Never Focus on the Money: Focus on Your Higher Purpose and Contribution

 Loading ...Read Summary

People fail far too often in the working world because they focus too much on the money they earn at their jobs. The money you are paid is generally commensurate with your contribution to something more important, more meaningful, and much larger than yourself. When you focus on what you are doing for the world and the value of this contribution, you become energized. Being energized by your work brings more and better work your way and ultimately leads to greater earnings. The money is a by-product of your contribution to your job. You generally will be paid at a rate matching your contribution to the bigger picture.

What is your particular contribution to the bigger picture? Every job makes a contribution to a bigger picture.

I started delivering papers when I was 10 years old. By the time I was 13, I was getting up at 5:00 every morning to deliver more than 175 papers in a prestigious suburb of Detroit. High-ranking auto executives lived in most of the houses. When I delivered these papers, I found myself energized by the thought I was providing them information they would be using to help run companies that supported the American economy, provided millions of jobs, and gave people access to transportation. In a small way, I realized, in this job I was fulfilling a larger purpose.

Some years later, I took a second job washing dishes in a cafeteria. I motivated myself in this job by thinking if not for my work, hundreds of people each night might go hungry. I was also providing people enjoyment when they sat down for dinner, I was helping families spend more time together, and I was making the world a happier place. This motivated me to do good work, and it made me happy.

Whatever you do, there is a higher purpose to your work, and your job is fulfilling a role that is changing the world and making a contribution. Money is just money. When you focus on the money, you lose track of the importance of the contribution you make. My career advice is to find the importance in your contribution and use this to inspire your job performance.

Don’t focus on money if you want to do well in your job. In the same way a person must focus on his or her relationship in order to have a successful one, a person must focus on his or her work in order to be successful at it. Focus on your job and your performance–nothing else. If you can do this, the money will follow.

It is easy for me to spot people whose eyes are on the money and not the job. These people are in every profession and they never have long-term success. Having a larger purpose is incredibly important, and money is not a larger purpose.

The issue I see with people who always focus on the money is that they are constantly interrupting their work to consider if they are getting the short end of the stick. They are extremely concerned about their compensation relative to others. They wonder whether or not their efforts are being adequately compensated every step of the way. They are overly concerned about the accuracy of each paycheck. Their focus on their work is perpetually distracted by an interest in the money, rather than the job.

If you were an employer, who would you want to have working for you? Someone who is committed and enthusiastic about the job? Or someone who appears to be doing the work just for the money?

Several years ago, I was speaking with a young CIA agent and he told me about a meeting he was getting ready to have with a senior agent. The senior agent told him the person they were going to speak with was very dishonest, untrustworthy, and an all-around bad person. However, the agents would be nice and would treat the target nicely. They would only accomplish their assignment if the target were to see them this way. The senior agent said something to the younger agent he thought so profound he remembered it throughout his career:

“Don’t ever think something or else you will show it.”

Basically, the second you start thinking something, you will begin telegraphing your thoughts. People will begin to pick up on it through nonverbal signals, facial expressions, and body language.

Have you ever had the experience of being able to tell something about someone without speaking to the person? You just get a feeling about something. Who knows how we pick up on it, but we do.

When you are focused on the money, you put your purpose in the job on the back burner in favor of your obsession with how much you are going to make. People easily pick up on this–employers, clients, and others. This is one of the worst things you can do in any job.

At the risk of becoming overly metaphysical, I would like to share a quick side story with you. I was at a dinner once discussing this exact topic of people picking up clues about others through nonverbal communication. The person I was talking with had a background in engineering and the study of energy, and he too was interested in this subject. He told me there is a gland in the brain–the pituitary gland–that for some strange reason has almost the exact same cellular structure as our eyes. He told me he believes people pick up on information using this. He believed this has something to do with how humans pick up signals from the world around them when they are babies.

