10 Things Successful People Never Do Again

We all make mistakes but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.

Henry Cloud       

“Never go back.” What does that mean? From observations of successful people, clinical psychologist and author of Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again (Howard Books, June 2014), Dr. Henry Cloud has discovered certain “awakenings” that people have—in life and in business—that once they have them, they never go back to the old way of doing things. And when that happens, they are never the same. In short, they got it.
“Years ago, a bad business decision of mine led to an interesting discussion with my mentor,” Dr. Cloud says. “I had learned a valuable lesson the hard way, and he reassured me: ‘The good thing is once you learn that lesson, you never go back. You never do it again.’
“I wondered, what are the key awakenings that successful people go through that forever change how they do things, which propel them to succeed in business, relationships, and life? I began to study these awakenings, researching them over the years.”
Although life and business have many lessons to teach us, Dr. Cloud observed 10 “doorways” of learning that high performers go through, never to return again.
Successful people never again…   

1. Return to what hasn’t worked.

Whether a job, or a broken relationship that was ended for a good reason, we should never go back to the same thing, expecting different results, without something being different.

2. Do anything that requires them to be someone they are not.

In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? Am I suited for it? Does it fit me? Is it sustainable?” If the answer is no to any of these questions, you better have a very good reason to proceed.

3. Try to change another person.

When you realize that you cannot force someone into doing something, you give him or her freedom and allow them to experience the consequences. In doing so, you find your own freedom as well.

4. Believe they can please everyone.

Once you get that it truly is impossible to please everyone, you begin to live purposefully, trying to please the right people.

5. Choose short-term comfort over long-term benefit.

Once successful people know they want something that requires a painful, time-limited step, they do not mind the painful step because it gets them to a long-term benefit. Living out this principle is one of the most fundamental differences between successful and unsuccessful people, both personally and professionally.

6. Trust someone or something that appears flawless.

It’s natural for us to be drawn to things and people that appear "incredible." We love excellence and should always be looking for it. We should pursue people who are great at what they do, employees who are high performers, dates who are exceptional people, friends who have stellar character, and companies that excel. But when someone or something looks too good to be true, he, she, or it is. The world is imperfect. Period. No one and no thing is without flaw, and if they appear that way, hit pause.

7. Take their eyes off the big picture.

We function better emotionally and perform better in our lives when we can see the big picture. For successful people, no one event is ever the whole story. Winners remember that—each and every day.

8. Neglect to do due diligence.

No matter how good something looks on the outside, it is only by taking a deeper, diligent, and honest look that we will find out what we truly need to know: the reality that we owe ourselves.

9. Fail to ask why they are where they find themselves.

One of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that in love and in life, in relationships and in business, successful people always ask themselves, what part am I playing in this situation? Said another way, they do not see themselves only as victims, even when they are.

10. Forget that their inner life determines their outer success.

The good life sometimes has little to do with outside circumstances. We are happy and fulfilled mostly by who we are on the inside. Research validates that. And our internal lives largely contribute to producing many of our external circumstances.
And, the converse is true: people who are still trying to find success in various areas of life can almost always point to one or more of these patterns as a reason they are repeating the same mistakes.
Everyone makes mistakes…even the most successful people out there. But, what achievers do better than others is recognize the patterns that are causing those mistakes and never repeat them again. In short, they learn from pain—their own and the pain of others.
A good thing to remember is this: pain is unavoidable, but repeating the same pain twice, when we could choose to learn and do something different, is certainly avoidable. I like to say, “we don’t need new ways to fail….the old ones are working just fine!” Our task, in business and in life, is to observe what they are, and never go back to doing them again. 
10 Things Successful People Never Do Again

The SUCCESS Best-Seller List: December 2016

The most popular books in business, entrepreneurship and personal development

Take a look at the top-selling personal development books of the past month, and you’ll see not all of them are new—that there are modern classics, like Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages, and all-time classics, like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. But others, like Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans, are brand-new and already making waves in the self-improvement world.
For your journey to your best self, we continue our monthly list of the best-selling personal development books with the top 10 for December 2016:

1. Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

By Tim Ferriss (December 2016; Houghton Mifflin; $27)
On his popular podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, Ferriss has interviewed top performers of every type. In this ultimate self-help book, he distills and tests the key insights from elite athletes, adventurers, entrepreneurs, executives, creative thinkers, researchers and more to help readers learn to become healthy, wealthy and wise.

2. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

By Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrams (September 2016; Avery Publishing Group; $26)
Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question: How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering? This book offers a rare opportunity as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama spend a week exploring the Nature of True Joy and confront each of the Obstacles of Joy (fear, stress, anger, grief, illness, death). Then they offer the Eight Pillars of Joy, which provide the foundation for lasting happiness. This unique collaboration offers a reflection on real lives filled with pain and turmoil, in the midst of which they have been able to discover a level of peace, courage and joy to which we can all aspire in our own lives.

3. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

By Jen Sincero (2013; Running Press; $16)
This refreshingly entertaining how-to guide serves up 27 bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice and easy exercises, helping you to create a life you will love. Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want—create a life you love and make some damn money already!

4. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts

By Gary Chapman (2015; Northfield Publishing; $15.99)

Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that’s the challenge! How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts and just plain boredom of everyday life? Whether your relationship is failing or flourishing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love is as practical as it is insightful. The 5 Love Languages includes a “his and hers” personal profile assessment. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, the new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant and actionable wisdom.

5. Trump: The Art of the Deal

By Donald J. Trump and Tony Schwartz (2015; Ballantine Books; $16.99)
President-elect Donald J. Trump lays out his professional and personal worldview in this classic work, a firsthand account of the rise of America s foremost deal-maker. See Trump in action, how he runs his organization and life as he meets people, chats with family and friends, clashes with enemies and challenges conventional thinking. He isolates the common elements in his greatest accomplishments. Trump: The Art of the Deal is an unguarded look at an entrepreneur’s mind and a must-read for anyone interested in the man behind the spotlight.

6. The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

By Dave Ramsey (2013; Thomas Nelson; $24.99)
America's trusted voice on money and business provides a surefire way to whip your finances into shape with the simplest, most straightforward game plan for completely making over your money habits.

7. Jump: Take the Leap of Faith to Achieve Your Life of Abundance

By Steve Harvey (December 2016; Amistad Press; $25.99)
On January 13, 2016, at the close of taping an episode of Family Feud, Steve Harvey spontaneously began to speak. Not knowing that the cameras were still rolling, the $100 million host offered his studio audience insights into his own happiness and success. His staff, also moved by Steve’s words, shared the riveting six-minute video on social media. The clip immediately went viral, with more than 58 million views worldwide. His message is simple: You need to jump like your life depends on it, because it does if you truly want a life of peace and abundance.

. StrengthsFinder 2.0

By Tom Rath (2007; Gallup Press; $29.99)
Do you do what you do best every day? Chances are you don’t. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths. Although you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades. The redesigned StrengthsFinder 2.0 companion website features a strengths community, a library of downloadable discussion guides and activities, a strengths screensaver and a program for creating display cards of your top five strength themes.

9. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

By Mark Manson (September 2016; HarperOne; $24.99)
For decades we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. In his wildly popular blog, Mark Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is in a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach the lemons better. Once we embrace our fears, faults and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity and forgiveness we seek.

10. How to Win Friends and Influence People

By Dale Carnegie (1998 edition, originally published in 1936; Pocket Books; $16)
Go after the job you want and get it! Take the job you have and improve it! Take any situation you’re in and make it work for you! Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 15 million copies. As relevant as ever, Dale Carnegie’s principles endure and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age. Learn the six ways to make people like you, the 12 ways to win people to your way of thinking and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.

SUCCESS analyzes a combination of sales data acquired from Nielsen BookScan—which gathers point-of-sale data from more than 16,000 locations across the U.S.—and from a variety of independently verified sources within the personal development industry. This list represents sales from Dec. 4, 2016, through Jan. 1, 2017.    

