The Ingredients for Success
I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with musings that are designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement. Today is February 1, 2025.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about how to define success. In those Muses, I’ve talked about the preconditions for defining success because its definition is one-size-fits-you. I’ve stressed the trouble we can get ourselves in when we adopt someone else’s ideals and that we all have personal blockers and biases that can unduly influence how we think about success.
So at this point in our journey, you’ve determined that you want to be successful, you’ve done the work on yourself to create an authentic definition of success that aligns with your personal purpose and values, you’ve identified your personal blockers to success and have developed the courage to challenge your internal biases and critics. You’ve resolved that the skills and characteristics of grit, determination, persistence, perseverance, drive, and resilience are key ingredients to success by any definition of the word.
So what’s next in the list of universal ingredients to success?
Grace, Competence, Financial Literacy, Curiosity, Communication, and Showing Up
So let’s briefly touch on each ingredient:
Grace: Successful people fail. They fail a lot. From the outside it may seem like they are somehow immune from failure, but they fail over and over again. What sets successful people apart from those who are stagnant and stuck is the ability to quickly recover from failure. To learn from it and move forward. This fundamentally relies on their ability to afford themselves the grace to recognize that they’re not perfect, they don’t have everything figured out, and the permission to pivot, adjust, and try again.
Competence: Successful people are lifelong learners. They understand that they must develop expertise in an area of focus and must never stop learning and growing. They understand that competence is a portfolio that consists of knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that all work together and play off each other to create the excellence they demand of themselves. They also know that while they can theoretically do almost anything, they shouldn’t do everything and instead surround themselves with individuals who complement their strengths and weaknesses.
Financial Literacy: Successful people know the value of money and they understand that it is a tool to help them achieve their goals. They understand the concept of living within their means, they know when to spend and when to save, they understand the strategic use of debt and leverage, and the long-term benefits of building equity or an ownership stake. Note what I didn’t say. You don’t have to be a financial expert to be successful, but you do need to be financially literate and savvy.
Curiosity: While successful people can be laser focused on achieving their goals and seeing a vision come to fruition, they also ask questions—lots of questions. “Why” is one of their favorite words. Uncovering root cause and figuring out how systems, processes, and people work is energizing. Grace and curiosity go together because to be curious means that you’re also able to say you were wrong when the answer you seek isn’t the answer you expected. They ask questions with the intent to seek to understand and not tear others down.
Communication: Successful people know how to communicate and they’ve learned—mostly through trial & error and learning from mentors and colleagues—how to package information so that it’s easily understood by stakeholders across an organization. They have pushed through their fear of public speaking and have mastered the elevator pitch. They’ve learned how to sell their ideas, capabilities, and products.
Showing Up: Successful people know that showing up is half the battle. That participation is not optional. That opportunities go to those who raise their hand and put themselves in a position to win. They know when they’re adding value and strive to continuously do so. They know that the world doesn’t owe them anything and that they have to go out and get whatever they’re looking for. Some people are sold on the idea that you go out and get whatever you want no matter the cost, but successful people know that this is not the path. Lies, cheating, cutting corners, and bullying will always come back and exact their revenge. Always.
So there you go. We’re at the end of our multi-part series on the definition of and ingredients for success. If you’re just jumping into the conversation, I recommend you go back to part one of this series from January 4th and read/listen to each Muse. You can download my Personal Planning Guidebook here.
Grace. Dignity. Compassion.
