Peter DeCaprio: 4 Things Highly Confident People Do Differently

What do the greatest athletes, most successful entrepreneurs, and top professionals in every field have in common? Besides talent and skill, they all share one quality: high levels of confidence. That’s right — sheer self-belief is by far the biggest predictor of success in any area of life.

Since I work with so many high achievers around the world, I’ve noticed that there are four things that distinguish those who excel from everyone else: their clarity about what they want to accomplish, their laser focus on achieving it, their resilience in the face of setbacks along the way and finally their absolute conviction that they will succeed says Peter DeCaprio.

If you’re not doing these four things already, I recommend that you start right now.

1. Know what you want, and be crystal clear about it

This is the first step toward high performance — knowing exactly where you’re headed. Without a clear goal in mind, your chances of having to “wing it” are greatly diminished, so this means no more aimless drifting or vague aspirations (“I’d like to have a job people respect”). Instead, it’s time to choose an objective so specific that if someone were to ask you what your plan was for fulfilling this goal by the end of this year, you could give them an answer that would actually surprise them with its specificity (for example: “My goal is to raise $250,000 in startup capital by September 1st for my new business, which is launching a widget that will compete with an established competitor with 50% of the market share”).

2. Stay focused on achieving your goal

It’s easy to be enthusiastic at first — but without discipline, momentum rapidly stalls. That’s why CEOs provide employees with “charters” or missions for projects, and why all successful salespeople know there are three things they must do each day: set goals, write their plans, and take action. They also have systems in place to keep them accountable for doing so (whether it’s daily huddles or weekly team meetings). And this isn’t just because they’re disciplined — it’s because they know that staying committed to anything is really hard if you don’t have a carefully thought-out plan for how you’ll reach your destination. And if you’re not moving forward, it’s because you’ve changed direction and plans or abandoned them altogether.

3. Have the resilience to bounce back from setbacks and disappointments

Great things don’t come easily — and that means at some point you’re going to be smacked in the face by a setback (and trust me, there will be plenty of them). However, with the right skillset for coping with them, they can actually become amazing opportunities for growth. At my company, we refer to these as “reversals of fortune” or “ROPs.” They are both inevitable and necessary — if your goals are high enough that achieving them would make you a game-changer in your industry, and then you will face these setbacks and challenges on the way to making them reality. This is why every top performer I know has a ROPs Strategy in place for when they inevitably hit a roadblock or experience a reversal of some kind. And it’s what separates those who ultimately succeed from those who simply exist in their comfort zones.

4. Be absolutely positive that you’ll achieve greatness

This last one might be the most important — that absolute conviction that whatever obstacles come at you, whatever pain gets inflicted along the way, whatever people say about your dream or stand in your path — it won’t matter because you’re going all the way with this thing. All great things require us to pay a price to get them, and this is the final piece of the puzzle that will separate you from everyone else.

Conclusion by Peter DeCaprio:

Remember, achieving great things almost never happens because we’re “lucky” — it’s the result of a constant focus, laser-sharp determination and an unshakable belief that we can accomplish what we set out to do. And now that you know what those four things are, I recommend doing one thing right now: start putting them into place in your life.