There is a strong correlation between success and achievement drive, as often one influences the other.
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing;
it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it. – Margaret Thatcher
Why are some people more successful than others? It might not surprise you that it can have a lot to do with their drive to achieve.
What does that mean?
It turns out there’s a strong correlation between success and achievement drive: one will often influence the other.
That’s why I wrote this article.
Why do some individuals have a higher achievement drive?
Now that you know that a higher achievement drive is often linked to more success, you’re probably wondering what makes some people have a higher drive to achieve than others.
We’ll get to that soon.
But first, it’s important to acknowledge why we need to be aware of what makes a person more likely to succeed.
If you understand the factors that can boost your drive to achieve, you can take control and use these factors to your advantage!
These are just a few of the things that can influence your achievement drive:
- Parents who encouraged independence in childhood
- Praise and rewards for success
- Association of achievement with positive feelings
- Association of achievement with one’s own competence and effort, not luck
- A desire to be effective or challenged
- Interpersonal Strength
- Desirability
- Feasibility
- Goal Setting Abilities
(Source: wiki)
While you may not be able to go back and change how your parents raised you, you do have control over many of these factors.
For example? You can work on your goal-setting abilities, which will ultimately help you achieve them.
Your personal desire is what influences you to achieve your goals.
For more than 20 years, David McClelland researched achievement at Harvard University.
And what has he found?
He conferred that the need for achievement is a distinct human motive that can be distinguished from other needs.
McClelland advised that people with a high need for achievement behave like this only if they can influence the outcome.
Explaining that they aren’t gamblers - they prefer to work on the problem rather than leave the outcome to chance:
Achievement – motivated people take the middle ground, preferring a moderate degree of risk because they feel their efforts and abilities will probably influence the outcome. In business, this aggressive realism is the mark of the successful entrepreneur. - David McClelland
The good news is, if we want to, we can learn to increase our achievement drive and ultimately our success!
Did you like this post? If you’d like to see more like this, have a look at these articles:
Simple & Quick Strategies to Boost Your Productivity »
Simple Ways to Instill Achievement Drive in Children »
You CAN Have What you want, if you ASK for It »
This article was originally published in June 2017 and has been updated.
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