What character trait determines a person's success? What determines the size of your bank account? What makes some people a successful minority and others a gray mass?
Some will say mind. Hardly. After all, everyday realities show us a successful businessman - yesterday's C student and former excellent student with honors, who works in the office all his life, at best reaching the position of head of a department.
Availability of start-up capital? Disappointing statistics show us that 80 percent of all established enterprises go bankrupt within the first year of operation, and their owners return to work as employees.
Maybe luck? But according to statistical studies, the likelihood of winning a large sum of money in the lottery is much lower than the likelihood of being killed by lightning.
Having any extraordinary mental or physical abilities? To some extent, yes, but this mainly concerns athletes and figures in art, cinema, and music, and not ordinary citizens.
What about the inheritance left by a wealthy overseas relative? Not the same again. 60 percent of heirs lose their entire inheritance within the first three years, and another 20 percent within the next five.
American psychologist Angela Duckworth, who specializes in studying the lives of wealthy people, found that nine out of ten modern rich people who “made themselves” are united by the presence of such a character trait as “perseverance.” By her definition, “persistence” is the ability to move towards one’s goal regularly and over a long period of time. Those with this quality are significantly superior in life performance to rich heirs, talented artists, and gifted intellectuals.
Exactly perseverance allows an ordinary person to achieve heights in his chosen business, be it career, wealth or any other field of activity.
As an example of perseverance, one can cite, for example, a beginning writer who writes several pages of text every day (including holidays and weekends), while most of his friends, relatives, acquaintances unanimously repeat that he will not reach the heights of Pushkin and Lermontov, that this is a useless waste of time, that it is better to go to a “normal” job and generally “be like everyone else.”
If you look at this situation from the outside, with an open mind, you can see that while the surrounding “normal” people for decades have only been ranting about what is right and what is wrong, that same aspiring writer, DAILY, step by step, is approaching his goals, towards your dreams. This is persistence.
What type of people do you belong to? Towards persistent winners or the gray mass of “normal” people?
Each person is an individual and has his own ideas about justice, good and evil. However, society is an integral organism, so it is necessary to have connecting links and connecting factors. So what brings people together?
I think there is a set of aspirations and desires that are inherent in every person. For example, the desire for peace. Each of us undoubtedly has the desire to live in a harmonious environment, without wars, conflicts and deaths.
The main unifying link, in my opinion, is love. It is the feeling of unconditional love for human beings, animals, and nature that helps smooth out conflicts and the harmonious coexistence of people on the globe.
Creativity also helps bring people together. Literary works, masterpieces of painting, music, theater and cinematography allow us to penetrate into the inner world of another person and merge in a single impulse. Creativity not only contributes to the unity of modern society, but also helps to penetrate into other times and eras, to feel one’s involvement with distant ancestors.
The unification of society into a single whole is undoubtedly facilitated by such human qualities as humanism and concern for one’s neighbor. People help each other, sometimes risking their own lives. Rescuers, firefighters, doctors, police officers - these and many other professions are proof of the interaction of human units. And the exploits of volunteers who selflessly go to the hottest spots on the planet to provide all possible help to those in need!
If we talk about communicative methods of uniting people, then in modern society the possibilities for this process have expanded significantly. For example, phones help us stay in touch with loved ones even over long distances. And with the help of the Internet, we can find friends all over the world and get acquainted with news from the most distant corners. At the same time, knowledge of foreign languages is of great importance for unification. It’s not without reason that they say that the more languages you know, the more human you are. Knowledge of foreign languages significantly expands your circle of communication, allows you to get acquainted with numerous works of art in the original and, of course, communicate with representatives of different peoples and cultures.
To summarize, it should be emphasized that a sense of justice, humanism and the desire for a peaceful life are the basis that allows us to unite individual human units into a single whole. And to paraphrase Fyodor Dostoevsky, I will say that the world will be saved and united only by love!
Most psychologists and philosophers have long been occupied with the issue of uniting people. Based on numerous studies, it was possible to conclude that people unite in one of four available areas that play an important role in the life of every person. Having understood each of the areas, it will be possible to answer the question of what unites people.
Most often, people are united by work and creativity in a team. By doing what he loves, a person unites with people with whom he shares these interests, as well as principles of life. For example, work colleagues will automatically unite based on similar interests. In the case when some people's interests change, such unions break up, forming new ones. When a person works exclusively for money, without pursuing any other goal other than obtaining material wealth, groups of people will be created who are only trying to satisfy their need for money. As a rule, such associations are not strong, so they can fall apart very quickly.
Very often you can meet people who work without pleasure, that is, they do not do what they really like. This nuance creates some difficulties in uniting colleagues. To get rid of this problem, specialists from the HR department are dealing with this issue, and also write many scientific papers on how to unite people in such teams. But all this could have been avoided if everyone did what they loved, because love for work is a powerful tool for uniting people.
Another important factor that unites people is their habitat. For example, housemates are a united group until someone changes their place of residence. When this territorial unification is lost, the group disintegrates.
