Your perceptions of the world determine your reactions, and your reactions in turn determine your destiny. External factors do not dictate your life and destiny so much as your response to them, which is usually dictates by your emotional state. You must challenge yourself to make the best use of disorder in your life, and use it as a basis to develop a superior kind of order.
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”.
In this article, Harrison explains how nothing is permanent, everything faces a change at some point or another, and that everyone should possess the ability to readjust to the new situation. Your responsibilities and daily duties could end, businesses could end, and jobs could be lost without a reason or warning. You need to accept the fact that anything is possible and the comfort zone in which you might be in may just vanish one fine day. It is on such a situation that your ability to be flexible counts most. Learning new things, being with new colleagues, holding new responsibilities should be accepted very positively. Dramatic changes could occur in the job scenario, but you need to be ready for the change. You should never hold on to the past and constantly look towards the future. Change is natural and inevitable and Harrison believes that it should pave a path for progress and development.
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In this article Harrison talks about making rules that represent success and not failure. You make rules and interpret the things happening around you accordingly. Rules control how you feel about yourself. You need to have rules for your life and career that empower you. Your rules for what it means to be successful will largely control how you feel about yourself and your job. People who feel the most successful typically have the fewest rules. If you set rules for yourself that are easy to meet you will experience lots of fulfillment. Use rules to make yourself happy. A person who has the least stringent rules to meet is the happiest. You need to feel good about your life, so do not allow your rules to hold you back.
You should neither trust outward appearances, nor let them intimidate you. There is always a discord between the appearance that a person or organization projects, and their actual nature. For this reason, always be careful about the people and organizations in whom you place your trust.
Your environment ultimately shapes who you are, so you need to seek out environments that will help shape you into the person you wish to be. People choose their jobs based on all sorts of factors, but often overlook the environment itself. The environment and people that surround you every day, however, ultimately determine your happiness and shape your future.
Most people are afraid of exposing themselves to failure, and therefore settle for less than what they want or are capable of achieving. Failure to take action due to your fear is itself the biggest failure of all; few people ever reach any degree of success without consistent failure. You must use failure as an inspiration to try harder in the future, and manage your emotions so as not to fear failure and let that fear preclude action.
Don’t ever give up, and make the most of the tools at your disposal. Take chances and invest in your best skills, and persist in the face of unfortunate events. Have faith in your considerable work and capabilities, and use them to create value for others.
In this article Harrison explains how you can ensure success in your career by externalizing your opponents. Your job is like a game; if you work hard, play by the rules of the company and are seen as part of the team you will be viewed as a valuable player for the company. The most significant part of any game is the presence of an opponent. Don’t look for an opponent among your co-workers. Never speak negatively of your team members. Instead, concentrate on the external opponents. External opponents bring you and the team closer as you work towards a common goal. In order for you and your company to succeed it is important to have an external opponent. Harrison advises people to consistently work hard and not participate in the politics. This is a sure way to score big in your career.
True self-esteem comes from within, not from the acceptance of others. When your sense of worth comes from within, you free yourself from comparisons with others and will enjoy a greater sense of internal security. You will no longer be bogged down by the experiences of others and can become much more self-reliant.
Your greatest successes will come from some of the smallest actions in terms of meeting people. You will cause a “stacking effect” the more you meet and connect with people; conversely, people cannot connect with you when you are withdrawn and nothing will happen. You must do everything in your power to connect with as many people as possible.
A powerful sense of self will make all the difference in your life. You must understand that your sense of yourself and your capabilities come from inside of you, not from the external forces that have brought you to your current place in life. What you feel internally might be completely different from what the world is telling you, and you must learn to focus on the former rather than the latter.
Adopting a positive attitude will always bring you closer to success, as nobody wants to be associated with a losing side. Everyone wants to associate with and hire winners, and avoids losers. Nothing is more important than maintaining a positive attitude, as many employers hire people based primarily on attitude; with the right attitude, everything else will fall into place. You must look like you are on the winning team, even if times are tough; nobody wants to hire a loser.
Everyone tries to maintain a certain emotional state, and learning to control your own emotions will have a profound impact on your career. While everyone allows their emotional states to be influenced by outside events, there is no advantage in basing your own emotions on things that you cannot control. Allow yourself to discover happiness and fulfillment naturally, rather than making your emotions dependant on external circumstances. Your outlook will have a tremendous impact on your psychological health, as well as that of those around you.
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