The Most Important Quality for Success in the 21st Century Isn’t Ambition or Vision

 Survival goes not necessarily to the strongest or most intelligent of the species, but to the one most adaptable to change.

Back in the nineties, a major institute in New York did a study to discover the most important quality for success in the twenty-first century. The researchers looked at many qualities vision, courage, ambition, persistence, innovation but they found the number one quality was flexibility in the face of changing circumstances.

How do you know you need to be flexible, you need to adapt and change your course of action? The answer is, it's not working.

You're not getting the results that you expected. Back to the drawing board.

Taking action towards your goals is the single most important quality of all. The world is full of talented people with fantasies and dreams, but they don't act. They always have an exeuse not to do it yet.

When you take action, three things happen:

1. You get immediate feedback from your actions, which enable you to change course and direction.

2. You get ideas for more actions to move ahead faster.

3. Your self-confidence and self-esteem go up.

You get all three of those benefits from taking action, and you get nothing from sitting there on the couch.

The critical thing is to act and then get feedback. Get an idea, act, fail fast, learn quickly, try again. Repeat

It's an endless cycle. 

Keep making mistakes and learning lessons.

 Every successful person has made an enormous number of mistakes. You start off with a direction, take your first step, move toward the goal, and get feed-back. You then use that feedback to change your course of action.

Try, learn, change. Try, learn, change. Be Adaptable.

Brian Tracy, Unstoppable.