26 Habits of Exceptionally Successful People, According to a Journalist who Studied 500 Millionaires

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By: Richard Feloni

The idea of being "successful" is ultimately a matter of personal judgment. But regardless of personality, industry, or point in history, there are timeless truths about what it takes to achieve one's potential.

Self-made industrialist Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man on the planet in the early 20th century and was a student of what it takes to achieve greatness. In 1908, he met with the journalist Napoleon Hill and decided that Hill would be the vehicle for sharing his strategies with the world.

Their conversations and Hill's research on hundreds of self-made millionaires became the basis of the 1937 book "Think and Grow Rich," which remains one of the bestselling books of all time. In 1954, Hill held a series of lectures in Chicago that expanded on the principles explored in his book.

These lectures are now collected for the first time in print in "Your Right to Be Rich." Below, we've collected his observations on what it takes to be exceptionally successful from the sixth speech in the series, on personal initiative.

Here are the habits he found the most successful people have in common.