Tweet Page

Roughly eight years ago, I quit my miserable job working in a warehouse. I was there from 5AM — 5PM, Monday through Saturday. My job consisted of repetitive tasks, including things like: cutting metal, welding, drilling through stainless steel with a hand-held drill and cleaning paint off of metal with toxic chemicals. I know what it’s like to have a horrible, life sucking job. Everything changed, when I discovered one thing… it’s something that all successful people have in common but few talk about.

The #1 characteristic that all successful people share is this: Successful people take full responsibility for everything they can control and ignore everything they can’t control. It sounds like a simple concept, until you start to unpack what it actually means and the implications that come from it. I’ll use two examples to illustrate this.

Let’s say that a person is working at a great job, making six figures a year. Then, without warning, they learn their company is downsized. Their position has been outsourced. Even worse… thousands of employees like them have also been let go. Their entire job, in their entire industry is gone and will never come back. Sound familiar? This kind of things has been happening a lot, in the past five years.

It’s pretty clear that this person can’t control the fact that they were fired. They can, however, control how they respond and what they do. Most people who face a challenge like this will start complaining about how much their situation sucks; and, they’re right. It does suck. It’s unfortunate; but, every day they spend focusing on how much it sucks is two days wasted. What do I mean? How could they be wasting twice as much time? It’s because of opportunity cost. They could have been spending that time taking responsibility for things they can control. How they choose to go about that would be up to them; but, there are various things they can control.

This is just one example. It’s a pretty simple one. If you want to go even deeper, take a look at something like cancer. I know. It’s tough to talk to someone afflicted with cancer and tell them that they should be focusing on things they can control, rather than feeling like a victim. My father was diagnosed with cancer, several years ago. He fought hard and was able to beat it. I feel very fortunate to have my father in my life. Many people do not have that. That’s why I work with City of Hope, to help raise money for cancer research.

Some of you reading this many think: “But it’s not a person’s fault, if they lose their job or get cancer. How can you say that they need to take responsibility for something they didn’t cause?” Great question. Here’s the answer… Don’t confuse responsibility with blame. There may be other people to blame, for a job loss; but, that is not the same thing as taking responsibility. Responsibility means the ability to act (response — able). We all have the ability to act, even if it’s just inside our own mind. Think about it. It’s the one thing that all successful people have in common.