Have you ever wondered why someone seems to nail their goals and projects with ease, while others seem to struggle? In this article, I will be sharing 5 abilities you can develop to start crushing your goals with confidence and grace, along with actionable steps to help you along the way. These abilities are inspired by the book The Attributes by Rich Diviney, which are all about hidden strengths that can be cultivated to achieve optimal performance in different areas of life.
1. The Ability to Manage Your Fear (Courage)
When you physically move forward while in a state of stress or fear, you engage a specific circuit in your brain. That is courage.
Dr. Andrew Huberman
According to Rich Diviney (the author), courage is one of the most important attributes of optimal performance. Life is filled with scary things. The growth and accomplishments always lie on the other side of the fear. Therefore, the essence of courage is not about being fearless but the ability to keep going despite being afraid. In ancient times, courage might show up as exploring the unknown areas for food despite the fear of getting attacked or eaten alive. As a result, ancient civilizations are able to thrive because of human’s courage to explore the unknown. The same goes for modern times.
Nowadays, courage is more about stepping outside of our comfort zone and facing our fears head on despite the fear. The best way to achieve this is by expose therapy, where we simply expose ourselves to certain things we are afraid of. This is going to look different for everyone. For me, it’s about showing up to parties and events alone, striking up conversations with strangers, and public speaking. As scary as it might sound, I promise you’ll be incredibly proud of yourself once you accomplish something despite your fear.
The courage and confidence that comes afterwards is one of the most fulfilling things to experience. In addition, you can also gain various insights on who you are as a person during difficult times. This serves as a huge part of self-discovery. For more, I have a whole article about stepping outside the comfort zone. Feel free to check it out here.
Actionable Step:
Find something you are afraid of, and start exposing yourself to it. You can start with something small or break down you major fears into small doses of fear. It’s helpful to keep reminding yourself of the courage and confidence that is waiting for you on the other side. Over time, you will begin to realize that your fears are no longer your fears. Instead, they have become doors opening up various opportunities you have been dreaming of.
2. The Ability to Keep Going When it Gets Hard (Perseverance)
There will be times when things don’t go our way, when we failed, got humbled, not seeing the desired results or not being appreciated by someone important to us. When this happens, how are we choosing to react? We can choose to let ego take over and complain or give up. We can also choose to not take it personally, learn from the experience, and do it over and over again.
According to my experience, there are various opportunities that can only be obtained by getting rejected over and over again. Those who are high on perseverance is able to go after something they want despite the difficulties. For example, a student sending more than 10 emails to a professor asking if he can join the professor’s lab to do research. Eventually, he got to work at that professor’s lab after sending emails over and over again without getting a reply. Another example is my friend, who has access to various opportunities that most students don’t because she had the guts to keep asking the professor for them.
This taught me an important lesson that getting rejected once doesn’t mean you will keep getting rejected forever. Certain opportunities or success comes from doing something over and over again despite getting rejected or not seeing the desired results. The ability to stay consistent even during hard times is just as important as the ability to get started.
Actionable Step:
The most important thing about perseverance is being clear about your vision in what you want. Once you get clear in what you want, the person you want to become, the skills you want to develop, it becomes easy to stay consistent. Your purpose acts as your anchor to your goals, making you less subjective to the outside noise. So next time you face rejection or things don’t go your way, try reflecting on your purpose and what you hope to gain from the experience.
3. The Ability to Accept and Learn New Things (Open-mindedness)
A lot of time, our way of thinking can be what keeps us stagnate. This is why it’s so important to accept different ideas from different people to see things from a different perspective. By adopting this mindset, we are enhancing our problem solving skills and improving our relationships with other people. This is because understanding that everyone has something special to learn from naturally makes us kinder to other people.
Another person’s way of thinking might be the solution of something we have been struggling the most. For example, I used to struggle with not fitting in because I was hyper-focused on the idea that if someone wasn’t talking to me, it meant they didn’t like me. After listening to how my friend faced similar situations, her detached mindset completely changed the way I see relationships. She told me that sometimes we aren’t meant to get along with everyone, and that’s okay because trying to be friends with everyone is a form of greed that will never truly fulfill us. Accepting possibilities from other people has set free from my inner struggles of constantly taking things personally.
Apart from overcoming our inner struggles, open-mindedness also aids in stepping outside of our comfort zone. This is because is great part of our fear actually comes from a limited statement we have been telling ourselves. Accepting different mindsets from other people allows us to flip the way we see the same thing from something scary to something worth trying. For example, as mentioned earlier, I used be afraid of public speaking because it was like putting myself out there for other people to judge me. However, my friend sees public specking simply as an experience to share her thoughts with more people. Again, this completely shifted the way I approach public speaking, from fear of judgment to an opportunity to share my thoughts with people who might benefit from them. This mindset allows us to tranform our fears to something exciting, which sends us outside of our comfort zone.
Actionable Step:
Think of something you are struggling with or something you are afraid of and ask someone you trust about how they would approach a similar situation. You can ask more about their mindset and why they choose to interpret a situation a certain way.
4. The Ability to Think Outside the Box (Cunning)
Even though “cunning” often has a negative connotation, in this context, it refers to the ability to approach problems in an unconventional way—essentially, thinking outside the box. Nowadays, with the help of AI, it has never been easier to obtain information. One of the abilities that cannot be easily replaced by AI is our ability to utilize different information to create novel solutions. This is what doing research at universities is all about. Experts and professors trying to come up with novel solutions to solve problems in a more effective and cheaper way. This would not be possible without the ability to think outside the box—something that AI cannot easily replicate.
Our problem-solving abilities are often confined to solutions found in textbooks and guidelines designed to keep us safe. To practice thinking outside the box, we can participate in chamber escape games, where we must come up with various solutions to escape the chamber. This is a great way to have fun with friends and to excerise the mind!
Actionable Step:
Try playing board games that require constant thinking or chamber escape games with your friends. It is a wonderful opportunity to strengthen relationships and level up the mind.
5. The Ability to Believe in Yourself (Self-efficacy)
Self-efficacy is the belief that you can do something, the willingness to take the first step, and the optimism that you’ll eventually reach your goal. Optimal performance requires self-efficacy, and a high degree of it.
Rich Diviney (The Attributes)
For someone with great dreams and ambition, there will be times when being misunderstood, or when our vision doesn’t get validated by others. During these times, it’s important to understand that the only person that is going to be with us along the way is ourselves. This is when self-efficacy comes in—the ability to believe that we are capable of achieving our goals without support or validation.
The biggest part of believing in ourselves comes from our level of self-worth. By knowing that we are worthy, it becomes relatively easy to believe that we can achieve our goals. In addition, we are also more likely to step outside of our comfort zone and keep going when it gets hard.
Actionable Step:
Make a list of things you like about yourself. During my self-development journey, this really helped me recognize my worth. For more, you can also read the book Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima, or my article about building unconditional self-worth.
Hope this helps! Thank you so much for reading! If you find this interesting, make sure to check out the original book. You can find it here.
