Working in the worlds of the university and the church, I’ve had the occasion to meet and interact with a lot of highly successful people–university administrators, large church pastors, non-profit executives, and popular writers. Some are arguably almost genius; most are pretty normal. So what sets them apart? What do they do that others fail to do?
To answer the question, I turned to Nine Things That Successful People Do Differently (there’s a summary here) by Heidi Grant Halvorson.
Halvorson discovered nine things (or habits/practices) that successful people engage in.
Here they are:
- Get specific
- Seize the moment to act on your goals
- Know exactly how far you have left to go
- Be a realistic optimist
- Focus on getting better, rather than being good
- Have grit
- Build your willpower muscle
- Don’t tempt fate
- Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do
In the coming weeks, I’ll be blogging through these nine habits and thinking through how they apply to those of us in ministry or academic life. I hope you’ll join me.
Jeff Gissing 