Successful people tend to have four underlying beliefs: I choose to succeed. I can succeed. I will succeed. I have succeeded.

I choose to succeed.
Successful people believe that they are doing what they choose to do, because they choose to do it. Successful people have a high need for self-determination. The more successful a person is, the more likely this is to be true. When we do what we choose to do, we are committed. When we do what we have to do, we are compliant. Having the belief, "I choose to succeed" does not imply that successful people are selfish. Obviously, many successful people are great team players. It does mean that successful people need to feel a personal commitment to what they are doing. They need a sense of ownership. "I choose to succeed" is a belief that is highly correlated with achievement in virtually any field. Adding "and I choose to change" can be a very difficult transition. Successful people’s personal commitment can make it hard for them to change.

I can succeed.
Successful people believe that they have the internal capacity to make desirable things happen. It is perhaps the most central belief shown to drive individual success. People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats. This comfort with ambiguity leads people with high self-efficacy to take greater risks and achieve greater returns. To put it simply, they try more different things! They believe that they have the motivation and ability to change their world. They see success for themselves and others as largely a function of this motivation and ability, not luck, random chance or external factors. Successful people often confuse correlation with causality. They often do not realize that they are successful "because of" some behaviors and "in spite of" others.

I will succeed.
An unflappable sense of optimism is one of the most important characteristics of successful people. Successful people not only believe that they can achieve, they believe that they will achieve. This belief goes beyond any one task. Successful leaders tend to communicate with an overall sense of self-confidence. Successful people tend to pursue opportunities. If they set a goal, write the goal down and publicly announce the goal, they will tend to do "whatever it takes" to achieve the goal. While this sense of optimism is generally associated with success, it can easily lead to "overload" if it is not controlled. Successful people tend to be extremely busy and face the danger of over-commitment. Successful people achieve a lot, and they often believe that they can do more than they can.

I have succeeded.
Successful people tend to have a positive interpretation of their past performance. High achievers not only believe that they have achieved results, they tend to believe that they were instrumental in helping the results get achieved. This tends to be true even if the positive outcomes were caused by external events that they did not control. In a positive way, successful people are "delusional". They tend to see their previous history as a validation of who they are and what they have done. This positive interpretation of the past leads to increased optimism towards the future and increases the likelihood of future success. While the belief, "I have been successful" has many positive benefits; it can cause difficulty when it is time to change behavior.

To learn more about your behavior style consider taking the DiSC PPSS Behavioral Assessment