Your Future Success: Signs You Are Thriving

 

 

• Success isn’t just about money, power, and fame. Personal fulfillment and making an impact count for something, too.
• We collected a series of indicators that you’re going to be more successful than you think. Those include being open to failure and making time every day to learn.
• If even a few of these signs sound familiar to you, you’re making good progress.

You’re pursuing your passions, you’re learning, and forging meaningful relationships.  Congratulations, you’re probably on track to do great things.  It may not feel like you are if you aren’t extraordinarily famous or wealthy.  But have faith.  You are headed for success! Here are some signs.

11 Signs of future success

Below is a list of signs that you’re doing better at this thing called life than you’d be inclined to believe.

Looking for a better way to do things is always on your mind.

Are you stuck in the past – or hurtling toward the future?

John Sculley, a former Apple CEO and president of Pepsi, said throughout his career he’s always asked questions like, “Why is it done this way?” He said success is largely about the willingness “to solve a problem in a way that’s never been solved before.”

The opposite trait – resistance to change – can stall your career, the same way it stalls big companies’ progress, according to Scott Galloway.  He is a clinical professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.  Galloway writes: “Trying to resist this tide of change will drown you. Successful people go to work every day, not dreading the net change, always ask: ‘What if we did it this way?'”

The kind of life you want is your future vision  

Granted, that vision may evolve over time. But the point is not to take a job exclusively for the short-term benefits – like compensation.

Instead of asking yourself, “What job do I want?” you should be asking yourself, “What life do I want?” And how does this job fit into the broader picture?

Even if you only have a vision for the year ahead ask yourself questions like, “What does my ideal average day look like?” and “What kinds of people do I want to be connected with or meeting?”

Keep using your ‘signature strengths’

Your signature strengths are simply the skills you’re uniquely good at.
The more often you use those skills, the more you’re happier, you’re respected, you feel good about your job. What’s more, if you’re using those skills in your job, you’re going to achieve more.

You are open to failure

The four major tech titans – Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon – are all open to occasional failure, if it means they’re trying something new. If you want to be successful in your own career, you should be the same way.

Willing to take calculated risks

You’d be hard pressed to find a successful person who hasn’t taken some amount of risk in their career.  Take Hearst executive Joanna Coles, for example.  She left her job as a foreign correspondent for the Times of London and took a job in magazine journalism.  At that time, though pregnant, she didn’t have a visa that would allow her to stay in New York.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the richest man in the world, has spoken often about how he decides which risks to pursue. In one interview, Bezos explained how he decided to found Amazon.  “When I reached 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. Not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet.  It was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that.

“But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.”

Even though they’re not your superiors, You’re nice to people

On another episode of “This is Success,” Coles described the importance of maintaining good relationships with your friends and colleagues. She said:
“The thing that I always try and say to people starting out is that your peer group is really the most important influence on your life.  You are going to rise and fall together. And I have always got jobs through the loose ties of friendships and someone knowing someone who might know a job. And, you know, a group of you will start out together, and they sort of pull you with them.”

You exhibit a ‘beginner’s mind’

That’s a concept from Zen Buddhism, and it describes constantly seeing the world anew, as if you didn’t know anything about it. It’s a big advantage in business.

The late Steve Jobs was a proponent of the beginner’s mind.  Jobs emphasized the need to develop a beginner’s mind in order to avoid the constraints that cause us to come up with old answers to difficult problems.

Every day You make time to learn

You should be allotting some of your time to reading or research, something that expands your horizons.

Beth Comstock, former vice chair of General Electric, recommends devoting 10% of every workday to these activities. In an interview with LinkedIn, Comstock shared some career advice:
“The first thing you have to say to people is: Make room for discovery. Your people need to be focused on what’s next.

“And it could be 10% – you know for yourself. I think usually 10% is a pretty good way to think about it.  “Think about how you manage your own time. Can I spend 10% of my time a week reading, talking to people, asking What trends are you seeing? What are you nervous about? What are you excited about?”

You’re self-aware

According to Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist and the author of “Insight,” most people don’t know how others really see them. Those who have a more accurate picture of how they’re coming off tend to be more successful.

Eurich recommends finding one or two “loving critics,” or “people who will be honest with us while still having our best interests at heart.” Tap them regularly for insight into how you can perform better at work.

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith goes so far as to say that what other people see in you matters even more than how you see yourself.  Goldsmith has written:
“If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world. We can then begin to make the real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.”

Every day You show gratitude

Gratitude can benefit your relationships, your health, and your career.
Doug Conant is known for turning around Campbell’s Soup as its CEO. He’s also known for making gratitude a key leadership strategy: Throughout his career at Campbell’s, he sent more than 30,000 handwritten thank-you notes to staffers and clients.
Other famous and successful people have a daily gratitude practice. For example, John Paul DeJoria takes the first five minutes of the day to “be thankful for life.”

You’re self-compassionate

Self-compassion doesn’t make you weak or unambitious. Instead, scientists say it can make you more successful.
Research on self-compassion suggests that it has three components: engaging in a positive internal dialogue, understanding that everyone makes mistakes, and being aware of your thoughts and feelings without succumbing to them.

In “The Happiness Track,” Emma Seppala, Stanford’s science director recommends one strategy for practicing self-compassion.   Treat yourself as you would treat a colleague or friend who has failed.

By Shana Lebowitz & Business Insider

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