14 Things Ridiculously Successful People Do Every Day

Having close access to ultra-successful people can yield some pretty incredible information about who they really are, what makes them tick, and, most importantly, what makes them so successful and productive.

“Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.” –Vaibhav Shah

Kevin Kruse is one such person. He recently interviewed over 200 ultra-successful people, including 7 billionaires, 13 Olympians, and a host of accomplished entrepreneurs. One of his most revealing sources of information came from their answers to a simple open-ended question:

In analyzing their responses, Kruse coded the answers to yield some fascinating suggestions. What follows are some of my favorites from Kevin’s findings.

1. They focus on minutes, not hours. 

Most people default to hour and half-hour blocks on their calendar; highly successful people know that there are 1,440 minutes in every day and that there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller told Kevin, “To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute.” You must master your minutes to master your life.

2. They focus on only one thing. 

Ultra-productive people know what their “Most Important Task” is and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goals? What accomplishment will get you promoted at work? That’s what you should dedicate your mornings to every day.

3. They don’t use to-do lists. 

Throw away your to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out that only 41 percent of items on to-do lists ever get done. All those undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik effect, which, in essence, means that uncompleted tasks will stay on your mind until you finish them. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live by that calendar.

4. They beat procrastination with time travel. 

Your future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are time inconsistent. We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. Successful people figure out what they can do now to make certain their future selves will do the right thing. Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution today to defeat your future self.

5. They make it home for dinner. 

Kevin first learned this one from Intel’s Andy Grove, who said, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.” Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for many, these other values include family time, exercise, and giving back. They consciously allocate their 1,440 minutes a day to each area they value (i.e., they put them on their calendar), and then they stick to that schedule.

6. They use a notebook. 

Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down... That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!” Ultra-productive people free their minds by writing everything down as the thoughts come to them.

7. They process e-mails only a few times a day. 

Ultra-productive people don’t “check” their e-mail throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded into their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their e-mails quickly and efficiently. For some, that’s only once a day; for others, it’s morning, noon, and night.

8. They avoid meetings at all costs. 

When Kevin asked Mark Cuban to give his best productivity advice, he quickly responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander around their topics, and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can and hold fewer of them yourself. If you do run a meeting, keep it short and to the point.

9. They say “no” to almost everything. 

Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” And James Altucher colorfully gave Kevin this tip: “If something is not a ‘Hell Yeah!’ then it’s a no.” Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in a day. Don’t give them away easily.

10. They follow the 80/20 rule. 

Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases, 80 percent of results come from only 20 percent of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results. Focus on those and ignore the rest.

11. They delegate almost everything. 

Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead, they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the I out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues, and they are not micro-managers. In many cases, good enough is, well, good enough.

12. They touch things only once. 

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail -- a bill perhaps -- and then put it down, only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an e-mail and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” If it takes less than five or ten minutes -- whatever it is -- they deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress, since it won’t be in the back of their minds, and it is more efficient, since they won’t have to re-read or re-evaluate the item again in the future.

13. They practice a consistent morning routine. 

Kevin’s single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with him. While he heard about a wide variety of habits, most nurtured their bodies in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast, and light exercise, and they nurtured their minds with meditation or prayer, inspirational reading, or journaling.

14. Energy is everything. 

You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy to increase your attention, focus, and productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep, or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and breaks as opportunities to recharge in order to get even more done.

Bringing It All Together

You might not be an entrepreneur, an Olympian, or a billionaire (or even want to be), but their secrets just might help you to get more done in less time and assist you to stop feeling so overworked and overwhelmed.
A version of this article appeared on TalentSmart.

Travis Bradberry

Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and President at TalentSmart

Award-winning co-author of the best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the co-founder of TalentSmart -- a consultancy that serves more than 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies and is a leading provider of emotional intelligence tests, training and certification.
His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. Bradberry has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Harvard Business Review.

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Hilarious footage shows schoolgirl shouting words to hymn at nativity

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5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself

5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself

1. Give up dwelling on "If only..."   

Posted May 10, 2016    

Most of us have goals, both big (go back to school and get a master's degree) and small (pare down that pile of junk mail). What keeps us from meeting our goals? Why are some goals successfully achieved, while others remain on our to-do list, nagging us for months or even years at a time? 

