7 Challenges Successful People Overcome

It’s truly fascinating how successful people approach problems. Where others see impenetrable barriers, they see challenges to embrace and obstacles to overcome.

Their confidence in the face of hardship is driven by the ability to let go of the negativity that holds so many otherwise sensible people back.

Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania has studied this phenomenon more than anyone else has, and he’s found that success in life is driven by one critical distinction—whether you believe that your failures are produced by personal deficits beyond your control or that they are mistakes you can fix with effort.

Success isn’t the only thing determined by your mindset. Seligman has found much higher rates of depression in people who attribute their failures to personal deficits. Optimists fare better; they treat failure as learning experiences and believe they can do better in the future.

This success mindset requires emotional intelligence (EQ), and it’s no wonder that, among the million-plus people that TalentSmart has tested, 90% of top performers have high EQs.

Related: Misused Words That Make Smart People Look Dumb

Maintaining the success mindset isn’t easy. There are seven things, in particular, that tend to shatter it. These challenges drag people down because they appear to be barriers that cannot be overcome. Not so for successful people, as these seven challenges never hold them back.

1. Age

Age really is just a number. Successful people don’t let their age define who they are and what they are capable of. Just ask Betty White or any young, thriving entrepreneur.

I remember a professor in graduate school who told our class that we were all too young and inexperienced to do consulting work. He said we had to go work for another company for several years before we could hope to succeed as independent consultants. I was the youngest person in the class, and I sat there doing work for my consulting clients while he droned on.

Without fail, people feel compelled to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do because of your age. Don’t listen to them. Successful people certainly don’t. They follow their heart and allow their passion—not the body they’re living in—to be their guide.

“They follow their heart and allow their passion—not the body they’re living in—to be their guide.”

2. What Other People Think

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own destiny. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to hold up your accomplishments to anyone else’s, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within.

Successful people know that caring about what other people think is a waste of time and energy. When successful people feel good about something that they’ve done, they don’t let anyone’s opinions take that away from them.

“No matter what other people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain—you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.”

3. Toxic People

Successful people believe in a simple notion: you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Just think about it—some of the most successful companies in recent history were founded by brilliant pairs. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple lived in the same neighborhood, Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft met in prep school, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google met at Stanford.

Just as great people help you to reach your full potential, toxic people drag you right down with them. Whether it's negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome, or just plain craziness, toxic people create stress and strife that should be avoided at all costs.

If you’re unhappy with where you are in your life, just take a look around. More often than not, the people you’ve surrounded yourself with are the root of your problems.

“You’ll never reach your peak until you surround yourself with the right people.”

4. Fear

Fear is nothing more than a lingering emotion that’s fueled by your imagination. Danger is real. It’s the uncomfortable rush of adrenaline you get when you almost step in front of a bus. Fear is a choice. Successful people know this better than anyone does, so they flip fear on its head. They are addicted to the euphoric feeling they get from conquering their fears.

Don’t ever hold back in life just because you feel scared. I often hear people say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Will it kill you?” Yet, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you...

“The worst thing that can happen to you is allowing yourself to die inside while you’re still alive.”

Related: 50 Inspirational Quotes to Motivate You

5. Negativity

Life won’t always go the way you want it to, but when it comes down to it, you have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else does. Successful people make their time count. Instead of complaining about how things could have been or should have been, they reflect on everything they have to be grateful for. Then they find the best solution available, tackle the problem, and move on.

When the negativity comes from someone else, successful people avoid it by setting limits and distancing themselves from it. Think of it this way:

“If the complainer were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke?”

Of course not. You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with all negative people.

A great way to stop complainers in their tracks is to ask them how they intend to fix the problem they’re complaining about. They will either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.

6. The Past or the Future

Like fear, the past and the future are products of your mind. No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. Successful people know this, and they focus on living in the present moment. It’s impossible to reach your full potential if you’re constantly somewhere else, unable to fully embrace the reality (good or bad) of this very moment.

To live in the moment, you must do two things:

1) Accept your past. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will never leave you and it will create your future. Successful people know the only good time to look at the past is to see how far you’ve come.

2) Accept the uncertainty of the future, and don’t place unnecessary expectations upon yourself. Worry has no place in the here and now. As Mark Twain once said,

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”

7. The State of the World

Keep your eyes on the news for any length of time and you’ll see it’s just one endless cycle of war, violent attacks, fragile economies, failing companies, and environmental disasters. It’s easy to think the world is headed downhill fast.

And who knows? Maybe it is. But successful people don’t worry about that because they don’t get caught up in things they can’t control. Instead, they focus their energy on directing the two things that are completely within their power—their attention and their effort. They focus their attention on all the things they’re grateful for, and they look for the good that’s happening in the world. They focus their effort on doing what they can every single day to improve their own lives and the world around them, because these small steps are all it takes to make the world a better place.

“They focus their effort on doing what they can every single day to improve their own lives and the world around them...”

Bringing It All Together

Your success is driven by your mindset. With discipline and focus, you can ensure that these seven obstacles never hold you back from reaching your full potential.

Travis Bradberry

The 8 Instinctive Habits of Remarkable Leaders

Once in a while you meet a leader who stands out -- even in a room filled with skilled, experienced, successful people. She hasn't just learned to be remarkably charismatic. He hasn't just learned to be remarkably likeable.

