In my opinion, It all comes down to... When are you ready to throw in the towel?
Everyone has UPS and DOWNS. The biggest thing that separates successful people vs unsuccessful is their ability to deal with the "downs"
Very unsuccessful people give up the moment they have a "down" period.
Average people (what some may consider successful) have worked through many "bad times" but eventually one is too big to handle and they eventually throw in the towel.
And of course super successful people... simply have made it through the most "down times" and still haven't given up. They are still focused and continue moving forward.
It's like a scale... on how much failure your willing to go through, and still not give up. That dictates success in my opinion.
This also assumes a person is motivated. I mean, if you're not motivated and don't have a purpose, your going to give up QUICK. lol
And to the person who said "most people just aren't born with motivation" or whatever...I agree. I don't think anyone is just born motivated. Things motivate us and everyone has the potential to be extremely motivated. You just need something to stimulate it. For some people, it's being told "you can't do this"... for others it may be something like a tragic family death... or a near death experience.
Point is, you need some sort of stimulant that has an impact on you. The bigger the impact, the bigger the purpose you'll have, the bigger the drive, and the bigger the motivation.
So to the person saying... "some of us just need 10 hours of sleep to function" that is BULLSHIT. You just haven't had something make a big enough impact on you yet and your probably just in a rather comfortable situation.
I know this example has been told many times... but if you had a gun to your head... and you HAD to do something... I'm pretty sure you'd go for days and days without sleep to achieve what has to be done.
If you don't succeed at what your doing, what is the END results? The WORSE it is, the more motivated your likely going to be. If it's something absolutely horrifying like death, you're gonna work like a mother fucker until the job is done and sleep won't even enter your minds thoughts. If the end result, means getting a cool car you want... most don't have a problem sleeping and putting it off till tomorrow.
My point is...
The more life or death a scenario is, the greater the motivation will be, and the more failures you'll be willing to work through, without giving up... which will ultimately dictate your level of success.
The tricky part is that most things simply aren't life or death scenario. Not even close. So you almost have to try and "trick" your brain. The better you can trick yourself into believing something is important, the more failures you'll be able to work through without thinking of giving up.
For me personally, I recently invested a huge percentage of my monies. I was comfortable, I didn't feel like working, and I went back to getting full nights sleep, etc. I just couldn't convince myself to work. So by investing most of my money, I put myself into an "emergency" situation, and it's definitely lit a fire under my ass, to say the least. lol