Signs that show you’re successful

Travis Bradberry says ambitious people are often lured into thinking that success equates with power and material possessions. He lists attitudes to life that indicate this is not necessarily the case.

If you’re ambitious, you’re bound to feel like a failure from time to time. Lofty goals lead to inevitable moments when you aren’t living up to your expectations.

We live in a world that reinforces this feeling. Though most people won’t admit it, we equate material possessions with success.

It’s a shame we fall prey to materialistic thinking because we certainly know better.

Some 90 per cent of respondents to a recent study believed happiness was a bigger indicator of success than power, possessions or prestige.

Some 67 per cent defined success as “good relationships with friends and family”, and 60 per cent said it is loving what you do for a living.

Only 20 per cent said monetary wealth determines success.

However, saying and doing are two different things.

When it comes to success, our eyes often lead us astray. It’s hard not to feel like the most successful people are those with the biggest houses, the most expensive cars, and the most influential friends.

Regardless of what you achieve, there’s always someone with more, and this can make you feel like you’re losing. The problem isn’t your lack of toys; it’s believing that toys indicate true success.

If you worry you’re not as successful as you should be, you may be evaluating yourself against the wrong criteria.

Sometimes you just need a reminder as to what you’ve really accomplished in life. The success indicators that follow will help you with that.

You’re no longer the centre of the universe: We all know ‘’successful’’ people who act like it’s their world and the rest of us just live in it.

That’s not success. True success requires the ability to feel empathy – to realise that other people’s feelings and dreams are just as important as ours, and we cannot succeed without them.

You stay positive: If you dwell on the things that go wrong, you become bitter and resentful. When that happens, you fail – no matter what you may have achieved.

Real success means always seeing the bright side and believing you have the power to make even the worst situations better.

You know that failure isn’t forever: You’ve learned that the only people who never fail are those who don’t try.

When you fail, you don’t automatically assume you’re a failure. Instead, you embrace each failure as an opportunity to learn something and move on.

If you still struggle with this at times, know you’ll never experience true success until you learn to embrace failure.

Your mistakes pave the way for your success by revealing when you’re on the wrong path. The biggest breakthroughs typically come when you’re feeling frustrated and stuck.

It’s this frustration that forces you to look outside the box and see the solution you’ve been missing.

You keep things in perspective: Bad things happen; it’s part of life. However, our very worst day would often seem like a vacation to somebody who has real problems, like not having enough to eat, or trying to survive a civil war.

Locking your keys in the car, or even getting passed over for a promotion, aren’t that bad once you learn to develop perspective.

You ask for help when you need it: Refusing to ask for help, no matter how much you’re struggling, is a sign of emotional immaturity.

Asking for help means you aren’t afraid of people discovering your weaknesses and you understand no-one succeeds alone.

You realise that life isn’t a zero-sum game: It’s not a see-saw, either. Just because somebody else achieves a big success, that doesn’t mean you suffer a loss in equal proportion.

You just didn’t win that particular time. One sure sign of success is the ability to celebrate others’ achievements with sincere enthusiasm.

You no longer care what other people think: You only worry about what other people think when you still feel you have something to prove.

Conversely, you know you’ve ‘’made it’’ when you don’t worry about that anymore – when you’re true to yourself and your principles, and satisfied with your life.

You know you’ve made it when you understand that other people’s opinions are just that – opinions. They don’t change who or what you are.

You accept what you can’t change and change what you can: If there’s a cyclone heading your way, there’s nothing you can do to stop it, but once you accept it is coming, you can start working to mitigate its effects.

If your organisation downsizes and you get laid off, every moment you spend in denial just delays whatever is waiting over the horizon.

Taking responsibility for changing the things you don’t like about your life is one of the biggest indicators of success.

There’s no sense in feeling like a failure just because you think you should have a better job, a bigger house, or a nicer car.

Real success comes from the inside, and it’s completely independent of circumstance.

Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the bestselling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the co-founder of TalentSmart. His books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. He can be contacted at TalentSmart.com.

This article first appeared on the TalentSmart website.