Separating The Successful From the Successful Wannabes

How often do you come across someone who says, “Success? No I’m not really interested. I’ve always strived for mediocrity.” Not often (hopefully).

It’s true some people don’t have a lot of ambition, but most people do want to be successful at what they do. They want to have a life they can be proud of, where getting out of bed in the morning is something to look forward to, rather than the beginning of a day they can’t wait to end.

Just about EVERYONE wants to be successful. But not everyone is. Every successful person is different, but they do share a few traits.

 Make each day THE most important day

Success isn’t going to just come up to you and shake your hand. You’re going to have to chase it down. The more urgently you want that success the more dedicated you’re going to have to be to the chase. To getting out there and tracking opportunity down NOW. Not tomorrow, or later, or next week or when you’re feeling more inspired. Sitting around binge watching Netflix might be fun, but catching up with success means achieving the most you can everyday. Investing in yourself emotionally, physically, mentally. 

Learn from those who came before

Closest to the sky, there is one stone at the top of a pyramid. What a beautiful thing it must be to be up there, the pinnacle stone. But that stone is nothing without all the other stones beneath it. Without them there would be nothing to be the top of. People who fast track to success find mentors, people they can learn from, people to guide and help them. Those mentors are the blocks of the pyramid. The learning and expertise they contribute expedite the trip to the top. There’s no point re-learning what others already know. Success comes from taking the knowledge others have worked to accumulate, and building on top of it.

Make like Velcro

Keep your ultimate goal in mind and stick to it. Ignore the no’s and the negatives and all the reasons you want to give up everyday. Don’t waste time trying to make others happy. You can’t. Focus on your vision and learn to believe in yourself. At the end of each day or each failure, ask yourself what you could have done differently. How you can improve for next time. Ask yourself the same thing after each success.

Successful people are living proof of Abe Lincoln’s words, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Is Your Ego Getting In The Way of Your Career?

 

In this day and age, most people either have a university degree or college diploma. Because they’ve spent a lot of years in school, recent grads often feel entitled to secure a job in their field right after, or a few months after graduation. And when they don’t land one right away, they blame the poor job market and the economy, then start feeling unmotivated with their job search and life in general.

If you see yourself in that picture, bring your ego down a bit! Uncounted successful people, all started from the bottom and many hopped from  job to  job on their way to success.

Sometimes you need to step it down a notch and take the job that presents itself  after graduation while looking for the right job. Doing something will keep you from feeling negative and blaming the economy. You’ll also build character, learn to budget, meet new people (possibly connections to another job closer to your filed) and most importantly, gain real life work experience. We’re not saying to set your ambitions aside. We’re saying keep working towards them. Always keep working towards them, but in the meantime, work!

Graduating Words of Wisdom From Several Simpsons Characters

Who better to help you set sail on the waters of life than characters from the Simpsons? Rounding out his  commencement speech for Tuft’s with words of advice from several of his unforgettable Simpsons characters, Frank Azaria sprinkled in a few words of wisdom of his own. He said as an actor he’d spent a lot of time pretending to be other people, but it wasn’t until he embraced the person he really was that his work as got really interesting. He advises everyone to be honest with themselves about what they think and how they feel about the situations life presents, and to follow their instincts.

If you’d like to hear the whole inspiring speech, you can check it out here.

 

Keeping Your Cool During Job Interviews

Job interview jitters – we all get them no matter how many interviews we’ve done. The shaking, sweaty palms and stuttering, the worry about forgetting all the answers  you worked so hard to perfect. But here’s the trick to making a long, lasting impression even if you’re shaking in your boots. If you look confident on the outside, your nervousness will hide away in your inside.

Arrive early to the interview

Get there 10 to 15 minutes before your interview starts so you have time to calm your nerves and soak in the atmosphere. If you arrive right on time, you’ll be disheveled and before you know it, you’ll be in front of the interviewer. You want to have some time to sit on your own and get everything you want to say straight in your head before you have to say it in front of someone else.  That 10 to 15 minutes of your life could be the game changer in your confidence during the job interview.

Make eye contact with the interviewer

Looking at the person you’re speaking to shows confidence in many different ways. It shows that you are confident with yourself, the things you are talking about and the overall situation. Like we mentioned earlier, you don’t have to feel confident, but you have to look confident. Make eye contact and throw in a couple smiles here and there to hide how nervous you really are.

