In his article, Harrison talks about how hope is the element central to most of our circumstances. We may buy medicines to heal a particular physical problem, but what we are actually buying is hope; the hope that we will get better after using that medicine. It works in much the same way for job seekers and recruiters as well. When you present your credentials to a prospective employer, you offer hope in the form of your qualifications and experience. Harrison says it is important to convey hope in a job interview, because eventually it is only hope that the recruiter will use as a benchmark when choosing one candidate over another. Depending on how you see it, you as a job seeker can offer the recruiter a definite hope to improve his or her situation.
When you buy something cheap, it is often likely to be expensive in the long-term; things that seem too good to be true usually are. When you are approached with an attractive deal, remember that nothing comes for free and there aren’t any no-strings-attached deals.
One Saturday night when I was around 14, one of my neighbors, a 16-year-old boy who was a well-liked athlete at the local high school, went out with friends to a local party, got very drunk, and had someone give him a ride home. How drunk was he? He was so drunk he somehow walked into his neighbor’s house through the front door, instead of his own. The owner of the house awoke, and, greatly alarmed, pulled a pistol out of his nightstand, went downstairs, and shot the boy in the head, killing him instantly.
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If you wait for the right market conditions to begin your job search you will face more options, which in turn will help you make better decisions. When the market for your product is strong, you have much more negotiation leverage and are much better positioned to get what you want. Market conditions, therefore, give you a compelling advantage. When do you begin your job search, make effective self-promotion a top priority and draw as much interest as possible to yourself; surprisingly few people do this, and dong so will vastly increase the number of offers you receive.
The ability to fit into your work environment is among the most important parts of obtaining and retaining a job, even more so than your skill level. Fitting in means nothing more than being comfortable in one’s work environment, and making others similarly comfortable. Employers want to hire people who will embrace their approach to business and the world on physical and moral levels, so you must strive to fit in with their worldview.
In this article Harrison discusses how resisting change and not taking necessary and relevant action can be the biggest obstacles to a better career and better life. Resistance is something that prevents most people from ever changing. Resisting change can be highly damaging to your growth in your career and life. Instead of allowing your life to be controlled by external circumstances, choose to take action and bring about a change. Conduct a brutal self analysis if needed, to clear the blocks you have in your mind and to bring about change that is necessary. Most people give up. They do not persist. You need strategies and beliefs that will allow you to persist and persevere, so that you can change. The best strategy is to be focused, and this focus will help you overcome the resistance you face whenever you make an effort to begin changing.
The most successful people in the world have found new ways of expressing themselves professionally. To be continually successful, it is vital for you to reinvent yourself and find new, fresh approaches to the world. Settling into a single way of doing things is dangerous as it makes you predicable, and therefore easier to replicate and ultimately replace.
Many people have a single weakness that they have failed to address, which holds them back in their careers and leads to job hopping. Job hopping indicates that something is wrong with a person’s attitudes and outlook rather than with their employers. Identify and fix the things that are holding you back rather than leaving your position when you should not, and much more success and happiness will come to you.
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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