After reading "How To Lead" by Jo Owen it gave me some inspiration to talk about some of the character traits required to stand out from the rest. In the book, these characteristics are described as being a leader's traits but I thought I would adapt them and discuss how they can make you stand out from the crowd.
Ability to Motivate Yourself:- you have all these dreams, goals and visions with this burning desire to go out and conquer them but you can't bring yourself to actually get up and do the steps required to achieve your biggest dreams. It all comes from within you and your ability to motivate yourself. You need to find what makes you tick, what makes you excited in life, what makes you feel like you can do anything. Then, reflect on your goals and ambitions and put positive emotions to them and think about how you want to feel once you've completed your goal. Write down small, manageable steps to achieve your goals so you don't feel overwhelmed when moving closer to your dreams.
Vision:- you need to have a clear vision and guideline as to what you want to achieve. For example: do you want to go on a holiday abroad somewhere but you don't have enough funds to do the trip. Have a vision of you at the airport about to board the plane, feeling excited for the adventure you're going to go on. Now bring it back to present day where you can look at your budgeting and where you can scrap and save to afford your magical trip away.
Decisiveness:- this is where you can be a little bit selfish in a sense and really think about where you want to head in life. You need to make decisions around your goals and dreams that get you in the best possible position to achieve them. On the other hand to this is opportunities that come your way. You need to question, is this right for me? Will this progress me to where I want to be? Will I feel happier doing this? There's no point saying yes to everything to please others. It's your life and you need to decide if what is thrown your way as well as your self created path is where you want to be.
Able to Handle Crisis:- aka "Able to Push Through Your Fails." There will be times where you fail. You've tried something and it's not worked out how you wanted it to or you are constantly pushing to progress with something but it's not getting you anywhere. You need to have the ability to push through your failures and keep going and to not give up. With this will bring you strength and commitment as you will have motivation to make it work, to do extra reading, to take additional classes, to constantly improve to get you to where you want to be.
Learning and Growing:- this leads me nicely on to learning and growing. As discussed in many of my other blog posts, constantly self improving is so important to progress in life. Whatever problem you are facing, you are likely to want to find out more about it to improve. For example: if you find you're always tired and can never concentrate then reading up on the importance of sleep, listening to a scientific podcast about sleep or watching a documentary on sleep will help you learn and grow to improving your quality of sleep and how you feel.
Be Positive:- no matter what situation you're in right now, you need to remain positive. You don't know what the future holds but as long as you've got a positive, can do attitude you can conquer anything in life. Don't get me wrong, we all have bad days and feel negative but having a positive mindset you are able to remain happy and comes across to others as a nice person rather than moaning all the time. Being positive allows you to be optimistic and more likely to throw yourself into the deep end and say yes to more opportunities.
Believe in Yourself:- this is so so important to progress in life and to achieve everything you can want to achieve. If you don't have believe in yourself then who will? You need to run with your dreams, visions and goals and make them a reality. No matter how much someone tries to push you down and tell you you're not good enough this gives more fuel for you to prove them wrong and that you can do it. You need to have the ability when you're sad and self doubting yourself to pick yourself up and say "I can do this." Find your favourite motivational speakers or the notes you made when you were inspired to give yourself that extra boost to make you believe in yourself again.
Be Brave:- life beings once you've stepped out of your comfort zone. Every week, set yourself the goal to do something that you would like to do but scares you at the same time. Perhaps it's sending a collaboration email to someone who inspires you constantly or maybe it's going to the cinema by yourself. Whatever scares you, you need be brave and bite the bullet as if you don't do it now, when will you ever do it?
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