This may seem like bizarre thinking, but I do believe when people are more concerned with their salary than their work, the people around them pick up on it. You should push any concerns you have about your compensation out of your mind, and focus on your work and your work’s greater purpose. The greater purpose of your work is something that deserves your attention. Regardless of what type of work you do, it has a greater purpose. People will pick up on your passion and will want to work with you.

Every single person I’ve ever known in our company who is outstanding at what he or she does has always focused on the greater purpose of his or her work. Every single attorney I know who is outstanding at his or her job has always focused on the work and not the reward. Get into what you do and realize your higher purpose.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

SEE JOBS ONLY FROM EMPLOYER CAREER PAGES

Resources
Search Jobs in Your Industry
Post Your Resume to 65+ Job Sites
Resume Service
Classified Ads
Job Search Course

Related posts: Focus on Other Geographic Areas to Get Your Job Search GoingConcentrate on Your ContributionYou Need to Bring a Singular Focus to Everything You DoThe Importance of Productivity, Focus, and MeasurementThe Greater Your Purpose, the Greater the Obstacles You Will FaceThe Focus of the Group You Are in Determines the Kind of Person You BecomeSummary In this article, Harrison explains the importance of realizing the greater purpose in the work you do. One of the greatest causes of failure in the work world is when your focus diverts from your contribution to the money you are earning. You need to understand the larger purpose for which you have been hired. The money you are paid for your job is generally commensurate with your contribution to something more important, more meaningful, and much larger than yourself. The secret to success then will be having a higher purpose to your work and being energized by your work which would ultimately bring more and better work and lead to more money.

View the original article here

Why You Should Never Miss a Company Holiday Party or Invitation to Your Boss’s Home

 Loading ...A few years ago, I spoke with a man (now retired) who had worked in a large corporation for 40 years and in his last 20 years, he basically did nothing. He was paid very well and basically forgotten—doing very little of anything. He would show up at the office at 9:00 a.m. each day, try and look busy—do a task now and then—and then get in his car at 5:30 p.m. each evening and drive home. When he finally retired from the company, he felt as if he had achieved a great victory. For the past 20 years, his friend (who had risen very high in the company) had protected the man and made sure he kept his job—despite the fact that the guy was doing next to nothing and was of very little use to the company whatsoever.

This story may sound a little odd, but in virtually every company, there are people working in jobs who are not needed. There are people working in jobs where they may be grossly overpaid. There are people who are not carrying their weight. There are people who simply have very little utility to the company at all but, for whatever reason, are kept in the jobs they are in due to some connection, emotional attachment, or otjob marketherwise.

Hiring, interviewing, continued employment, and your entire career is something that is largely emotional. Most people believe that hiring and the job market are ”professional” and ”rational”—I believe nothing could be further from the truth. Probably 50% of the people in any company do not belong there, the company could do without them, or the company could do their jobs cheaper with someone else. If this sounds a little offensive to you, then I apologize. What I want you to understand is the value of having emotional connections in your job. Without these emotional connections, you will be much worse off than with them.

In one law firm I worked at, I remember an entire group of attorneys were kicked out of a block of hotel rooms because one of the attorneys had thrown a woman he had met out of his room naked and proceeded to call her a bunch of names. Incredibly, this guy was not fired, nor was he even disciplined by the firm. He was friends with several attorneys and no one really seemed to care. If the relationship had been ”professional,” he would have gotten in a lot of trouble. I saw other attorneys fired or asked to leave the same firm for much more minor offenses. However, where an attorney like this is fired, they generally do not have an emotional connection to the firm.

In every industry I am aware of, when layoffs occur and when people are fired, generally the first to go are those who do not have an emotional connection to the organization. If you do not have an emotional connection, you are making a huge mistake. Regardless of how professional you are, the odds are that you setting yourself up for problems later on.

Holiday parties are a perfect example. An invitation to an event at your boss’ house is another. I used to be uncomfortable with these sorts of things when I was working—in fact, I often dreaded them because I felt instinctively they were so important and did not want to screw up. Nevertheless, I always went and am glad I did—the relationships I made were very beneficial to me.

