To wonder what ingredient succesful people have?

[malificent7]

I mean is it talent, drive, ambition, good luck, timing etc or all of the above?
There are so many talented people out there who really deserve fame and fortune then someone like me who eorks hard but barely scrapes by and dosn't excel in anything.
When I look at the honours list I am in awe...from Lewis Hamilton to an Occupational Therapist who has made innovations in her field...all exceptional people.

Ignoring the apathy that surrounded me as a child and going for a different life than the one I was brought up in.
I was neglected and ignored a lot, especially my good grades which made me independent and determined to achieve.
Listening to my rich aunt and uncle.
I have ambition and drive that escaped my lazy siblings.

All this makes me financially wealthy.
Personal life was sorted through therapy because of much of the above.

Good health.
Luck.
Discipline.

It's not that people are just successful. They have gone through all of the struggles unsuccessful people go through, but eventually it pans out for them

Also, everyone has different ideas of success. When someone says they are head of global logistics at widgets incorporated, they've worked 60 hours a week to get there but now have an executive house and a fancy car I think they're a mug and have been sold a lie by capitalism.

For my cohort, it was luck, ability to relocate/travel and the gift of the gab.

I know people who have achieved phenomenal success. Interestingly, they were the people who you would least have expected. They didn't try hard, they didn't work, and they dossed about for most of their teens and twenties.

But they were good at blagging, and picked up "jobs" in various European countries (largely because they couldn't get any work in the UK). Twenty years later, they are now Senior Heads of Department at some global powermakers.

No-one else I know from my cohort, no matter whether they went to Oxbridge or into a trade, whether they took risks or not, whether they started a business or not has particularly got anywhere. And there were people who should have seen successes. So many people I know took risks, jumped out into the unknown, worked hard /smart and they ended up nowhere.

It's a bit of an interest of mine, this subject, and over the years I ask people I meet who've achieved extraordinary success how they did it. As a rule, they tend to be in their 60s and 70s now, and they all say the same thing: it was luck. Right place, right time.

Most people would say that I'm pretty successful
I had wonderful parents, drive and work ethic. I'm very positive and extrovert
And prepared to take risks and not follow a trodden path. Small example of this is I have twice 'found houses not on the open market because I didn't like what was out there.
This includes my current dream house that most people would have run away screaming from.
I really like people and am a very loyal friend and manager but really don't care if people don't like my views .I'm always kind and treat my team and people who work for me as if they are part of my family.

I read really fast - have always thought this helps at work .
I lost a parent at a very difficult time for me and that shaped me enormously. My father - also very successful - was in care as a child and that definitely drove him on

And, to add something controversial here, I think we Brits delude ourselves that out country isn't like other European countries, that we are kess hampered by nepotism.

In truth, success in Britain is a lot about who you know. Many fields are entirely sewn up.

I mean, twenty years ago, you couldn't even qualify as a tradesman if you didn't know someone who would give you an apprenticeship and be willing to pay NMW for the privilege. That often meant they had to be family. So if you didn't have a dad or uncle in the trades, you were screwed.

Same goes for all sorts of fields. I now benefit from it myself as I get work from old contacts and mates.

I don't think we are honest with young people about it all. We tell them they need good grades when really what they need is experience, contacts, and an understanding that people fundentally pay for someone to remove a stress from their lives: be that an office drowning in paperwork, a burst pipe, a plastic slide for lockdown, a phone to help them handle their lives, a hair product so they look more groomed, or an algorithm to solve a tech security problem etc.

Once you understand that, life becomes easier to figure out.

@Zenithbear

Ignoring the apathy that surrounded me as a child and going for a different life than the one I was brought up in. I was neglected and ignored a lot, especially my good grades which made me independent and determined to achieve. Listening to my rich aunt and uncle. I have ambition and drive that escaped my lazy siblings.

All this makes me financially wealthy.
Personal life was sorted through therapy because of much of the above.

Absolutely to ‘ignoring the apathy of your childhood environment’. I love my parents, and acknowledge that they also grew up in impoverished backgrounds, but neither of them ever did anything to improve our circumstances. My father kept turning down promotions to foreman in his low-paid manual job because it would be ‘too much hassle’, and they both tried to get me to leave school at fifteen, actively tried to stop me considering university (‘only for rich people’, despite full grants existing then) and were mortified when I won a scholarship.

I had a lot of work to do to overcome the ‘Never try, you’ll only fail and people will think you’re getting above yourself’ mindset. Still do.

I wonder this too.

Resilience, persistence and belief I deserve the best in life. Also the ability to take responsibility for my decisions and live with the consequences.
The belief mentioned above comes from my grandparents who treated me like the Queen.
The rest came from my parents who did the opposite.

