The difference between someone who has a difficult youth, a career full of failures, and a personal life that’s in shambles versus a person who has the same difficult youth, career full of failures, and personal life that’s in shambles but has an attitude for success to go with all that is massive. That one ingredient—the right attitude—can make or break us. Because the right attitude for success says, sure, we had a rough start in life, but we aren’t going to sit around blaming others’ actions for our choices. Instead, we’re going to start shedding old ideas and adopting new beliefs to grow beyond the painful past.

The right attitude for success says, ‘Wow, we failed a lot in our professional life but what we learned from those failures will propel us even further next time we try!’ And the right attitude for success says, ‘Relationships are hard sometimes and we all lose people we care about, but now we can take what we’ve experienced and apply it so we’re the best versions of ourselves.’ Rather than spend idle time wondering why we have it so rough, an attitude of success inspires us to look back only to see what lessons we can take with us as we charge into the future. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to help us get there, but if we end up in a positive place of gratitude, even after difficulty, we know we have the right attitude for success.