The holiday party, invitation to spend time with your boss outside of work—and other similar occasions are extremely important because they are a chance to form an emotional connection with the people you are working with. This connection is arguably more important than the professional connection. The emotional connection will take you farther and will last longer than any other sort of connection. Avoid holiday parties and other occasions to form emotional connections with your coworkers and superiors at your own risk.

Most hiring is motivated by some sort of emotional need on the employer’s part. When you go to interview at any job, the most important thing you can do is find out why the employer really wants to hire you. You may get some sense of this in the advertisement you respond to—or your recruiter—but you are only going to truly understand why the employer wants to hire you when you get into interviews and are able to feel comfortable with the interviewer—and uncover the employer’s emotional reasons for wanting to hire you.

Most people go into interviews concerned mainly about themselves.

They worry about their appearance.They worry about how they will describe past jobs and moves.They worry about their experience.They may worry about their education.

All of these are valid worries (and may be important to the employer) but none of them are as important as the emotional motivation behind the employer hiring you.

Emotion is often irrational and employers often hire people for irrational reasons. In fact, our entire economy runs on irrationality. This may seem like a bold statement, but look at it this way:

In virtually every news story I have read about when unemployment is high, something is always mentioned about how companies and other organizations are “doing more with fewer people.” Many of the stories mention things like companies doing just as much business (yet being more profitable) with 25% of the workforce.

More recently, news stories have mentioned ”record corporate profits” because companies have staffed down and are doing the same amount of work with fewer employees in response to recessionary conditions.

This indicates to me that something else is going on when employers are in ”hiring mode”. A ”rational” and ”unemotional” organization would only hire as many people as it needs to do the work. It would not hire more people than it needs to do the work—and it certainly would not hire 4x as many people as it needs to do the work.

There is, of course, the need for extra employees in case someone leaves. There is the need to make sure people are not overworked. But there is absolutely no reason for any company to have 4x as many employees as it needs to do the work. (Forget about 4x as many employees … there is no reason to have 25% more employees than is needed to do the work.)

Overstaffing is a complete waste of any organization’s money and resources. If this is the case, what is going on?

In good economic climates, companies may be enthusiastic about the future and therefore want to hire more people—this is emotional.In good economic climates, more work that might not even be necessary is allowed to be done—this is emotional.In good economic climates, companies may want to see their offices and factories full of people—this is emotional.In good economic climates, friends and relatives of people are hired more readily—this is emotional.In good economic climates, people who are not productive are kept around—this is emotional.

Hiring becomes more of an emotional function for many employers than a rational and business-oriented function.

For a few years, in my own company, we had a man who was consistently working massive amounts of overtime. It got to be so that his overtime was so excessive, I spoke with his supervisor and told him that overtime had to stop. Then I spoke with his supervisor again. Then I spoke with him again. Then I spoke with him again. This went on for over a year. Finally, I told the supervisor that if the overtime did not stop, I would fire the guy working overtime.

To my astonishment, the supervisor said: ”Boss, he had three kids to feed and a house. You need to let him work overtime.”

The supervisor was telling me, essentially, that his ”emotional” connection to the employee overrode the company’s more pragmatic and business-oriented reasons (saving costs) for limiting his hours.

I could list countless examples of these sorts of emotional connections and how they come into play in the workplace. There are so many emotional connections that virtually every company is far more inefficient that it should be.

If you are smart, you should realize that these emotional connections and emotional alliances are almost as important as your professional performance at work. These emotional connections are important in you getting and keeping a job and just about everything you do in your professional life.

Make the most of your emotional connection and realize that emotion is the dominant force in most professional settings.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

SEE JOBS ONLY FROM EMPLOYER CAREER PAGES

Resources
Search Jobs in Your Industry
Post Your Resume to 65+ Job Sites
Resume Service
Classified Ads
Job Search Course

Related posts: Always Ask and Observe: “How Long Have People Been Around”How to Be a Good ManagerConcentrate on Your ProductDon’t Be Dead Weight–Contribute More than You TakeFrustration, Rejection, Sylvester Stallone and RockyOver Deliver Because It’s Not About YouSummary A few years ago, I spoke with a man (now retired) who had worked in a large corporation for 40 years and in his last 20 years, he basically did nothing. He was paid very well and basically forgotten—doing very little of anything. He would show up at the office at 9:00 a.m. each day, [...]