Don’t forget about connections such as interests, entertainment and common hobbies. So, for example, when people do the same thing, they will automatically create groups with common interests. Of course, if several people are passionate about building model airplanes, they will create groups, but as soon as one of them loses interest in this entertainment, the group will lose one of the members of this association. That is why such groups are not quite strong. Of course, language also unites people. This is already a very strong association.
But perhaps one of the most durable groups is the union of people from the same group of friends. People who are close to each other unconsciously unite into groups. Most likely, such associations occur on an intuitive level, which determines the small size of such groups. Most often, such people are guided by love, sympathy, friendly feelings and other immeasurable characteristics, which allows them to create very strong and quite valuable alliances.
For 20 years, Napoleon Hill conducted numerous interviews with people who had amassed enormous fortunes. It turned out that all very rich people have common habits. The most amazing thing is that they have nothing to do with money.
Only 13 rules separate you from the state. Napoleon Hill talked about them 80 years ago in his book Think and Grow Rich. This book outlived the author and was distributed throughout the world. Hill's recommendations are more relevant now than ever.
Step 1. Desire: You must want to get rich
All super-rich people started out with dreams, hopes, plans, the desire to make a fortune. They imagined large sums before they saw them in their bank accounts. In itself, such a desire to get rich, of course, will not make a person rich. But, becoming an obsession, it helps to find ways to achieve your goal and move towards it with perseverance that does not know defeat.
What Hill writes about echoes, for example, the advice of modern financial planner Carl Richards, author of the book “How to Stop Doing Stupid Things with Your Money.” He recommends formulating your savings goal as clearly as possible - this will make it easier to understand what and how much you can save.
Step 2. Faith: Convince yourself that you will achieve your goal.
The path to wealth depends on the right attitude - you must believe that you can get rich. Hill concludes: “Wealth begins with thought. And its size is limited by the person himself, in whose mind this thought lives. Faith erases limitations!”
These days, business coach and dollar millionaire Steve Sebold puts it this way: “Being rich is not a privilege. Being rich is a right. And if you create something of value for others, you have the right to have as much wealth as you want.”
Step 3. Self-hypnosis: program yourself
For wealth and success to become a reality, you need to sow the desire for them in your subconscious by repeating certain phrases. Briefly formulate what and how you want to achieve, and try to say it out loud. But the success of self-hypnosis will depend on your ability to focus all your attention on your desire - until it becomes an obsession for you, warns Hill.
Example: if you want to become a dollar millionaire in old age by saving a certain amount every week, then repeat to yourself literally the following every day and as often as possible: “I will save money this week so that I will have $1 million for retirement.”
Step 4: Professionalism: Always Learn
Hill emphasizes: “Successful people constantly improve their skills in accordance with their interests, business or profession. Those whose education ends when they graduate from school generally do not succeed in life.” It is no coincidence that most successful people value reading so highly. Let's say it is known that billionaire Warren Buffett devotes up to 80% of his working time to it.
But education then leads to wealth when you acquire knowledge in a systematic way, and the knowledge itself is applicable in life. “Walk into a rich person's home, and one of the first things you see will be a vast library filled with the kind of books that help successful people become even more successful,” writes Steve Sebold.
Step 5: Imagination: Visualize your ideas
Don’t be afraid to come up with something fundamentally new and try to imagine the results of the successful implementation of all your ideas. What you can imagine, you can create, says Hill. “Ideas are the starting points for great fortunes... Whoever you are, wherever you live and whatever you do, just remember every time you see the Coca-Cola sign that this gigantic empire of wealth and influence grew from one single ideas,” advises the author of the book.
Step 6: Planning: Be Consistent
Once you can visualize your success, get started. Be persistent and purposeful, take it step by step. “Most of us start something easily, but few of us finish it. People tend to give up at the first sign of defeat,” Hill laments. But nothing can replace determination.
For example, if you decide to save a certain amount each month for the future, do not make exceptions. Make a financial plan and use it to consistently distribute your savings between different investment instruments.
Step 7: Decision Making: Don't Procrastinate
Decisiveness is a character trait that Hill found in all of his successful interlocutors. And the losers miss it. “People who fail to get rich, even if they can make independent decisions, do so very slowly, but change them very quickly and often,” the author of the book shares his observations. But determination is not only a characteristic of the rich, it is one of the key qualities of any leader. It's better to end up making a bad decision than to make nothing at all.
Step 8: Persist: Persevere
This is a key success factor, although few people have the willpower to convert their desire to get rich into real money. Hill writes: “Wealth does not arise simply in response to desire. It is the result of specific plans, specific aspirations and requires perseverance.”
Remember that successful people also do not succeed in everything, but, unlike losers, they find the strength to overcome difficulties and move on. “I realized that it doesn’t matter how many times you make mistakes. You should only succeed once,” billionaire Mark Cuban aptly said in an interview.