Collect your thoughts

Sometimes when people get nervous they tend to speak faster and ramble on. To avoid this, use a few seconds to think about your answer after the interviewer asks the question. Pause between sentences to collect your thoughts if you have to. It’s ok to take your time to answer the question, rather than letting yourself ramble off on an irrelevant tangent.

Pretend you’re trying to get to know the other person

This is easier said than done, but pretend it’s not an interview and just a casual conversation between you and someone you’re getting to know. This will ease your mind and take the pressure off. Get the fact that it’s a job interview out of your head (but still remain professional).

Getting Over The Hump Day With A Little Charge From Socrates

Six Rules For Success From Arnold Schwarzenegger

 

We all know Arnold Schwarzenegger as some sort of Midas for success. He jumped from Mr. Universe at the age of twenty, to one of the biggest movies stars of the 1990s a decade and a half later, to two terms as Governor of California a decade after that.

Success in sports, entertainment and politics, it’s like everything the guy touched turned to gold. Of course success that appears almost magically only happens in fairy tales – or the movies. In real life, success is created and worked for, not given. Arnold built his success with vision, determination and hard work. As a matter of fact he has six rules of success and he talks about them extensively in a commencement speech he gave for the University of Southern California in 2009.

We’ll get to the rules in a second but first we wanted to touch on a few things Arnold said as a preamble because his preamble words are just about as important as his main points.

Envision your success

Before talking about the rules for success Arnold talked about his early life. How he’d always wanted to go to America and build a brand new life. At 15 he decided he’d book his ticket to America through bodybuilding. “I didn’t want to just be a bodybuilding champion, I wanted to be the best body builder of all time.” By the time he was 20 he was Mr. Universe.

He started with vision, followed through with determination and backed it up with hard work. Next stop, United States of America. Once he got there he decided he wanted to be a movie star. “I didn’t just want to be a movie star, I wanted to be a great movie star that is the highest paid movie star and have above-the-title billing.”

There seems to be some sort of pattern building here.

To the rules that took Arnold Schwarzenegger from one success to the next.

Trust yourself

As much as your parents, teachers, friends, peers and the barista at the coffee shop all have advice for you and your career, there is only one person living your life. You. Absolutely listen to the advice others give, but don’t feel like you have to always take it. YOU have to figure out what you want to make of your life, what makes you happy, what makes you fulfilled, and what makes you want to tear out of bed in the mornings and embrace the day. Trust that ultimately you know what’s best for you.

Break some rules

If you’re going to follow every single rule that everyone else has always followed you’re going to get exactly where everyone else has always gotten. If you’ve got a vision for yourself then follow it, even if it takes you in directions others say you shouldn’t or can’t go. New paths are not forged overtop of old ones. They are forged on fresh ground for others to follow.

Don’t be afraid to fail

No one succeeds right off the bat – or at least almost no one, and if you’re not willing to fail then you’re really not willing to succeed. Getting where you want to go is hard. Doors will be closed. You’ll most likely hear NO way more than you’ll hear YES (at first anyway). If those NOs scare you, if they’re a deterrent or a stumbling block then you can’t want that success as much as you think you do. Fear of failure, not wanting to look bad, worrying what other people think – these are the things that separate the people who ARE successful from the people who only WANT to be successful.

Don’t listen to naysayers

“You can’t do that.” “It’s not done that way.” “No one else has done that.” “THIS is the way that needs to be done.” You started with a vision for what you want to accomplish. Don’t get distracted by people who tell you it’s impossible. The Wright brothers didn’t. Henry Ford didn’t. Thomas Edison didn’t.

Work your butt off

You can have a strong vision for what you want to do, trust yourself, be unafraid of breaking some rules or of failing and adept at ignoring the naysayers and still not get anywhere. Why? Those things are all part of the foundation for success. The actual building blocks are hard work, piled one on top of the other.

Give something back

Crazy as it might sound, once you’ve climbed to the highest peak, achieved the goals you spent your life chasing after, checked off every item on your to-do list, the thing that ultimately brings you the most satisfaction is having the opportunity to give back. It makes sense. We’re all in this together. You were probably helped in some way on your way to your goals. The best feeling in the world is doing the same for the next person.

In Arnold’s words, “I can tell you, playing a game of chess with an eight year old kid in an inner city school is far more exciting for me than walking down another red carpet or a movie premier.”

Want to get that Midas magic working for you? Here’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commencement speech.

Reaching The Top Of Your Personal Mountain

There’s a mountain to climb – a goal, a dream, a life achievement. A bunch of people are standing at the bottom of their personal mountains but only a few of them are going to get to the top. Why? What are the people who plant their flags on their mountaintops doing to get there? What aren’t they doing?

