10 Simple Qualities That Can Help You Achieve Professional Success and Satisfaction in Life Those qualities start with being "authentic" and "truthful."
By Sherrie Campbell Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The two biggest things people search for are simple: the desire to be happy and the desire to feel satisfied with life. To attain these goals and to achieve great satisfaction and personal satisfaction in your life and career, consider working to incorporate within yourself these 10 simple qualities:
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1. Be authentic.
Be yourself. Let the results of your life reflect your readiness to express your personal freedoms. Take care to exercise your own ideas, your free will and independence. Live from your individual uniqueness and the willingness to be different from others. Your authenticity is that place within you that is true and secure enough to withstand the destructive external negative pressures that often come from life and business.
When you are true to yourself and passionate about your life, you choose to see choice rather than challenge. Your true essence is not set up on false pretenses because whatever paths you choose in life, personal and professional, are completely congruent with who you are.
2. Be truthful.
There is nothing of greater significance to offer your life or business than honesty. To understand why being truthful is important, question how anyone, including yourself, ever benefits from dishonesty. The one thing you cannot afford to lose is your reputation. Once that is lost, due to dishonesty, it may be impossible to recover.
Living from the truth allows you to build relationships based in trust between you and your loved ones, colleagues, competitors, staff and customers. Those around you become energized by your honesty, compelling them to progress in their business and personal relationship with you going forward.
3. Challenge yourself.
In order to make the most of your life and career, challenge yourself. You cannot fulfill even a fraction of your dreams by sticking to the comfortable and secure. Where there is security. there is nothing forcing you to rise to the occasion of maximizing your potential. Challenge yourself to always pursue those goals that will stretch you. You have to have that "thing" that makes you set out to achieve those goals -- that elusive "thing" which propels you to engage in life in ways that you wouldn't if you remained secure and comfortable.
The more you challenge yourself and flourish, the greater your confidence becomes to challenge yourself yet again. Challenges not only help you grow in skill and knowledge, they help you develop your belief in your capacity.
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4. Put love first.
The most significant people in your life are those who genuinely feel for and worry about you. These are the individuals who will always be there to fall back on when you have been disappointed by the world. The people who love and accept you, despite your mistakes and weaknesses, and do not need you to be different are those who bring the most value to your world. They help refuel your belief in yourself when you cannot.
There is no amount of financial gain that could substitute for the love these individuals offer you. They bring a sense of connectedness and belonging which serves to make your life happier and more fulfilling. Those who do not value their loved ones are less well-rounded, less happy and less motivated and successful in life. Do not let this be you.
5. Be thoughtful.
Treat all of those you interact with, with a sense of dignity and value. When you can make another person feel significant, he or she will be motivated to maintain that feeling. Being thoughtful of others does not make you a pushover. Thoughtfulness is that high-level quality of being emotionally intelligent in all your exchanges. When you treat others with openness and respect, you have a calm power to stay rational and present in your communications.
Keep in mind that anger is never useful in relationships, personal or professional, as it is nearly impossible to respect an angry person. Anger doesn't wear intelligently on anyone.
6. Be a good human being.
Be mindful of others in the ways you expect others to be mindful of you. Practice tolerance and acceptance to bring a sense of peace to your life and world at large. Let go of small-mindedness, bigotry, the belittling of others and self-righteousness.
Tolerance is an essential quality to possess. Think about who you are in the global world, or in the wholeness of life, and what you want your personal impact to be. Strive to be that bigger person. Be open-minded to learning from all types of people and their differing beliefs, as you never know what type of person holds your next biggest opportunity in his or her hands.
7. Practice patience.
Knowing the difference between patience and waiting is key to a successful life and career. Patience is not about waiting. Waiting is action-less. When you practice patience, you never stop working toward your dreams even when you do not yet see results. If you are "waiting" without working, you have stopped. When you are passionate, there is no limit to the the amount of work you will do if you see it as bringing you closer to your goals.
Patience means believing enough in what you have set out to achieve to keep going.
8. Live your dreams.
Do not just follow your dreams, live them. Make each wish a manifested destiny. Work to make your dreams reality, with consistency, precision and commitment. Living your dreams is the stuff a well-lived life is made of. What you pursue passionately will bring you a life full of vitality, excitement and the joy that you deserve.
Your dreams and passions bring deeper meaning to your life and to the lives of others. When you live your dreams, you become inspiring. You instill in others the belief that if it is possible for you, then it can also be possible for them.
9. Have a grateful heart.
When you have a grateful heart, your positive emotions become stronger, decreasing the negative emotional experiences of envy, victimization and jealousy. Gratitude makes your memories more positive and is a great catalyst in helping you to bounce back quickly from stress.
Gratitude helps you achieve life and career goals, making both your personal and professional lives more loving, productive and enjoyable places to be for you and everyone you touch.
10. Remain humble.
Commit to working quietly and allowing your success to do the talking. Humility is based in internal reflection. Yet, when it comes to choosing where to focus your time and energy, it is all about other people for you. In being humble, you are not being self-centered, or worrying about your image; you have the courage to risk and try new things. You are not compelled to try to be perfect, because you are not stuck on expectations. This frees you from the paralysis of fearing failure as your main concern.
When you are humble, you approach life with openness and flexibility. You are not afflicted by the search for happiness or success for yourself alone, because your main focus is not about trying to be either successful or happy. Instead, you are caught up in projects, passions, people and things you consider bigger and more important than yourself, and from this you end up with more happiness and success, as a simple byproduct.
The surest path to becoming happy and successful in life is in helping others to achieve the happiness and success they desire.
To experience happiness and that deep sense of well-being and satisfaction with who you are, what you are doing and who you still desire to become, you must contemplate daily what it means to be authentic. You must be committed and deliberate in your search to challenge yourself, to face fears, to be good to others and to be the conscious creator of the wholeness of your overall life experience.
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