Filed Under : Featured
Tagged: apply for a job, attorney jobs, attorney search, career advice, economic climates, emotional connections, holiday party, job blog | a harrison barnes, job markets, job search, legal career, legal jobs, legal profession, new jobs, past jobs

View the original article here

Never Punish Yourself

 Loading ...When I was growing up, one of my childhood friends was continually reminded by very serious Christian parents that any sort of physical contact with the opposite sex outside of marriage was wrong.  His parents promised all sorts of evil that would befall him if he associated physically with girls outside of marriage.  To top all this off, he had been going to various Christian youth groups since a young teenager where he was lectured about the tremendous guilt and wrath he would receive from God if he engaged in physical contact with women.

When he was around 17 years old, he took his parents car over to his girlfriend’s house and the two messed around.  He told me that when he left, he felt terribly guilty.  He knew his parents would never find out, but the guilt was just too much.  On his drive home, he took his eyes off the road, crashed his parent’s car and was injured.

When he told me about this episode, I remember finding it pretty odd. This guy was always very alert, was an exceptional athlete and was not the sort of guy who would take his eyes off the road going 35- miles an hour down a relatively calm suburban street.

“It’s always like that,” he told me.  “The last time I kissed a girl, I ended up just ‘blanking out’ completely on a math test. I got an ‘F’ and I actually knew the material. For some reason I just could not concentrate.”

The message that I got and understood from what he was saying was that God was “striking him down” for doing evil.  That was the message that he believed.  I grew up in a relatively small town in the Midwest and when I was 16 or so, this seemed to make sense to me.  Yes, this is how God works.  Even if our parents do not punish us for something, then God will.

Regardless of your religion, I am sure this sort of thought process makes some sense to you.  Perhaps it is not kissing a girl when you are not married.  It could be theft.  It could be cheating.  It could be murder.  Regardless of what it is, the message is that even if society does not punish us then God (or a higher power) will step in and take care of it. What about the people who do not get punished on earth?  Well … the logic here is that if someone is lucky enough to escape punishment on earth, then they will end up spending eternity in Hell.  This is the thought process that most of Western Civilization has been raised under and it is part of the way we think.

I am going to take a leap here and offend many people: The reality is that it is we who are doing the punishing.  If someone is not around to punish us, we go ahead and punish ourselves.

Everyone is punished as children, adolescents, and adults by a variety of people—parents, teachers, peers, friends, bosses, society, wives, and husbands.  How we are punished and how we deal with being punished has a significant impact on the quality of our careers and lives.   I am sure that the punishments you received in the past are something you remember well.  I certainly do.  The concept of punishment sets the “tone” for most of us and the quality of our psychological and even physical lives.

The family I grew up in, believed in spankings and similar sorts of “traditional” punishments when I did something wrong.  While this is not something I will ever do with my children, there is logic to such type punishments: The child does something wrong and is immediately punished for what they did.  Ideally, after being punished with a spanking, the child is forgiven and everything is back to normal.  In “healthy” punishment, a bad behavior is identified and immediately punished:

If you do something wrong in school, you are punished and then you are [generally] allowed to go on with your life.Socially, if you do something wrong, your friends may not be your friends anymore (unless you make up to them in some way).If you break the law, you are fined, sent to prison, and so forth—and then the punishment is over.

Most of us very quickly learn that if we do something wrong, we will generally be punished—and everything will be just fine.  Society functions are based on us doing something wrong and then being forced to “atone” for what we did, and moving on.  Societal incentives:

Encourage us to act properly;Punish us for not acting properly; and,Allow us to “re-enter” society after being punished.