I've written before about how to set goals that are more likely to be met. And though a few tweaks to your goal-setting method can have an immense impact on your likelihood of meeting those goals, for many of us the problem lies not so much in the goals we set, but the ways we prevent ourselves from meeting them. You might have the most functional, realistic goals in the world, but if you engage in self-sabotage, then guess what? Your chance to meet a goal is gone before you even begin.
With my clients, I consistently see the same behaviors keeping them from taking action. These methods of self-sabotage can prevent them from getting where they want to be, fixing what they need to fix, and becoming the person they would love to be. You may know what you want and be pretty sure of the path you need to take to get it, but it's not uncommon to be stuck in a rut of self-sabotage.
Do you recognize any of the following behaviors in yourself? 

1. Dwelling on "If only...."

We all have regrets, whether they're about something we did (if only I hadn't dropped out of college), or something we didn't do (if only I'd stood up for myself more in that relationship). Sometimes we play the "if only" game about things that we can't control, but that we wish were different: If we had grown up with different parents, if we were more talented, if our partner could fundamentally change in some way.
These thoughts can follow us around for decades, and the problem with them is that they don't lead to action. Repeatedly revisiting "if only" fantasies when they involve things we can't do anything about keeps us idling in neutral. Given our lack of a time machine and the inability to overhaul people other than ourselves, continuing to indulge in these thoughts brings nothing but further frustration. These thoughts don't spur action, inspiration, or problem-solving. And worst of all, dwelling on them keeps the same patterns going (ruminating on how you wasted your 20s socially may make you less likely to go out and seek good friendships in your 40s; dwelling on imperfect aspects of your partner builds resentment that makes your relationship worse).
Try turning "if only" into a different mindset altogether by accepting what's done, but using this fact to influence your future actions. Such as, "X is this way, but Y can be that way" or "I can't undo my past, but I can influence my future" or "I have learned something from X, which is Y—and here's how I plan to use it to improve things." Each of these is a new, more functional spin on the "if only" mindset.

2. Being afraid of your thoughts.

One of the easiest ways to ensure that a thought will have power over you is to try your hardest to suppress it. Sometimes we do this because our thoughts terrify us: "This is the third argument my fiancee and I have gotten in this week. What if it was the wrong choice to get engaged?" Or because we feel guilty about having them: "My coworker is just not pulling her weight on this project. But she's a sweet person and a good friend so I shouldn't rock the boat."

When you suppress a thought, though, you have no chance to process it—to understand it, feel it, and perhaps eventually decide that it doesn't make sense. Ironically, walking around afraid of what your brain has to say gives your thoughts far too much importance. This is a hallmark of people who struggle with obsessional thinking. These people are locked in a battle of trying desperately to get a sticky thought to go away, mainly because they're so overly distressed by having it in the first place. But getting trapped in this battle doesn't move you forward. Try not to think of a rhinoceros in a bikini, and bam—there she is, and she's wearing quite a hot number!
The more you battle your thoughts, the more you deny yourself the opportunity to work through them, and the more you keep yourself locked in a negative pattern. Try acknowledging your thoughts and facing them, emphasizing that they are just thoughts, and labeling them as such. For example: "I'm having the thought that it was a mistake to get engaged. That's probably because I've been stressed out. I don't have to be afraid of this thought; it is human. I will get a bit more sleep, get over this bad week at work, and see if I feel differently. If I don't, I'll think things through further."

