Four Character Traits that are Vital to Success

In my opinion, all of the success literature either ignores, or takes for granted, four character traits that are vital to succeeding in any endeavor in life. If you're missing any of these traits, you have two choices:

1. Give up.

2. Acquire and develop the missing character traits in your life.

Here are the four traits, and a short explanation of each.

Courage

• Not just courage to do the right thing, but courage to do the scary thing.
• ... or the uncomfortable thing.
• ... and, especially, the thing you don't want to do.

Ambition

• This is the drive to do something important or meaningful in your life.
• It's not necessarily about fame, or wealth, or power. 
• It's the will to do something besides watch TV, surf the web, play games, or read magazines.
• It's the will to do something with the time you've been given, besides waste it in meaningless pursuits.

Initiative

• This is the ability to get up and do something - to start something.
• Ambition by itself may not be enough to motivate you to action.
• To repeat and rephrase: initiative is the power to get up off the couch and get started.

Tenacity

• This is the ability to stick with something until it's completed.
• My friend John W started dozens of home-improvement projects around his house. He never finished a single one. His house always looked half-demolished, as if a truck had crashed into it. He had an abundance of ambition, but a complete absence of tenacity.
• Tenacity is related to perseverance, and also to stubbornness. It's the wolverine on the bear's nose in Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man.
• It's the unwillingness, maybe the inability, to give up.

Notes: I wrote these down on a piece of notepaper and stuck it in my wallet, many years ago. I've been carrying it around since then. It needs to be published - and now it is.

 And here's the original, for those of you who want to see it.

© 2017 R. Ray Depew. You can use these points to give an inspirational speech or write something, as long as you remember to give me credit for them. Always list your sources!