If You Want To Be More Successful In Life, Turn Toward Your Intrinsic Motivations

When you meet a super successful person, there’s something about them that you often can’t quite verbalize.

Let’s be clear: super successful people tend to have many overlapping traits, regardless of what industry or field they are in. To be a super successful poet is not the same as being a super successful entrepreneur, and beneath the differing methods each must employ to get to where they want to be exists a core truth about them all, that distinguishes those who actualize their potential from those who don’t.

It’s deeper than their morning routines, business acumen or raw talent. It’s more essential than what they could ever learn from a mentor. The most obvious thing about super successful people is that it is about their personality more than anything else.

When you meet a successful leader, you will notice that they naturally have very high energy. They are busy-bodies, they get things done. They often connect and engage with people well, have more extroversion than not, a unique or distinct style, and carry themselves with confidence. They manage people well because they are influential, inspirational, and driven to accomplish a lot. They don’t have to try to force any of these things, it’s just who they essentially are.

When you meet a successful artist, you will notice that they are in some way unique. They are introspective, intuitive, emotional and at times, insightful. They interpret life below the surface of it all, they are constantly at work putting pieces together in their head, making sense of things, seeing beauty where others do not. They tend to be more introverted than not, and their success depends largely on their willingness to be vulnerable. The more vulnerable they can be in their work, the more deeply it will resonate with others. They don’t have to try to force any of these things, it’s just who they essentially are.

Super successful people capitalize on the natural strengths of their personalities. That’s what sets them apart.

There are many skills you can learn. You can learn marketing, you can learn bookkeeping, you can learn emotional intelligence and leadership. You can alter and enhance different parts of your personality. You will change over time, there’s no doubt about that. But you have to grow in the direction of who you most fundamentally are. Because trying to make someone else’s success formula work is never going to give you the right equation.

It’s not that some people were born with “success personalities” and others were not. You can learn the methods, behaviors and habits that will help you capitalize on what you have. But at the end of the day, it is always going to come back down to your degree of self-awareness. Who are you? What are you good at? What do you care about? What do you have to give?

Truly successful people are intrinsically motivated. This means that their work is fulfilling to them on its own, it is the reward in itself. When you are motivated by power, or money, or anything else that conveys status, you’re never going to feel complete, because you’re always working for someone else to give you something, as opposed to what you can give yourself.

Ironically, the more you lean into that intrinsic fulfillment, the more the world tends to acknowledge and reward you — often beyond your wildest dreams.