You can tell, in an instant, they simply think and act and lead differently than most people.

But those rare individuals don't become remarkable leaders overnight. While some are born with an aptitude for leadership, truly outstanding leaders are made. Through training, experience, and a healthy dose of introspection they learn how to make quick decisions. They learn to work with different personalities. They learn to nurture, motivate, and inspire.

They learn to truly lead.

And in time those skills become automatic and reflexive. While great leaders do a tremendous amount of thinking, that thinking happens behind the scenes. In the moment, in the trenches, when people look to them and need them most, they act: swiftly, decisively, and confidently.

Want to become a remarkable leader? Work hard to, like them, do some things naturally, automatically, and instinctively:

1. They praise.

It's easy to tell when employee recognition is simply one entry on a very long to-do list. We've all been around people who occasionally -- and awkwardly -- shake a few hands and pat a few backs. No matter how hard they try to fake it, their insincerity is evident. (Tell me you haven't had at least one boss like that.)

No one gets enough praise, so truly outstanding leaders see expressing thanks, giving praise, and providing recognition as one gift that can never be given often enough.

Praise is almost like breathing to a truly outstanding leader: natural, automatic, frequent, and most of all, genuine and sincere.

Related: 10 Qualities of Really Amazing Employees (LinkedIn)

2. They decide.

Ideas are great but implementation is everything. Outstanding leaders quickly weigh, assess, decide, and then immediately act -- because decisiveness and action build confidence and momentum.

That's why making a poor decision is often better than making no decision at all. Mistakes can almost always be corrected. Even though you should always try, rarely must you be right the first time. Adapting and learning and revising so you get it right in the end matters a lot more.

Especially when...

3. They take responsibility.

We all make bad decisions. What matters is what we do afterwe make those mistakes.

Outstanding leaders are the first to say, "I was wrong." Outstanding leaders are the first to say, "I made the wrong choice. We need to change course."

Outstanding leaders instinctively admit their mistakes early and often because they're quick to take responsibility and because they desperately want to build a culture where mistakes are simply challenges to overcome, not opportunities to point fingers and assign blame.

4. They communicate.

Business is filled with what: What to execute, what to implement, what to say, and sometimes even what to feel.

What's often missing is the why.

That's why so many projects, processes, and tasks fail. Tell me what to do and I'll try to do it; tell me why, help me understand why, help me believe and make that why my mission too...and I'll run through proverbial brick walls to do the impossible.

Managers stipulate. Outstanding leaders explain. And then they listen--because the most effective communication involves way more listening than talking.

5. They set the example.

Say you're walking through a factory with the plant manager and there's a piece of trash on the floor. There are two types of people when that happens:

• One spots it, stops, struts over, snatches it up, crumples it like a beer can, and strides 20 feet to a trashcan to slam it home. He picked up the trash... but he also made a statement.
• The other veers over without breaking stride, picks it up, crumples it, keeps talking, and doesn't throw it away until he comes across a convenient trashcan. He's not thinking about making a statement. He just saw a little trash... and picked it up without thinking.

Simple example? Sure. But extremely telling -- especially to employees.

Why? Employees notice what you do. When you're in charge, everyone watches what you do. The difference lies in how you do what you do... and what that says about you.

Outstanding leaders do what they do simply because it's important to them. It's part of who they are. They care about go, not show -- and, in time, so do they people they work with.

Related: What Kinds of People Do You Hate to Work With? (LinkedIn)

6. They give feedback.

We all want to improve: to be more skilled, more polished, more successful. That's why we all need constructive feedback.

Because they care about their employees, not just as workers but as people, outstanding leaders instinctively go to the person struggling and say, "I know you can do this. And I'm going to help you."

Think about a time when a person told you what you least wanted to hear and yet most needed to hear. They changed your life. Outstanding leaders naturally try to change people's lives, even if it's uncomfortable... because they care.

7. They seek help.

At some point, most people in leadership positions start to avoid displaying any signs of vulnerability. After all, you're in charge of everything, so you're supposed to know everything.

Of course that's impossible. You can't know everything about your job. (Your employees can't know everything about their jobs, either.)

Outstanding leaders don't pretend to know everything. (In fact, they purposely hire people who know more than they do.) So they instinctively ask questions. They automatically ask for help.

And in the process they show vulnerability, respect for the knowledge and skills of others, and a willingness to listen -- all of which are qualities of outstanding leaders.

8. They challenge.

Most leaders implement their ideas by enforcing processes and procedures that support those ideas.

For employees, though, engagement and satisfaction are largely based on autonomy and independence. I care a lot more when it's mine: my idea, my process, my responsibility. I care the most when I feel I am depended on -- and given the authority -- to make important decisions and do what's right.

Outstanding leaders create broad standards and guidelines and then challenge their employees by giving them the autonomy and independence to work the way they work best. They allow employees to turn "yours" into "ours," transforming work into an outward expression of each person's unique skills, talents, and experiences.

That's a challenge every employee wants to face -- and one that outstanding leaders instinctively provide.

LinkedIn Influencer, Jeff Haden, published this post originally on LinkedIn.