Do have definite goals

They know exactly what they want to achieve, meaning they don’t just generalize like “I want to be rich” or “I want to be famous.” They are specific in their aspirations. Ask them and they’ll give you the elevator pitch. They know WHAT they want to do. The HOW they’re going to do it is an evolving process.

Do know when to follow and when to lead

In the words of Lao Tzu, “If you want to lead people you must learn to follow them.”

Those that reach the top of their proverbial mountains first spend some time following others who have climbed similar peaks. They listen to advice, they ask questions, they learn everything they can from those ahead of them. They also know when it’s time to stop following or listening to the can’t be doners. Successful people trust their intuition.

Don’t get caught up in the small setbacks

They know where they’re going. If they hit dead ends or realize they’re on a route that’s the long way around they don’t get stuck there or lament the situation or try to force success out of something that’s proving unsuccessful. They learn what they can and move on. Failure isn’t seen as a setback. It’s seen as a step taken towards the ultimate goal.

Don’t get tangled up in multitasking

Much as people might think they can get more done by doing more at once, the fact is, multitasking makes you less efficient, not more.

In an article called  Why Multitasking Doesn’t Work in Forbes, Douglas Merrill wrote:

“Unfortunately, our brains just aren’t equipped for multitasking tasks that do require brainpower. Our short-term memories can only store between five and nine things at once…when information doesn’t make it into short-term memory it can’t be transferred into long-term memory for recall later. If you can’t recall it, you can’t use it.”

Do live outside of their comfort zones

They are willing to do things they’ve never done before, even if those things scare them or make them nervous. They will go farther than is expected or than others are prepared to go. They’re willing because step after step they’re know they’re getting closer to their destination.

Don’t allow themselves to get burned out

So many people get stuck half way up the mountain or three quarters of the way up because they just burn out. The ones that make it to the top take one thing at a time. Rather than getting overwhelmed by the size of the project, they take it on in chunks. They set realistic goals along the way and stay focused on the ultimate goal. They also take the time to stop climbing altogether. It’s during the silence of doing nothing that the greatest insights are able to make themselves heard. Stillness is often the most important part of the climb.

Do help others along the way

There’s never only one mountain. One person can’t climb all of them. Even if he or she spent an entire lifetime climbing mountain after mountain there would still be countless other mountains. And what would be the benefit of being alone at the top of your highest peak? Ask any successful person and they’ll tell you, the greatest satisfaction for all their efforts is the gratification of helping others achieve their own success. They’ll also tell you the greatest reward isn’t necessarily all the things they were able to accumulate as a consequence of their efforts it’s the experiences gained. The climb itself and everything learned is the reward.

Daily Reminder

Conquering Post Graduation Jitters

It’s been over a month since graduation!

Post-graduation Jitters

The reality of post-grad life is finally setting in – maybe you’ve moved back in with your parents until you can get on your feet, maybe your friends from school are all going their separate ways, or maybe you’re just anxious about what comes next – but the heart of the matter is that early post-grad life can be a little intimidating.

A lot of people deal with that by sliding into inactivity and laziness. We know it’s daunting – how could it not be? The last 18 years of your life have been dedicated to education, and now you suddenly need to find a job and an apartment and get your life going, all at once. It’s scary, and some people get so scared they do nothing at all.

But put down those Doritos, turn off those non-stop Netflix playbacks of whatever terrible sitcom you’ve been binge-watching, and sit up straight!

Get out there and conquer!

You can do this! You can’t stop trying just because you’re afraid. Everyone’s afraid when they first start out. That’s okay. Just don’t let it beat you – keep moving forward! It might take a while to find a job, or an apartment, but you have no excuse to stop trying!

If you’re having trouble we have lots of articles to help, not to mention hundreds of job postings here on our website.

Your time in school was just the prologue. This is the book! You should be excited! The whole world is open, you can do anything you want to do – go anywhere you want to go! It’s okay to be afraid; remember – “Courage is resistance to fear, the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.”

So don’t bury your fear – conquer it! Go out and live your life!

Strap On Those Rose Coloured Glasses

Life is like a magnifying mirror. The more confidence you exude, the more others perceive you as confident, the more confident you are. A positive outlook helps build confidence, it increases your appreciation of everything good and lessens the sadness of the negatives, it fuels the engine working towards your success.

Need some help switching negative thought patterns to positive ones? Check out this infographic from generation pioneer.