When Do You Know that You are Successful?

Is is money, title, power? No. Experience from studying hundreds of successful people in all walks of life shows me you are successful when:

You are working towards, are on the brink, or have met your dream life and career goals while you remain a solid citizen. You are viewed as a “good” person: responsible, honest, and fair. You have not, will not, do not let the business political system corrupt you. The upshot is your co-workers truly like, trust, and respect you — and your family members do too.

When you communicate — which you have to do all of the time with everyone in some manner or another — you are deemed as: impressive, memorable, credible, genuine, trusted, liked, competent, confident, comfortable, cool, calm, and collected. You set a good example of personal empowerment and leadership and you help infuse it in others.

Money, title, power may be an outcome of success, but’s that’s not what makes you a success.

Picture of Debra Benton

Debra Benton

D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Picture next week and notice which way it runs, left to right, or toward you, or away, because whichever answer you just got, there are people who grew up finding a completely different one every bit as obvious as yours

Picture next week and notice which way it runs, left to right, or toward you, or away, because whichever answer you just got, there are people who grew up finding a completely different one every bit as obvious as yours

The Vessel

There are things about a life that are worth keeping to yourself even with people you trust completely, not because there is anything shameful in them, but because privacy is one of the few forms of ownership nobody can take from you once you have given it away.

There are things about a life that are worth keeping to yourself even with people you trust completely, not because there is anything shameful in them, but because privacy is one of the few forms of ownership nobody can take from you once you have given it away.

Global English Editing

On Earth Day 2021 Dow and Shiny Meadow laid China’s first recycled-plastic asphalt road at ECUST in Shanghai; its 300 metres hold over 200 kg of plastic from 6,000-plus milk bottles and other wastes

On Earth Day 2021 Dow and Shiny Meadow laid China’s first recycled-plastic asphalt road at ECUST in Shanghai; its 300 metres hold over 200 kg of plastic from 6,000-plus milk bottles and other wastes

The Vessel

After a poor night of sleep, people tended to report more conflict with their partner the next day, and in the lab it was not only the tired one who misread the other

After a poor night of sleep, people tended to report more conflict with their partner the next day, and in the lab it was not only the tired one who misread the other

The Vessel

Researchers on self-regulated learning have found that effective learners do for themselves much of the checking a teacher might otherwise supply — setting goals, monitoring what’s working, and changing strategy when it isn’t — and that habit can make them better at adapting when they run into a problem they haven’t seen before.

Researchers on self-regulated learning have found that effective learners do for themselves much of the checking a teacher might otherwise supply — setting goals, monitoring what’s working, and changing strategy when it isn’t — and that habit can make them better at adapting when they run into a problem they haven’t seen before.

Global English Editing

Saying “thank you” on reflex and actually feeling grateful aren’t the same event, and decades of gratitude research suggest that the benefits come less from simply saying the words than from genuinely noticing and appreciating something good, which means the automatic version and the deliberate version may be doing two different jobs.

Saying “thank you” on reflex and actually feeling grateful aren’t the same event, and decades of gratitude research suggest that the benefits come less from simply saying the words than from genuinely noticing and appreciating something good, which means the automatic version and the deliberate version may be doing two different jobs.

Global English Editing