Entrepreneurship isn’t just about creating businesses, managing people, offering value and taking risks expecting to increase profits.

It’s more than that. It’s a lifestyle, a way of thinking, a set of beliefs and principles, the discipline to wake up every day and keep working on your goal, to make things happen instead of waiting for life to give them to you.

So before any successful startup founder and small business owner started launching products and building companies, he had to develop the right mindset that could later help him work with people, define problems and create the solution, connect with influencers, reach out to potential customers, put systems in place and eventually start making big money and a difference in the world.

Here are the things such inspiring individuals started believing in early on that helped them change the world and design the lifestyle of their dreams:

1. They believe that anyone has to find what he’s passionate about and make something big out of it.

Everyone is good at something, enjoys some activities, has a talent, develops skills, or has different interest. One of all these, however, is your true calling. And it’s everyone’s mission in life to find it and dedicate time to it daily.

Your passion is the thing you can do for hours without feeling exhausted or even getting bored. It’s what comes naturally to you, but at which you can also exceed, and eventually master.

Your job then is to find a way to monetize it, to offer value with it and help others using that. You should turn your passion into your career – this is the only known way to reach happiness and success at the same time, and contribute to the world with the work you do.

Entrepreneurs know that. The most popular apps you’re using today wouldn’t be here is their founders weren’t super passionate about coding like Mark Zuckerberg, maps like Jack Dorsey (co-founder and CEO of Twitter), capturing moments of life by making beautiful pictures like Kevin Systrom (co-founder of Instagram) and many others.

So if you’re onto achieving big things in life, make sure you care about the stuff you do.

2. You need to go the extra mile.

Anyone that’s reached success in life believes in hard work, in doing more than what’s expected, in offering true value, in doing your best, in dedicating effort and time to your project day after day, no matter what.

That’s the hard part.

You can’t really expect anything meaningful to happen or any money to start coming in if you’re not willing to work harder than the average person, to sleep less, to be more productive, to make sacrifices, to say no to daily distractions and do productive work from the moment you wake up.

There’s just no shortcut. And if you’re looking for one, it means you don’t want to be successful bad enough.

3. Failure is your friend.

Highly successful people are not just okay with failing many times and learning from their mistakes, but they actually think that failure is what leads them to massive success.

Truth is, every single great man from history and of today has failed tens of times, but it’s perseverance that helped him always try one more time and eventually find what works.

Making mistakes gives you more experience and knowledge than anything else. After that, you’re stronger, better prepared and know what doesn’t work. So you’re left with less options as to what’s the right way to do things, and that makes the road to the ideal lifestyle easier.

But people aren’t consistent, they lose hope early on and don’t see any point in trying again after failing more than once. That’s why it’s lonely at the top.

So if you’ve set goals and are serious about accomplishing them, you’ll have to make peace with failure, to respect it, to be absolutely okay with it and accept it as an inevitable part of your journey.

I suggest you do something about these 3 things today. Grasp them first, contemplate on what it will take to live a better life and be successful, make a list, get clear about what you’re good at, what you’re willing to sacrifice and whether or not you’ll dedicate enough time and energy.

What do you think? What else makes the entrepreneurs and leaders we all admire that great?