I was paging through the Sunday paper about a month ago and I came across an article promoting a FREE seminar by Richard St. John. He’s a successful businessman, photographer, marathoner, mountain climber and the author of the book, ‘The 8 Traits Successful People Have In Common; 8 To Be Great‘. This is what he was going to be talking about.

I decided to write it down in my calendar and commit to going and hearing what he had to say. I’ve read a lot of books on success, listened to hours of audio by Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins and many others. And I’ve also watched a number of videos by them and many more. But I still haven’t achieved the success I’m after so I figured their’s probably still something I could learn.

Richard opened the talk with a little humor and a condensed version of his life story. Then he went onto tell us about how this book came about from a simple question a young girl asked him on a flight he was sharing with her, “are you successful, a millionaire?” He answered “yes”, but when she asked how he became so he didn’t have a good answer for her.

The hunt was on

That’s when Richard decided to interview as many successful people as he could that would sit down with him. He interviewed musicians, artists, actors, businessmen, investors and nearly every walk of life you can imagine. After gathering all the information there was 8 traits they all had in common. And I’m going to tell you what the NUMBER ONE thing is that they ALL had in common.

PASSION

They had a passion for what they were doing. If you want to know what the other 7 are you’re going to have to buy the book. Trust me, it’s a great book.

But passion’s what gets you through when the struggles mount. Passion gets you through when the hours start adding up. Passion makes you almost blind to obstacles. Passion makes you try one more time. Of course this is only one of the traits, but without this one you won’t get very far. And with it the other 7 will all come together… eventually.

Success Is Easy

It is when you have passion. I believe passion is the easy button if there is one. Because none, not one of the people Richard interviewed said becoming successful was easy.

But they did say the work was easy because they were so passionate about what they were doing. Or it was easy to bounce back from bankruptcy because they were passionate about building their business. Even athletes that sustained bone crushing injuries were foaming at the mouth to get back in the game because they loved it so much.

But they had struggles just like the rest of us do. Even Richard came close to losing everything because he lost focus of his passion and started chasing the almighty dollar. When you chase your passion, the money comes automatically.

The thing I love about this book and his talk is that it made me realize even more so that successful people have all the struggles we do. They just kept going and didn’t let the struggles and obstacles stop them. They kept pushing their ‘easy button’ and stayed focused on their passion.

Success takes time. Probably more than you planned on it taking. And it takes work. No matter how many e-mails you read or infomercials you watch that promise ‘push-button’ riches, they just don’t exist. You have to find your hot button(your passion) and push it. And you may even have to work that job you hate for awhile while you’re getting your project off the ground. But you’ll find life a lot more fulfilling chasing after something you’re passionate about than you will going to a job you dread day after day… week after week… year after year… knowing it’ll never fulfill your dreams.

It’s up to you.

Find your passion and you’ll have found your button.