You can learn a great deal from successful people. Usually if one person can accomplish something, another person can accomplish the same goal. When following a similar path, you can often avoid some mistakes along the way since it's possible to learn from the mistakes of others. Successful people who have overcome challenges can teach you to leverage adversity in a new way. You can also learn much about your values and interests by thinking about why you consider certain people more successful than others.
If you ask several people who they think is the most successful person in the world, you are likely to get many different answers. For example, someone who values wealth and/or humanitarian efforts, and also maybe has an interest in computers, may choose Bill Gates. Others may choose a sports figure, doctor, artist or parent depending on how they define successful people. There are, of course, many ways to be successful and they don't all revolve around fame and fortune.
All types of successful people do seem to have a few traits in common such as a determination to succeed, perseverance and self-confidence in their abilities. It has been said that the traits you admire in others are ones that you yourself can embody. Of course, the flip side of that is also supposed to be true -- that is that those qualities you strongly dislike in other people may be ones you dislike in yourself. In any case, you can probably gain some insight into your personality by thinking about what you admire in others.
By following the lives of successful people, you can also learn how they handle setbacks in their success. For example, some people that have achieved much success have suddenly lost the acclaim they had due to a scandal. Do they bounce back or do they fade away out of embarrassment? Successful people often inspire others to follow in their footsteps or to break new ground in something. For instance, most successful athletes name at least one athlete who inspired them to pursue their chosen sport.