Thinking about this some more - and it came out previously on the successful women thread - the not siting still that @KiKiDeluxe references resonates. I’ve always got a million balls in the air.

In the past 25 years there hasn’t been a single year where I haven’t taken on a project of some sort whether that’s professional qualifications; house purchase and renovation; a move to a different country; a new job/role; setting up or selling a company. Usually there’s at least two, sometimes more, overlaid by having babies and all the rest.

A decade ago if you’d told me where I’d be now in terms of finances and family I’d say in that case I’ll have my feet up on a lounger somewhere hot. Instead I’m starting a number of new projects.

You've got to want it enough. And be good enough to do it or to pay someone else to.

So much of this thread reminds me of the IT Crowd.

"When I started this business, I only had two things. A dream, and six million pounds."

Every case is different, will never meet a successful person who didn’t have self-belief. You will never strive for the things that make you happy and/or are valued by others, unless you value yourself and believe you can do it.
Many other things are needed besides, but I think without self belief at some lecel it is impossible, because without it you would self sabotage.

A parent at school owns a small empire of rental properties but gives the nanny £10 a week for food for two children.

What a bitch. To me that's somebody who is a failure.

Scott Galloway from NYU is wise on this.

www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/self-made-millionaire-scott-galloway-why-you-shouldnt-follow-passion.html

Basically 'do what you're good at', work at it REALLY hard and become great at it.

My sector typical salary pays around £40k when you look at salary surveys yet by being very good at what I do I earn 4 times that.

The other point, 'find a great life partner' works for me too. We share the load and support each other. It's much easier to take risks and play a long game when there's 2 of you.

I am still looking for something I'm good at!

I think 'hard work' is a bit misleading, because you can work hard scrubbing bogs all your life, earning a pittance and being miserable. You have to have the confidence and intelligence to know where to apply your efforts. Hard work on its own isn't any good.

That’s certainly true that working hard is no harbinger of success. The hardest-working people I know are my MIL, SIL FIL and DF, two cleaners, a bin man and a mechanic (all now retired apart from SIL).

However, my father was offered possibilities for progression throughout his life and always turned them down, and refused to apply for promotions or to switch companies — he worked for the same one since he started there as a messenger boy till he retired — and DH says risk-averse MIL talked FIL out of his one idea of starting his own small business in the 70s, and the one time he filled in for a bin supervisor, he was offered the job permanently, and refused it, returning to the binman job that wrecked his body. (This was in the era before wheelie bins— he’s suffered agonies with his back all his later life.)

These people were and are incredibly hard-working, and got up at five am every day of their working lives to do physically demanding work, but didn’t have the confidence/ambition/desire to work ‘smarter’, or to trade physically demanding work for more psychologically demanding but better-paid. To this day, both parents and PILs are notoriously risk-averse and change-averse and regard one of us moving jobs as something akin to tightrope walking across the Grand Canyon. None of them understand the nature of DH’s and my jobs, which don’t have defined hours but responsibilities that need to be dealt with whenever they arise.

The people I know who are really successful aren’t particularly academic and I wouldn’t say have come from privilege. They all work very hard, they’re very disciplined and they just don’t give up!
I run a business (pretty successful) and I’d say the only reason I made it is resilience. I’m not that academic or qualified. I just kept going when others would have quit. No great mystery to it. If I had a chance to pitch my business I took it, if anyone wanted me to speak at something I bit their arm off. I network, A LOT and that’s helped too.
I took every opportunity and really forced myself out there.

Some people are just in the right place at the right time or have a lot of help ( Lewis Hamilton's dad was rich and could buy him a go kart to train in as a kid)

You don’t have to know much about Lewis Hamilton to know this is completely untrue. His dad worked two or three jobs, earning ten quid here and there, to fund his racing. Some weeks they couldn’t go to a race as they didn’t have the money. Other racers sneered at them coz they had second-hand karts etc. Find the clip of him on Graham Norton talking about it. He’s quite open that his dad is the hero, not him.

He’s successful because he’s talented, worked hard, has self-confidence and a great family setup. I think most of these things are present in the lives of successful people and go a long way to explaining it.

Oh and I’ve no safety net. I don’t have parents anymore and no inheritance. So I work very hard and am very driven to ensure I have money! Absolutely no one is helping me. That has helped in a way, it keeps me focused.

When I look at the honours list I am in awe

Even of Craig David?

@Eckhart

I think 'hard work' is a bit misleading, because you can work hard scrubbing bogs all your life, earning a pittance and being miserable. You have to have the confidence and intelligence to know where to apply your efforts. Hard work on its own isn't any good.

I agree wholeheartedly. Some people complain because they work hard but don't have what someone else, who also works hard, has. What they fail to see is that the other person also took risks, put work before friends and family at times, made smarter decisions, etc. Working hard on its own is rarely sufficient to achieve success IMO.