If you’re looking for a role model of lifelong success, you can’t do much better than Bill Gates. Microsoft, the company he founded, created a whole industry. At a net worth of nearly $80 billion, he’s the richest man in the world. His philanthropic activities reach far and wide and have actually made the world a better place. Oh, and he also achieved his dream, which was a personal computer on every desk.

What led to Gates’s success? He certainly was in the right place at the right time with the right concept for a product. But over the years, he himself has pointed to some of the attitudes he believes lead to continued success. They’re a good guide for anyone, in any field. The personal finance site GOBankingRates has compiled some of them within a piece about how Gates thinks you should spend your money.

Here are some of the most relevant attitudes he looks for–and which anyone can develop:

1. Knowing how to say no.

The advice Warren Buffett gave Bill Gates is tremendously helpful for everyone, whether or not they are wealthy and successful. Opportunities, activities, causes you care about, and so forth will always be in abundance. The most crucial talent you need in this busy world may be the ability to say “no” to projects, social invites, and other time-consuming demands. It will enable you to ascertain what is actually crucial so that you may direct your attention there.

2. Welcoming criticism.

“Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement,” Gates advises in his book Business @ the Speed of Thought. While it’s never pleasant to hear someone tell you how you’ve screwed up, without that kind of feedback, your learning process and growth will be much slower. I find listening to criticism nearly always gives me perspective that I didn’t have, and that I need.

Of course, some criticism is useless, so you must use your judgment to distinguish between the two. In light of this, do not run away the next time someone tries to pick on you. Stop, pay attention, express gratitude, and gain knowledge.

3. Optimism.

In a world when everything seems to be going wrong, it can be challenging to maintain optimism. But without optimism, no one would ever found a business, make a financial commitment to a novel notion, or test a novel product or market.

Gates understands the importance of optimism, and he requires a lot of it because his work tackles some of the most depressing issues facing our planet, such as sex trafficking, famine, and extreme poverty. In 2013, he declared, “Optimism is frequently dismissed as false hope,” in a commencement address at Stanford. However, there is also delusionary hopelessness.

4. Being willing to fail.

“Success is a terrible instructor. In his book The Road Ahead, he claimed that it “seduces intelligent people into believing they can not lose. He says that a product that is unbeatable now might become obsolete tomorrow, which is possibly what is occurring to desktop personal computers and the Windows operating system that frequently powers them.

Even if you might prefer successes to failures, failures will educate you the most and provide you with the most room for improvement. Remember it the next time you stumble and lose your balance.

5. The ability to focus on a goal and keep progressing toward it.

Bill Gates drew some conclusions from the development of the steam engine in an annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “If you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal, you can achieve amazing progress,” he stated. He continued by saying that it is surprisingly difficult to set the correct objectives and measure one’s success.

Then again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.