the success characteristics and slowly grow yourself into the person worthy of success.

1. You are not afraid of change and constantly seek new and better grounds.

To be successful, you must be willing to change. It is easy to understand. If you are not willing to change, you will be the same.

If you stay the same and do what you have always been doing, rest assure, you will be getting the same old results.

This is why it is important to change – for the better.

People who are willing to change are usually more successful than those who are not.

Your willingness to change means that you are open for better possibilities. There are more than just one way to reach your destination, so you don’t have to stick to the only route that you know.

The ability to change is one of the greatest characteristics of success that you must adopt. If you resist change, you will forever be stuck in the same old place.

When you do one thing and you fail, and you try it again, you will fail again, which will eventually lead to you to give up to try again. This is what is happening to most people out there.

They set goals, they work on them, but when they are not getting the results they want, they choose to give up. Some people try a couple of times, but if they don’t change their strategy or approach, they will get the same result and face with failure again.

This is why your willingness to change is important. And if you are showing this trait, success can be yours, my friend.

2. You don’t work for just the money, but the passion and responsibility.

A lot of people have the perception when you have a lot of money, you are successful.

It is just like saying, when you are successful, you will be happy. The problem is that money and success, or money and happiness don’t have to be on the opposite side.

Perhaps, you can be happy and successful too, right? And perhaps, between being happy or being rich, you don’t have to choose just one, what if you can have both?

So don’t just work for the money, work for the passion and the responsibility too.

When you have the passion and responsibility, the money will come. Just like you don’t have to wait until you are rich only to feel happy about it.

You can choose to be happy right now and more success will come to you.

It is common sense. When you are happy, you feel good, and you do better work. When you do better work, you produce better results. When you get better results, you become more successful.

Hence, don’t just focus on the money. Don’t set goals solely to earn the money. You need to consider other factors such as passion and responsibility too.

And when you are working not just for the money but for the people, for your clients, and for yourself, trust me, success will come.

It’s a clear sign, my friend.

3. You have a vision for the life you want and constantly set exciting goals to reach it.

Success starts with your vision. People without a clear vision for the kind of life that they want to live, usually end up living in mediocrity.

Your vision is what drives you to set goals. Your vision is what makes you want to live a better life and to achieve more in your life.

More importantly, your vision is what creates the intention in you so that you will work on it and take massive action.

Think about it. If you don’t have the vision to do better in life, will you care to attend training or do something to improve your results? Not at all.

I’m a blogger. And if I don’t have the vision and the commitment to grow this blog, I will never care so much about it. I won’t spend so much time to grow it and to consistently publish fresh content on this blog.

I do all these because I have the vision to build a successful blog.

Therefore, if you have a clear vision of what you want and you constantly set exciting goals to reach it, you are already showing a clear sign of success.

If you’re unclear with your vision or you have no idea what you want to achieve out of your life, I suggest you to watch this video from John Assaraf. He will show you how to rediscover your passion, how you can reconnect with your purpose, and more importantly, he will show you how to achieve them.

4. You love to learn and to improve what you do to get better results.

Every successful people love to learn and improve what they do to get better results. Be it entrepreneur, businessman, or athletes, your trait to strive for constant-and-never-ending-improvement tells a lot about you and your success.

According to this article from BusinessInsider, most successful people are avid readers. They read a lot and they encourage others to do so.

  • Warren Buffett reportedly spends five to six hours a day reading five different newspapers.
  • Bill Gates said that he reads 50 books a year, or roughly one book a week.
  • Oprah Winfrey created her own book club and called reading “her personal path to freedom”.
  • Mark Cuban reads for about 3 hours every day, just to learn more about the industries he works in.

So it is a common sign, isn’t it?

Develop the habit to read and learn. If you strive to improve just 1% in what you do, over the years, you can become super successful because the compound effect has kicked in.

5. You don’t work on work/life balance, you work on life

Most of the ultra-successful people don’t really think about work/life balance because everything that they do is just life.

It is not about working or living life, it is all the same. It is your life. Sir Richard Branson said it wisely:

“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”

Hence, if you don’t think work/life balance first and to you, everything is just a part of life, you are showing a good sign that you will be successful in the future.

It is obvious. You don’t have to leave by 5 or 6pm. You don’t have to start your work from 9am each day. Everything is just life. You can start your work early and you can work on even if it is late at night.

You don’t have to stick to the rule that you can’t talk about work when you are off working hours.

I love the Four Burners Theory as explained by James Clear. There is no way we can achieve the work/life balance equation. If you do, you are not living your life at your full potential.

Sometimes, you have to play it wisely to produce maximum result in one area before you put in more time and energy in the other areas.

6. You care more about others’ success than your own.

This is another crucial sign of success. When you care more about others, you can become more successful. As what Les Brown famously said:

“Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours.”

Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonald’s into the largest fast-food chain in the world, once said, “Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself.”

It is clear that one of the keys to success is to help others and create values for others.

