Hard things to achieve successful

Success does not come easy. Ask any one who has made it to the top of the ladder of success and he/she will tell you that it was not a bed of roses. Success can often be a result of a life of self denial.

How often do we hear the saying ‘You cannot eat your cake and have it’. This is so true about success. You have to be
willing to do or face those things that 80% of the people don’t want to do or face to be a success story. Please continue below to a write-up I came across a while ago. Unfortunately I cannot remember where or how I came across this article.

In order to achieve success in life, You have to do the hard things.

1. You have to make the call you’re afraid to make.
2. You have to get up earlier than you want to get up.
3. You have to give more than you get in return right away.
4. You have to care more about others than they care about you.
5. You have to fight when you are already injured, bloody, and sore.
6. You have to feel unsure and insecure when playing it safe seems smarter.
7. You have to lead when no one else is following you yet.
8. You have to invest in yourself even though no one else is.
9. You have to look like a fool while you’re looking for answers you don’t have.

10. You have to grind out the details when it’s easier to shrug them off.
11. You have to deliver results when making excuses is an option.
12. You have to search for your own explanations even when you’re told to accept the “facts.”
13. You have to make mistakes and look like an idiot.
14. You have to try and fail and try again.
15. You have to run faster even though you’re out of breath.
16. You have to be kind to people who have been cruel to you.
17. You have to meet deadlines that are unreasonable and deliver results that are unparalleled.
18. You have to be accountable for your actions even when things go wrong.
19. You have to keep moving towards where you want to be no matter what’s in front of you.

You have to do the hard things. The things that no one else is doing. The things that scare you. The things that make  you wonder how much longer you can hold on.

Those are the things that define you. Those are the things that make the difference between living a life of mediocrity or outrageous success.

The hard things are the easiest things to avoid. To excuse away. To pretend like they don’t apply to you. The simple truth about how ordinary people accomplish outrageous feats of success is that they do the hard things that smarter, wealthier, more qualified people don’t have the courage – or desperation – to do.

Do the hard things. You might be surprised at how amazing you really are.

Bill Gates: 5 Success Attitudes

If you’re looking for a role model of lifelong success, you can’t do much better than Bill Gates.
Microsoft, the company he founded, created a whole industry. At a net worth of nearly $80 billion, he’s one of the richest men in the world. His philanthropic activities have a far and wide reach and have actually made the world a better place. Lest we forget, he also achieved his dream of putting a personal computer on every desk.

What factors contributed to Bill Gates’s success?
He certainly was in the right place at the right time with the right concept for a product. But over the years, he himself has pointed to some of the attitudes he believes lead to continued success. They’re a good guide for anyone, in any field.

Here are some of the 5 most relevant attitudes he looks for–and which anyone can develop:

1. Knowing how to say no.

This is an advice Bill Gates got from Warren Buffett, and it’s extremely useful for everyone, whether you’re rich and successful or not. There will always be an unending supply of opportunities, things to do, causes you care about, and on and on. In this busy world, knowing when and how to say no to projects, social invitations, and other requests for your time may be the most important skill you need. It will allow you to figure out what’s truly important, and then focus your attention there.

2. Welcoming criticism.

“Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement,” Gates advises in his book “Business @ the Speed of Thought”. While it’s never pleasant to hear someone tell you how you’ve screwed up, without that kind of feedback, your learning process and growth will be much slower. I find listening to criticism nearly always gives me perspective that I didn’t have, and that I need.

Of course, some criticism is not useful–so you have to use your judgment to tell the difference. With that in mind, next time someone wants to chew you out, don’t walk the other way. Stop, listen, thank them–and learn.

3. Optimism.

It can be hard to be optimistic in a world where so many things seem to be going wrong. But without optimism, no one would ever start a company, invest in a new idea, or try out a new product or market.

Gates appreciates the value of optimism, and since his work addresses some of the most disheartening problems on our planet, such as sex trafficking, hunger, and extreme poverty, he needs a lot of it. “Optimism is often dismissed as false hope,” he said in a Stanford commencement speech in 2013. “But there is also false hopelessness.”

4. Being willing to fail.

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose,” he wrote in his book The Road Ahead. Today’s can’t-fail product could wind up obsolete tomorrow, he explains, which could be what’s happening to desktop personal computers and the Windows operating system that often runs them.

You may find successes more enjoyable than failures, but it’s the failures that will teach you the most and give you the best opportunities to grow. Keep that in mind next time you fall flat on your face.

5. The ability to focus on a goal and keep progressing toward it.

In an annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates drew some lessons from the history of the steam engine. “You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal,” he wrote. He went on to say that finding the right goal and the right metric for tracking one’s progress is surprisingly difficult.

Then again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Key to Entrepreneurial Success is Hardword

Beneath all that joy and happiness, glitz and glamour of the successful launch of an entrepreneurial venture is a lot of hard work – Sheer Hard Work.

You may have all the skill possible. You may have spotted all the business opportunities possible in th world. You may even have access to all the necessary financing possible. Even done your market survey and plan etc. However, without hard work i.e the willingness to put in the extra shift necessary to creatively bring all of the above together to achieve your target, you will surely fail.

As a matter of fact, without hard work you will not be able to do all the necessary things to make your startup or business a success story. The possibility of conducting marketing survey and designing a market plan, crafting your business plan, arranging finance, putting your team together etc all require working hard extra long hours. Remember: There is no short road to success.

Of course, don’t get me wrong. Hard work alone will not take you to the promised land. Otherwise, every truck pusher, gravedigger etc who physically toil from dawn to dusk would have gotten stinkingly rich by now.

Take this story about Cooper Dressler who was recently elevated to being a team member of the Oracle America’s Cup boat racing team. Below are two quotes in his own words:

“At the beginning, I was sort of just a hired help”

“… A bit of labour, random things, packing containers. I learned how to drive a forklift pretty well …”  

Going by his words: Having started out as a helper, his willingness to graft (work hard) on the boat led to his being upgraded to the sailing team.

According to Jimmy Spithill, the skipper who led the Oracle team to its first America’s Cup success, Dressler’s hardworking enterprise set him apart from the rest and convinced him to upgrade him to the sailing team. He has these to say about Cooper:

“Cooper is just a fantastic story … the most important thing is your attitude and your work ethic.”

“It didn’t matter what job he was doing, he was always upbeat, motivated – a great attitude. We all saw that and we thought ‘We’ve just got to have this guy on our team’.”

Hard work truly pays not only in the America’s Cup but in all spheres of life and even more so in the success of an Entrepreneur. Your hard work as evidenced from moving your project from the idea stage to the business plan stage will help convince potential partners, potential investors, potential team members (staff) etc to join up in bringing your idea to fruition.

Hard work pays! Always!