12 Key Factors of Success

“The key to success lies in your particular manner of thinking. When you change how you think about yourself, your relationships, your goals, and your world. Your life will change. If you change the quality of your thinking you necessarily will change the quality of your life,” say Dr. Walter Doyle Staples, the author of the famous book, Think Like a Winner. Here are the 12 key factors of success as listed in his book:


1. Positive mental attitude: Your attitude decides who and what you are, and whether you respond to events under control or out of control. You cannot hope to control event that comes your way. But you can control the way you react to such events by adopting a positive mental attitude.

2. Total belief in yourself: Have confidence in yourself. Believe in your abilities, for you are who you think you are. You have the necessary skills and abilities to accomplish great things. You need only accept this fact to move ahead with your life.

3. Big, challenging goals: A strong sense of purpose in life is essential to all change and meaningful improvement. With a clear, central purpose comes directions, meaning, and positive expectations. With each step of progress comes a sense of fulfillment. With fulfillment comes a sense of pride, satisfaction, and other good feelings associates with high self-esteem and high self-worth. “Happiness,” wrote Emerson,” is the progressive realization of a worthy goal.”

4. Responsible behavior: The hallmark of all winners is accepting total responsibility for everything they say and do. As a result, they are confident and feel in control. They understand that with control comes freedom of choice and a realization that anything is possible if only they are willing to pay the price to earn it,

5. Time Management: Time management is really self-management. It is a thinking exercise that involves setting priorities and disciplining yourself in the use of time in order to derive maximum benefit.

6. Personal development: Personal development involves working on yourself, on the key mental skills that you must contribute to the performance equation. The more you improve yourself, the more you’ll like, respect, and believe in yourself.

7. Health: You must work hard at maintaining a high level of health and accept responsibility for all of your actions that are health-related. There is no cure for a lifetime of bad health habits.

8. Creativity: Your subconscious is a vast storehouse. It contains the wisdom of the past, the understanding of the present, and the vision of the vision. By tapping into its vast reserves, you can create new thoughts about anything you choose to think about.

9. Service: When you get right down to the root meaning of success, you will find that it simply means to provide service. And the more service you provide, the more success you will have. “To do more for the world than the world does for you, that is success,” according to Henry Ford.

10. Excellence: Only when you attain excellence in your chosen field can you hope to become truly successful in life. Anything less and you cannot hope to reach your full potential. Be the best that you can be.

11. Superior human relations: There are three principal ways to develop key interpersonal skills that lead to superior human relations. The first involves adding value to other people through recognition, the second is seeing things from another’s point of view; and the third is effective listening skills. Successful human relations is really the art of making other people feel good about themselves.

12. Leadership: “To be a leader, an executive must first develop himself and then help develop those for whom he is responsible,” says Koestenbaum.


“It remains for you to DREAM what you dare to dream, DO what you dare to do, and BE what you dare to be!’ His book concludes with this powerful line.