Never try to be someone who you are not, or something that does not match your natural gifts and skills. Embrace your skills, whatever they are, rather than rejecting what you are good at and setting yourself up for unhappiness. Find your true gift, and run with it.

In this article Harrison discusses the importance of having open lines of communication. According to him this will consistently keep you employed. You need to be friends with everyone you meet in business and stop competing and seeing differences. You need to understand that you have no opponents. Your success will largely be determined by your ability to go into the world, find commonality and make friends with the people around you. You must abolish from your mind the idea that the people you are dealing with in your career and in business are your competition. You must get rid of the thought of competition. Be friendly with everyone you meet. Stop looking for differences, and do everything within your power to find affinity with other people. This will change your career permanently.

Your mood is a major determinant of success in anything you do. You should never enter an interview or any other high-stakes situation in a negative frame of mind. You can needlessly lose many opportunities simply because you haven’t been “up”. For example, job seekers find considerably greater success when interviewing on Fridays, perhaps due to the fact that people tend to be in a better mood towards the end of the week. When people are relaxed, they are in a better “buying mood”.

You cannot achieve anything in life by just thinking about it; you must get out there and consistently do work that brings you closer to your goals. There are no short-cuts, so you will need long-term discipline to realize and measure of success. The most important thing you can do for your success is to have and apply long-term discipline to your life and work.

Everything is negotiable, and thus it is important that you choose your negotiations wisely. First, judge your negotiating environment and determine when you can and cannot negotiate; in many important matters, negotiating may actually work to your detriment. Your success in both career and life depends far more on your contributions than your negotiating skill, and having things offered to you is always preferable to demanding them.

Your skills and abilities merit profound appreciation; you must therefore place yourself in an environment where you will be so appreciated, and not subject to the negative opinions of others. People tend to believe the negative information that they hear about themselves. A work situation where you are unappreciated will tax your two greatest assets, your self-worth and your sanity.

The influence of relationships can inhibit business growth and lead to disaster. At the same time, however, relationships constitute your greatest assets in your career. All aspects of your job search and your career depend on the relationships you cultivate, so you must strive to form the best relationships possible. You must engender affinity and genuine connections with those around you to achieve success.