Step 9: Think Tank: Surround yourself with the best
Rich people create an environment of talented friends and colleagues who share their views. Combining the intellectual and creative powers of several like-minded people exponentially increases their power. It's like connecting several batteries together - together they will provide more energy than one, writes Hill. By the way, it is the desire to create “think tanks” around themselves that can explain why rich people tend to be friends with their own kind. “Meeting those who are more successful than you helps your thinking develop and your income grow faster,” states Steve Sebold. We become like those with whom we communicate.
Step 10. Love and sex: be with someone who is close to you
Sexual energy not only adds emotional color to our lives: if you can harness it and channel it in the right direction, it will enhance your creativity, passion and perseverance - all things that play an important role on the path to wealth. “Sexual desire is the most powerful of all human desires...
Love, romance and sex can lead people to unprecedented success. And the one who experiences all three of these emotions at once can become a real genius,” Napoleon Hill is sure. Modern research confirms this: people who are satisfied with their relationships with their partners earn more and grow faster in their positions.
Step 11. Subconscious: Don't Focus on Negativity
If you really want to become rich, you must start subconsciously striving for it. The subconscious will never stop working, and if you don't find a place in it for your dreams, other thoughts will fill it. “Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time - one of them always dominates. Your responsibility is to ensure that the former prevail,” Hill instructs. One recent study confirms his opinion: positive people are more likely to succeed in their careers and are less likely to lose their jobs.
Step 12. Mind: communicate with developed people
Our mind is a transmitter and receiver, receiving thoughts from those around us. This is also why it is so important to deal with those who are creative, smart and positive. The “receiver” of the brain, according to Hill, is our imagination: we imagine what other people tell us or show us.
It is on this principle that the “think tank” works, to which the author of the book dedicated the ninth step in his success formula. Only in this case, he goes further, advising each time to use the talents of people around you when you need to find a solution to a complex problem. Hill calls this "mixing several minds into one."
Step 13: Sixth Sense: Trust Your Intuition
“Using your sixth sense, you can anticipate upcoming dangers so you can avoid them, and spot opportunities in time so you can take advantage of them,” the book says. The problem is that real intuition is the result of many years of experience, and rarely can boast of people under 40 years old, admits Hill. But this does not mean that if you are younger, then the path to wealth and success is closed to you: the previous twelve steps are quite enough to achieve impressive results. Well, when (and if) if you add a “sixth sense” to them, you will become so wise that you will be able to make the right financial and life decisions even intuitively.
Hello my dear readers. The fact that I have you gives me strength to look for new topics for articles and write them even at night. Now I’m sitting and watching a football match between CSKA and Manchester United. Champions League. Second round. And a terrible difference in class. Apparently they will lose, by the 78th minute the score is already 0-4.
And I suddenly thought, because all these guys came to football to achieve success, why is some Cristiano Ronaldo and some not? And then I think it’s not only like this in football, in any business some people are successful, and others are just extras. What separates real professionals from losers and how to become great in your field of activity? Is there a secret to success?
In general, there is a good book on this topic, called Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. The essence of the book is that all great personalities have something in common, something that unites them. They are all from different cities and countries, they are all engaged in different types of activities, they all lived in different times, under different presidents and laws. Everything that we use as excuses was present in the biography of every person who achieved their goals. It was present, but did not interfere.
Today I watched a program about a mixed martial arts fighter who once said that he doesn’t believe in any talent, I just worked like a devil,” said Connor McGregor. I immediately remembered the story of Fedor Emelianenko, to whom, according to one of the articles on the Internet, the coach said that judo was not his thing and it was better to look for something else. Thomas Edison invented 10,000 light bulbs that were never lit, but then there was one that went down in history. Footballer Rivaldo once admitted that as a child he used to run to and from training. And despite the fact that he didn’t make it into the main team of his native Santa Cruz, he moved to the lower division and continued to work there. Rivaldo then played in Barcelona, and he still achieved his goal.
Do you know how many such stories there are in the world? There are as many successful people as there are stories. Seriously. Starting to analyze the biographies of famous personalities, you can always unearth a moment of struggle. By the way, how do you like the story of John Rockefeller, in whose family the younger ones wore clothes after the eldest, and there was a moment when one of the boys couldn’t find clothes, and he wore his older sister’s dresses. The money was actively invested and several generations of Rockefellers devoted their entire lives to realizing the goal of becoming the richest. Now they probably don’t skimp on clothes.
Here's what I found out for myself. What unites these people is not talent or country of residence, or even endurance, hard work and perseverance. No. What they all have in common is obsession! They are, in a sense, crazy people who believe in fairy tales. They set themselves goals that are not those that are possible, realistic, or easiest to achieve. They set the goal that they want to achieve. And they don’t see any barriers. They can devote their whole life to one goal and do not change it, even if it becomes obvious that this is impossible. This obsession often results in people being laughed at. Where, they say, well, he came up with it! But there is no other way to success. And thousands of stories confirm this.
Fall asleep and wake up thinking about your dream, and never doubt for a second that anything is possible. Let's try to live this way? And then, in a few years, we will share with each other the result of such thinking and perhaps we will do it on some island!
