When resolving to change the future, one does so in reflecting on the past. Having done that, and looking ahead, a good place to start is taking a glance at Super Achievers. In his book, Secrets of Super Achievers, Philip Baker lists the key attributes of Super Achievers. Here’s an encapsulation of their key character traits:
1. The Quest for Character – Character is about building an inner world that remains stable and secure, despite external concerns or comforts. We are made up of three parts: heart, mind and body. With our body we relate to the physical world; with our mind, the intellectual world; and with our heart the inner dimensions of character and spirituality.
2. On Taking Responsibility – Winston Churchill once said, ‘Responsibility is the price of greatness’. The sooner we accept that the number one person responsible for all our woes is our self, the quicker we begin to make decisions that will change our lives.
3. Have an overriding Goal or Passion – “You will become as small as your controlling desire; or as great as your dominant aspiration.” – James Allen
4. Be Optimistic – “The higher you go in any organization of value, the better attitude you’ll find.” –John Maxwell Baker said, “I think as adults, we should jump in more puddles rather than complain about the rain. We should sing more, smile more and take time to smell the flowers, look at the view and enjoy the journey.”
5. Have Focus – Super Achievers have learnt the importance of focus and concentration and refuse to be led away on interesting yet fatal distractions.
6. Have Endurance – “Never, never, never, never give up.” – Winston Churchill And, Helen Keller, who certainly had her fair share of pain and problems, wrote, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, and ambition inspired and success achieved.”
7. Have an Abundance Mentality – “If you are 20 and not a socialist, you lack a heart. If you are 40 and not a capitalist you lack a head.” – Winston Churchill
8. Be a Constant Learner – Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. anyone who keeps learning stays young.” – Henry Ford And Art Buchwald, one of America’s greatest humorists has put it this way: “There are too many people who think they’re educated because they have a diploma. They aren’t. You don’t get educated; you prepare yourself for an education. You prepare yourself to know how to look things, up, to know how to use books, how to think.”
9. Learn to be Content – Making more money does not increase happiness. To be rich is something we have or don’t have within us. Being content can be summed up in having an overriding goal, focus, self-growth and humility all are prerequisites for internal harmony.
10. Believe in People – This can be summed up by the children’s story of the battered toy. “The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced, like the Skin Horse, understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “Or bit, by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Baker summarizes it this way, “To reach a goal on one’s own is often a hollow and lonely experience. To bring a team, family or a group of friends together and see the dream realized corporately, brings community to success and success to community.”