3. Burying your feelings.

A close cousin to avoiding bothersome thoughts is trying to bury or mask feelings deemed unacceptable. Many people think that to fully acknowledge feelings means yelling obscenities in the grocery store, or hysterically wailing at their next staff meeting. But letting yourself feel things is not the same as unleashing emotions onto the world at large. In fact, you'll be less likely to unleash feelings in inappropriate ways if you've actually acknowledged them and worked through them in the first place. Often times we bury feelings out of guilt: "I'm angry at my sister for making that comment about my weight. But she's a sweet person and does so much for me. I have no right to nitpick." Or fear: "If I let myself feel sad about my breakup, I'll get so depressed I won't even be able to function."
But feelings, when hidden, grow bigger and bigger. And they are prone to corroding people from the inside out. Emotions don't tend to go away on their own just because we try to keep them in. It's similar to repeatedly slamming down a lid onto a pot of water that's boiling over. You know that if you let the water get a little bit of air—set the lid so that it doesn't completely cover the pot—you'll soon get a calm, smooth boil instead of a frothy, rattling mess. Acknowledging your feelings doesn't make them spin out of control, but putting the lid on them does.

4. Habitually starting tomorrow.

So, you've eaten a third sleeve of Girl Scout cookies before noon, or you're completely frustrated that it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you've gotten little work done. Many times, the natural reaction is to abandon the rest of the day and visualize the beautiful blank slate of tomorrow. But it's never tomorrow. If you spend so much time saving until tomorrow, the habits you want to pick up and the changes you want to make will always be beyond your reach, because tomorrow is a constantly moving target.

If you are someone who must have a "clean slate" to get motivated, it need not be tomorrow. Why not have that clean slate start in one hour? Or fifteen minutes? This helps stop the surge of all or nothing thinking that can lead you to write off the rest of the day, getting you farther and farther from your goals. Even better, instead of arbitrarily declaring the slate clean because the calendar flipped over, create a true and meaningful clean slate through your behavior. Take a brisk walk. Do a brief meditation. Have a quick chat with a friend. Do some breathing exercises. Allow yourself five minutes of a video that makes you laugh. Each of these things can help reset your mind and your productivity much better than the vague "tomorrow," which, when you think about it, is never actually here and never really puts you in the driver's seat.

5. Letting inertia harm you rather than help you.

Inertia is fantastic when it's on your side. If you pick up a healthy habit and maintain it for several weeks in a row—making coffee rather than buying it, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, sorting your emails as they come in—it becomes much easier to continue it. But too often, inertia applies to habits we don't want to have, and activities that make us feel unproductive and unhealthy. This is the reason why the psychological clean slate discussed above can be so powerful. We desperately crave the ability to be free from the things we already view as tainted: A busted diet, a soured relationship, or a pattern of motivation-killing habits at work. We don't want to salvage any of it. We want to start fresh because it's a much more attractive option.
Here's the thing: Just like in the physical world, we are prone to staying in motion—or in place—by this force of inertia, and no one can change it but ourselves. The calendar flipping to a new year, feelings of being "fed up," new workout gear, or public promises can all (briefly) jumpstart new behaviors. But they don't address the underlying inertia, which is truly needed to change long-term behavior. You must build the right day-to-day structure in order for new habits to take hold. Otherwise the inertia of the old habits never really goes away. Yes, those new workout pants are fabulous, but if your gym is still too far away or too incompatible with your work hours, then you haven't done anything to address the inertia that prevents you from going to the gym. Focus not on the jumpstart, but on the overhauling of the battery to get inertia working for you, rather than against you.

Andrea Bonior, Ph.D. (link is external), is a licensed clinical psychologist and speaker. She is the author of the upcoming Psychology: Essential Thinkers, Classic Theories, and How They Inform Your World, (link is external) and The Friendship Fix (link is external), and serves on the faculty of Georgetown University. Her mental health advice column Baggage Check (link is external) has appeared in the Washington Post Express for more than eleven years. She speaks to audiences large and small about relationships, work-life balance, and motivation, and is a television commentator about mental health issues. Join the conversation on Facebook (link is external) or Twitter (link is external)! 
Photo credit: Victor (Flickr Creative Commons)

Source: 5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself

How Do High Achievers Really Think?

Beliefs that lead to success.

Posted Oct 19, 2011

Positive affirmations (link is external) are a staple of the self-help industry (link is external), but there is a problem with standing in front of the mirror every morning and saying something like: "I prosper wherever I turn and I know that I deserve prosperity of all kinds." "I am my own unique self—special, creative and wonderful." Or "I will be king of the world in just five days, I just know it." It makes you feel kinda silly (and sometimes worse).