If you are in business and you care more about your customers than yourself, success will be yours.

As a blogger, I constantly strive to provide my readers (you) with valuable and quality content. I want my readers to feel inspired and I want to share with them the very best information so that they can be successful.

I know that if I’m able to give my readers useful information that will help them in what they do in life, I will be successful.

So, do you care more about others’ success than your own?

7. You are passionately working on your strengths rather than improving your weakness.

Every one of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. It is difficult to work on your weaknesses or to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

The great news is that you don’t have to. All you need to do is to focus on what you do best and delegate the areas where you are weak to others.

My friend, you can’t succeed alone in this world. You need the help from others to be successful. And the same goes for the others too. Others need you to get the results that they want too.

Take a look at how successful people started and you will often see that most of the time, they don’t do it by themselves. They have partners and friends.

  • When Walt Disney started his business empire, his brother Roy Disney was there to help him.
  • Steve Jobs did not start Apple all by himself, he started with Steve Wozniak and a few other friends from college.
  • The famous entrepreneur Elon Musk did not start out all by himself too. Musk started his early business venture, Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk and along with a few others.

Therefore, you just need to work on your strengths. Put your focus on where you can excel. You don’t have to crack your head to work on and improve on areas that you are weak.

“You grow most in your areas of greatest strength. You will improve the most, be the most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else your strengths. This doesn’t mean you should ignore your weaknesses. It just means you’ll grow most where you’re already strong.”

Marcus Buckingham

8. You join and mingle with other successful people in your industry.

This is a clear sign that you need to be successful. When you mix and mingle yourself with other successful people, your thoughts will change and you will become successful too.

Ever wonder why successful people have other successful people as friends? Well, it doesn’t happen by accident.

Look around you and see who you spend your most time with. If you spend most of your time with people who smoke, highly likely, you are a smoker too.

The same goes if you mingle with people who drink. You will eventually end up becoming a drinker yourself.

And what if you make friends with successful business people? Guess what the conversation will be about?

The market trend, which stocks to invest, what business is hot right now, net worth, who and who started a new business, or who bought the latest real estate in town.

On the other hand, what do you think will happen when you mix with people who love to complain and blame? Your conversation will be about the complains and blames.

This is why who you spend time with will determine your success.

And it is an obvious sign of success. So try to spend more time with people who constructive thoughts. Spend your time with people who share similar dreams like you and who want to be successful too.

9. You believe in yourself and trust your instinct than listening to what everyone has to say.

While joining other successful people is important, you must also trust yourself and listen to your guts.

Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author of the book, Think And Grow Rich once said:

“The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors.”

This is not to say that you shouldn’t listen to others, but you must validate the advice before you listen to others.

For example, if I tell my father that I wanted to invest my money into the stock market, he will never agree with me. He will advise me not to do so.

Why? The reason is simple. First, my father had a bad experience in the stock market. Second, he has no idea how it works and thought that investing in stock is like gambling.

So should I listen to him when it comes to investing in the stock market? Maybe not, right?

But when it comes to construction and building houses, he has years of experience and his advice may be something valuable and something that I want to listen to.

Thus, don’t just simply listen to anybody. When it comes to achieving success in life, where most people are not an expert, choose to trust yourself and follow your instinct.

10. You are willing to commit and do what most people don’t want to do.

If you want to accomplish great things in life, just do what most people don’t want to do.

There is a saying:

“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

So do what most people don’t want to do. The majority of people refuse to get up early, most of them don’t set goals, and many don’t commit to their goals.

And all you need to do is to do otherwise. Do the opposite.

Set goals, commit to working harder, be willing to sacrifice your leisure time, get up early, and do whatever it takes, eventually, success will be yours.

  • So are you willing to do the hard stuff?
  • Are you willing to do what most people are not willing to do?
  • Are you willing to commit to your goals and do whatever it takes to achieve them?
  • Are you willing to work harder than most others and spend more time on your goals?

My friend, your answers to the above questions do give a sign of your success.

Conclusion

Success may mean different thing to different people. And everyone’s success can be different. But in my opinion, I do believe that there is a common ground of what success means to all of us.

And this means that there are clues to success. There are basic principles that when you follow them, success will come to you.

You may have yet to discover the secret to success, but if you are showing these 10 common signs above, I believe that somehow, you are on the right path. And that success is just around the corner.

This article may contain affiliate links. Meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. As always, I only recommend products and services I trust.

By Shawn Lim

Hi there, this is Shawn. I inspire people to achieve their goals and dreams and to reach for higher success in life. If you want to learn more about me, kindly go to the About page. By the way, have you downloaded your FREE copy of The 90-90-1 Rule? Don't forget to do so. Cheers. :)

6 thoughts on “If You Are Showing These 10 Common Signs, You Will Be Successful”
  1. Love to read it, Waiting For More new Update and I Already Read your Recent Post its Great Thanks.
    I found your this post while searching for some related information on my blog research.
    It’s a good post.
    keep posting and update the information.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.