7 Rare Signs You Have What It Takes To Dominate Any Path You Choose
You can reach the top of any path you desire.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock When someone tells you to take a chance, they usually say you'll regret it if you don't. And deep down, you know they are right. But when you do eventually take that jump, you feel as alive as one can feel.
The same goes for anything else you do in life. You don't have to be "number one" at what you do, but if you don't strive to get to the top, you're missing out on something remarkable.
Here are 7 rare signs you have the skills to dominate any career
1. You take the time to dive deep and fall in love with what you do
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Many people are stuck in shallow waters.
They don't put in the work to go deep enough and are stuck in the shallow end of the same pool forever. Or, they have shiny object syndrome, where they get excited when things are new; however, they quit the minute it gets boring for them. These people feel that their career or field is boring.
But that's rubbish. The way human knowledge has progressed, if you go deep enough, everything is interesting. And when it gets interesting, you're excited to learn — and that makes it easier to make it to the top.
A big sign you can make it to the top of any field is that you understand that everything can be ridiculously exciting if you invest the time and energy to go deep enough.
2. You know the psychological winning formula to get you closer to success
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That formula is called the "push-pull momentum" rule:
Push: You can be proud of how far you've come all you want. However, you also have to have a certain level of dissatisfaction and dislike for where you are right now. This pushes you to move upward. Because if you're overly satisfied with your current competence, it's going to be difficult to move upwards.
Pull: You have to constantly remind yourself of the rewards that will come from reaching the top. This pulls you upward.
Momentum: You have to develop consistency and show up every day. Put in the work daily — less at first, and increasingly more later until you reach the necessary amount. Remember, consistency is always better than intensity. And consistency plus intensity is unbeatable.
If you have all three of these boxes checked, it's a sign that you can make it to the top.
3. You know the truth about competition
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When you look at the numbers, the competition always looks fierce. But remember, enrolling in something doesn't actually mean that they're part of the competition.
For instance, if 10,000 people sign up for an entrance exam, only about 1,000 might be preparing seriously. Or, if there are one dollar writers on any platform, only about 5,000 are going to keep writing consistently long enough for them to be considered "competition."
So, to beat the competition, you simply have to keep showing up long enough for others to get bored or frustrated enough to quit. Because, rest assured, they will quit. That's what people do.
4. You know why you want to get to the top
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You're not going to reach the top as a fluke. Unless and until you have a reason, it's impossible for you to make the climb. In fact, even if you have a reason, it's still difficult to make it to the top.
A sign that you can dominate any career is that you have a solid reason to do so. And that reason can be anything.
For some, it can be ego. These people just want to be at the top to stroke their egos. It's helpful, but can be damaging as well. However, even though too much ego is bad, it should definitely play some role in your climb.
Other people have unquenchable curiosity. They value knowledge so much that they actually don't want to stop learning until they have learned as much as anyone else in the world can. They want to join the top to learn from the best.
Finally, some people want experience. They want to be truly great in their field because it makes them feel alive or accomplished. And they want to experience that at the highest level.
5. You learn from the best in your field
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People who are extraordinary learners do so through two different methods: learning from the experience of others, or learning from their own experiences by maximizing the amount of experience they can get.
People who learn from the experience of others exhaustively read books, listen to podcasts, and buy courses from the best in the field. Most people are biased to not pay to learn because nobody wants to pay. But the worst that can happen is that they will lose some money.
On the other hand, there are people who, essentially, teach themselves. For professional poker player Dan Bilzerian, he explained:
"The first step toward succeeding at anything depends on finding a way to cram the most experience into the shortest period of time. I would play 10 online tables at once, seeing around 100 hands per hour at each table. So, by playing 14 hours a day, I looked at roughly 14,000 hands each day. It wasn't long before I'd seen more hands online than what even the most obsessive live players saw in a lifetime."
Most people skip both. They try to learn everything themselves and don't buy books or courses. And they're slow and inconsistent in gaining enough experience for themselves.
But not you. You prioritize and ace both. And that's a sign that you can reach the top of any career.
6. You pay your dues
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Maybe you're a writer who remembers a time when your first article was rejected. Then, the second article was rejected and you were even more devastated. But it brought up an important lesson that, sooner or later, one of your articles would be accepted.
Failure is not a lack of success; it's a prerequisite to success. By experiencing all those rejections, you were closer to success than you realized and, eventually, had an article get accepted.
Most people want to get it right the first time, or the second time. If they don't, they quit. But not you. You know that you have to pay your dues.
You know you have to fail a given number of times before you reach the top. And you're not afraid of failing because you realize how important it is to consider failure as success's prerequisite, not its opposite.
7. You focus on developing rare skills
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Making it big has nothing to do with hard work. People who do manual labor work harder than anyone else; however, they're not successful by any definition of the word.
Success today is defined by what and how many things you can do that many others cannot. Any given career or field is simply an aggregation of thousands of skills. Nobody can learn all those skills, so the skills you do focus on matter.
A glaring sign that you can make it to the top of your field is that you're drawn towards working on skills that are rare. And it makes sense, because if you have skills that others don't, everyone's gonna need you at some point or another — and that propels you towards the top.
Akshad Singi, M.D. is a writer whose work has been published in Better Humans, Mind Cafe, Medium, and more.