What does research show (link is external) about how high achievers really think? High achievers are often marked, unsurprisingly, by a strong motive to achieve. Less accomplished individuals are often more motivated to avoid failure.
Achievement motivated individuals have a strong desire to accomplish something important, and gain gratification from success in demanding tasks. Consequently they are willing to expend intense effort over long timespans in the pursuit of their goals.
Failure-avoiding individuals are more focused on protecting themselves from the embarrassment and sense of incompetence that can accompany failing at a valued task. Consequently they are less likely to attempt achievement-oriented tasks, and may give up quickly if success is not readily forthcoming. Where total avoidance of tasks is not possible, failure-avoiding individuals may procrastinate, give less than their best effort, or engage in other self-handicapping behaviour that provides a face-saving excuse in the event of failure (e.g. drinking heavily the night before the morning of an important exam).
Of course, achievement motivation versus failure avoidance motivation exist on a continuum, with most of us falling somewhere in the middle. In the research literature, this continuum is described as Relative Motive Strength.
An individual's relative motive strength does not exist in a vacuum, but is associated with an elaborate matrix of beliefs that justify the commitment of intense effort toward goal achievement, or the relative lack thereof. The core beliefs that differentiate achievement motivated individuals are:

1. Success is your personal responsibility
Achievement motivated individuals tend to believe that initiative, effort, and persistence are key determinants of success at demanding tasks. Failure-avoiding individuals are more likely to view success as dependent on available resources and situational constraints (e.g. the task is too hard, or the marker was biased).

2. Demanding tasks are opportunities
Achievement motivated individuals tend to see demanding tasks where success is uncertain as ‘challenges' or ‘opportunities'. Failure avoiding individuals are more likely to see them as ‘threats' that may lead to the embarrassment of failure. An achievement motivated individual might tell a failure avoiding individual, "Anything worthwhile is difficult, so stop acting so surprised".

3. Achievement striving is enjoyable
Achievement motivated individuals associate effort on demanding tasks with dedication, concentration, commitment and involvement. Failure-avoiding individuals categorise such effort as overloading or stressful. They see perseverance in the face of setbacks and obstacles as slightly compulsive.

4. Achievement striving is valuable
Achievement motivated individuals value hard work in and of itself. Failure-avoiding individuals may mock achievement striving as uncool (e.g. the attitude that the L on learner plates stands for Loser). They may associate achievement striving with lack of a social life or even early death by heart attack.

5. Skills can be improved
Achievement-motivated individuals have a strong belief that they can improve their performance on demanding tasks with practice, training, coaching, and dedication to learning. Failure-avoiding individuals tend to see skills as fixed and/or dependent on innate talents.
The research into how skills can most effectively be improved is discussed here.

6. Persistence works
Achievement motivated individuals are inclined to believe that continued effort and commitment will overcome initial obstacles or failures. Failure-avoiding individuals are inclined to see initial failure as a sign of things to come.
So the achievement motivated individual says, "Don't assume that you can't do something until you've tried. And I mean really tried, like tried 3000 times, not that you tried three times, and 'oh I give up.'"
And the failure-avoiding individual responds, "You really need to learn when to quit."

The beliefs held by achievement-motivated individuals are not necessarily more logical or objectively correct than the beliefs held by failure-avoiding individuals, certainly not in all situations. However, they are empirically associated with high levels of achievement.

Once you understand the modes of achievement motivated versus failure-avoiding thinking, you will recognise them in the way that others talk about their goals, dreams, successes, and setbacks. You will also recognise them in your own thinking, and you can choose to cultivate the beliefs that will support you to achieve your goals. This is more effective than just trying to think positive and relying on the law of attraction (link is external) to provide you with what you want.

Carl Beuke, Ph.D., is a psychologist working in management and leadership. He works with the New Zealand Prisons Service and Ministry for the Environment, among others.

Source - How Do High Achievers Really Think?