One of the questions that I am asked most frequently is, “What is the one quality that differentiates truly successful people from everyone else?” My answer is always the same: Successful people spend a large part of their lives engaging in activities that simultaneously provide meaning and happiness. They have learned that this is the secret of motivating themselves—MOJO is their incentive. As a result, their performance is of the highest caliber and we call them successful.

All of the successful people I know have MOJO, which I define as that positive spirit that starts from the inside and rates to the outside. It’s not merely about the rush we feel when we are “winning,” gaining by external measures such as money, respect, power, and status. It’s also not just about the direction we’re heading in or the pace we’re creating around us. MOJO is the moment when we do something powerful, purposeful, and positive and the rest of the world sees it. It’s about achieving two simple goals—loving what we do and showing it. And there is no gap between the positive way we perceive ourselves—what we are doing—and how we are perceived by others.

How can you tell if someone has MOJO? This was difficult for me until I defined its opposite: NOJO. NOJO is that negative spirit toward what you are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside. How many people do you know have this? They are bored and frustrated with their jobs. They are confused about why they are not more successful and they are not shy about sharing their bitterness about their lack of success with everyone and anyone who will listen.

The difference between the characteristics of people with MOJO and those with NOJO are so stark that I had to jot them down. Here are the few that I came up with in a nutshell (I am sure you can think of even more!):

MOJO
Take responsibility
Move forward
Run the extra mile
Love doing it
Appreciate opportunities
Make the best of it
Inspirational
Grateful
Curious
Caring
Zest for life
Awake

NOJO
Play the victim
March in place
Satisfied with the bare minimum
Feel obligated to do it
Tolerate requirements
Endure it
Painful to be around
Resentful
Uninterested
Indifferent
Zombie-like
Asleep

One of the most obvious places to observe the difference between those with NOJO and those with MOJO is in the service economy. Take waiters and waitresses at restaurants, for example. It’s pretty easy to tell who wants to wait tables and who’d rather do something else. In some countries, like France, for instance, being a waiter is a highly honorable career, not a fallback job. In the United States, just go to New York or Los Angeles and see how many would-be actors and actresses, writers, painters, and the like are waiting tables as a “fill-in” job while they work at their real jobs, writing a novel or auditioning for parts. The incentive to do a good job literally translates into a tip. People will usually pay a waiter a higher tip if the person radiates a positive spirit, has MOJO.

You can learn a lot about what you are motivated to do and what you aren’t motivated to do by taking a simple test to measure your MOJO about any upcoming activity. Flash-forward one hour to after the particular activity and ask yourself two questions: How much long-term benefit or meaning did I experience from this activity? How much short-term satisfaction or happiness did I experience from this activity? If your answer is this will be a boring waste of time, you have two options: (1) Do the activity and be miserable (probably making others miserable as well) and (2) make the activity more meaningful and enjoyable while you are in it. Try this simple process. It will get you started on changing how you approach activities. This is how we can create positive change within ourselves.

You can also download a free MOJO Meter at MojoTheBook.com. It’s a fun, easy-to-use application that will help you monitor your own experience of happiness and meaning throughout your day. It’s a simple process of monitoring and reviewing your results; it takes just a few seconds of your time, and the benefits are great. You will begin to learn what matters—and what doesn’t matter to you—in your life.

Marshall Goldsmith is a world-renowned executive coach and million-selling author of MOJO, a New York Times (advice), Wall Street Journal (business), USAToday (money), and Publisher's Weekly (non-fiction) bestseller, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, a New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal #1 business book, and Harold Longman Award winner for Business Book of the Year. Almost all of his articles, audios, and videos are available for anyone to use at MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com. This page is protected by Copyright laws. Do Not Copy