When you are successful, many around you will envy your success rather than being happy for you. The ability to deal with criticism, therefore, is crucial to your success. Most people recoil in the face of criticism, or remain inert for fear of attracting criticism; you must learn to avoid such inaction and fear in order to achieve your full potential.
If you are unemployed, or need a new job, there are many strategies you can use to get a new position. However, nothing is more important or can be more drastically effective than having a strong mentor on your side. Anything I could tell you about interviewing, cover letters, resumes, or tracking down jobs would pale in comparison to what a good mentor can do for you. Having a good mentor is hugely important.
Everyone seeks to imitate the people they look up to, and with transference they believe that they have an understanding of other peoples’ thoughts, motives, and beliefs. Transference, however, can blind yourself to the true nature of those around you and can lead you to make wrong judgments or assumptions. You will be much more successful with a better understanding of who you are and how your perceptions of the world help or hinder you.
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In this article Harrison discusses the significance of conditioning yourself to develop behaviors that will elevate you in your life. One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is to get leverage over themselves and condition themselves to go in a new direction. Very few people are ever able to make very fundamental transformations in their lives and become someone completely new and completely improved—and stick with it. Major improvements in our lives come only when we condition ourselves over and over again in one direction. You need to get leverage over yourself and condition new habits and behaviors within yourself to make any sort of fundamental and lasting change. The conditioning needs to be part of your lifestyle. You need to condition yourself to adopt new patterns in your life.
Think about your ultimate purpose in life, and what you are currently doing to accomplish it. Everyone is gifted with unique talents, and a failure to identify and utilize yours would be tragic for your life and career. The greater purpose you identify in your life, the greater the obstacles you will face. If you persevere and push through these hurdles, you will find the rewards to also be correspondingly greater.
In this article Harrison explains why you should never exaggerate your qualifications on your resume or in your interviews. Achievements and what you have done are important, but the most important thing is how likable you are. Come across as someone who tries hard, makes an effort, learns from mistakes, is loyal, helps the company, and who is going to be a stable addition to the company. People are not hired because of some isolated accomplishment from their past. It is very important to be yourself and to present yourself as a likable individual and a team player. Being caught up in a lie or exaggeration is not in your best interest and it weakens your case dramatically in the eyes of an employer.
When you give your employer a good value, they will be motivated to keep you even in the lean times. Nothing is more important to your career than making sure your employer is satisfied with your work, which will make them likely to use you over and over again. Working for companies where there is a lot of froth will present you with more money-making opportunities; understand that froth moves in cycles, however, and it is more important to have consistent work than to hold out for ideal market conditions.
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.
It is importantly that you be totally and completely involved in your work. When you do this, you establish a flow where time and problems disappear, and you will find yourself completing tasks with very little effort. Upon entering a state of flow, you can do your work unconcerned with power, competition, or recognition, vastly improving your chances of success. Satisfaction and rewards come when you are one with your work.
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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