3 Surprising Traits of Successful People

So recently I was observing that there are these three recurring traits I notice in some of the most successful people I’ve met. And I want to share with them with you because they might resonate and they might give you a little bit of a roadmap for what are the characteristics or traits that maybe I need to cultivate inside of myself if I also want to be successful. And I think about these a lot in terms of are these boxes that I’m actually checking myself and hopefully they serve you as well. So the number one trait that I see in very successful people, without a doubt, is that they’re competent. They are wildly competent at the thing that they do. They are very, very good. Doesn’t mean they’re great at everything. But within their particular domain of experience, they are experts.

They are not to be trifled with. I don’t know a single successful people person who has gotten to where they are in business and life, whatever that is, not wildly competent, at least at the thing that they do. So that’s number one. If you want to be successful, figure out what is the traits or the skills that you need to develop so that you can be above average. You can be not just a jack of all trades, but you can be a true master of at least one domain. And the truth is that like a master in any one domain can be leveraged to great effect. And it might not seem like that all the time. You might be an expert in something kind of esoteric and weird and you’re like, I don’t know how this competence in this particular domain is going to help me, but truly I believe that any niche skill can be extrapolated out to massive success.

Success if done correctly. That’s, that’s the caveat. Now one of the things I would recommend in terms of thinking through what are my skills that I could be extremely competent at, is to lean into what you’re already naturally interested in. I think passion and competence. It’s kind of this circle jerk that goes around and around. You become passionate about the thing because you have some early successes with the thing. Maybe it’s because you’re naturally predisposed to that particular activity. You have some proficiencies.
And that then makes it so that rehearsing or practicing or doing that activity repetitively for many, many hours is internally rewarded because you’re kind of good at it. Whereas the things that we suck at, we’re not rewarded on the same timeframe. And so we don’t practice them as much. We don’t put in as much effort, and so we don’t get as good at them. And so this flywheel of passion and competence goes hand in hand. A lot of times when you’re young, people will, you know, tell you you need to go find what you’re passionate about. If you find a thing that you love, you’ll never work a day in your life, that type of thing. I think that’s kind of misguided because it puts cart before the horse.
I think a lot of times the passion is the result of the skill, result of the competence. So focus more on the skill that you think that you could develop into, become great at, and there’ll probably be passion that follows from that activity. For me, that was writing. That was one of the very first things, one of the first skills. And that’s kind of transmogrified over the years. That’s crazy word. Transmogrified into communication as a whole, not just the written word, but that’s a particular skill that I knew I could develop and become particularly skilled at just because I had some natural predilection there already. So audit your skill sets and say, what are the thing? What could I lean into to become extremely competent at this? Because that is a prerequisite for greatness.
You gotta be very, very competent, at least at one thing. Number two is the most successful people that I know. They are also very confident, and that confidence springs from that confidence. You know, when you’re really good at a thing and you know you’re good at that thing, you know that you have the ability to, you know, if you’re. If your skill set is putting a basketball in the hoop, you don’t lack confidence. If you know that you shoot 90% from the free throw line, you go up there and you’re like, I’ve done this hundreds of thousands of times before. I know how to shoot this ball. It’s confidence.
I know that ball is going to go in confidence. I can’t remember how it’s defined, but it has to do with, like, your degree of certainty to which you believe an activity will lead to a particular result. And if you have done that activity and it has delivered that result tens of thousands of times, you are going to be very confident in your ability to produce the result. As a consequence of that, it will also lead to confidence. So you see how competence and confidence kind of go into one another right now. The third trait, which is really interesting is it’s almost like the antithesis of the confidence is that very successful people tend to have a bit of an insecurity. They tend to be paranoid or tend to have this self doubt about themselves, which pushes them to put in the long hours and work harder to increase their competence and their confidence, because internally, they might feel that they’re not good enough. There’s like this chip on the shoulder that drives them to continue improving and try to become the best at the thing.
It’s like this weird blend of confidence, competence, and insecurity. And if you have that in the right balance, then you can do pretty much anything that you put your mind to. And now the insecurity. It’s important that this doesn’t become crippling insecurity. It needs to be the type of insecurity that’s driven from the realization that you are competing in a game against very, very talented people and that if you are not at your best, if you’re not continually improving, they’re going to catch you, they’re going to pass you. Now, this makes the whole endeavor very competitive mindset and puts the perspective of me versus everybody else. And that’s not always so healthy, but in a very real way, the most successful people I know, they realize that games of business, games of whatever they’re playing, it’s a game with an opponent, and that opponent is often the marketplace or other competitors. And maybe it’s another version of yourself.

Maybe the insecurity is driven by the fact that you’re not everything. You know, you could be right. However you get there mentally, whatever mental gymnastics you need to do, I think it’s very important that you balance this confidence with this realization that you are not yet everything that you could be, that there is room for improvement after all. Like, that’s. That’s. I think what really separates masters from beginners is, like, the master understands, yes, I am better than 99% of people at this thing. And yet there’s still so much for me to learn, so much room for improvement, because they understand the depth and complexity of the tasks that they’ve dedicated themselves to. So I wanted to share that with you guys.

Hopefully, that gives you something to think about today is like, what am I competent at? What am I confident in, and where am I insecure, and how can I use these three traits and kind of blend them to continue propelling myself forward towards my greatness? I’ll catch you guys in the next episode. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.