What happens, though, when there is no one around to punish us if we do something wrong?  In the case of my friend who crashed his parents’ car, he was punishing himself because there was no one around to do it.  In fact, the concept of a “psychic” and “higher power” sort of punishment that would result from any physical contact with the opposite sex was so strong within his mind that he made sure he punished himself if no one was around to do it.

In dysfunctional families, the child may be punished and then reminded of what they did for days, months, or years later, and made to always feel guilty about what they did wrong.  I know of people who have been really messed up by families that continually put guilt on them and do not let them forget.

One of the most powerful movies I ever saw dealing with this was Ordinary People.  This movie is about an affluent family dealing with the aftermath of the death of their son.  Conrad (played by Timothy Hutton), the surviving son of a boat accident, is overcome with guilt to such an extent that he attempts suicide.  Conrad’s mother, Beth (played by Mary Tyler Moore), had always preferred Conrad’s brother and has great difficulty supporting Conrad.  This drives Conrad further and further into his guilt and self-imposed punishment of himself.  It is only when the psychiatrist Dr. Berger (played by Judd Hirsch) makes Conrad realize that he no longer has to punish himself that he is able to move on.  Dr. Berger also has to help Conrad come to terms with the fact that his mother is making him feel guilty about what happened.

How you have been punished at work and in your career in the past are important components of whether or not you will be successful in your work.  If you did something wrong in your job in the past and your employer will not forgive you, then you have a serious problem. Why?  Because having guilt loom over you all the time and having your employer make you feel like you need to continue punishing yourself will harm you.  Why should you be in a situation where you are made to feel guilty and bad about yourself all the time?  Many employers, friends, and others use guilt to exert control over us. Never put yourself in a position where you cannot be forgiven and move on.  Continually feeling guilty could drive you to all sorts of problems you do not need for yourself.

If you are in any professional or personal situation where you will never escape being made to feel guilty, my advice for you is to get out.  Guilt and the psychic punishment associated with this is too much for anyone to bear over the long term.  It is hurting your success and life.  You need to get free of this.

Many of the most severe problems people have in the world—self mutilation, depression, drug and alcohol addiction, cutting and other self-destructive behaviors—are the result of people trying to punish themselves.  I have personally known two women in my life who were sexually abused by their fathers when they were teenagers. In one case, the woman attempted suicide several times.  In the other case, the woman developed a habit of cutting herself on her arm after her father abused her.  Feeling tremendous guilt and with no one around to punish them, these women were punishing themselves for what occurred. 

Many people are [erroneously] punishing themselves so they can feel good.  They have done something wrong in the past, or believe they have done something wrong and just continue punishing themselves psychologically and physically.  After some time, they may have even forgotten why they were punishing themselves.  They just continue punishing themselves because they have developed the belief that this was something they needed to do in order to feel better.

Most of us typically punish ourselves due to our internal value systems that tell us when we believe we should be punished and when we believe we should feel guilt.  Let’s say that tomorrow you were to go out and run over someone in your car—killing them—and then made the mistake of driving away.  Furthermore, you decided that you were not going to tell the police about this—or anyone—and were just going to go on living your life normally. 

My guess is that what would happen is that things would rapidly fall apart for you (because you are a good person).  You would start to feel terribly guilty and would probably start doing things to punish yourself. 

You might alienate people close to you to (in an odd way) punish yourself. You might get yourself fired from your job. You might start abusing substances.You might even develop all sorts of health problems. You might even just drop dead for no reason.You might have a bad accident that could have been avoided if you were more alert.

I do not know how you would punish yourself (only you do).  What I do know is the odds are very good that you would punish yourself quite severely even if the law did not catch up with you.

The problem with punishing yourself, though, is that it can only hurt you.  Punishing yourself will never make you feel better.  In most cases, the punishment you inflict on yourself will be far worse than society would inflict on you.  When you punish yourself, you are never forgiven and you can never move on.  If you run someone over with your car, go to the police and are punished, you will have paid your debt.  You may still have issues you need to work through after having paid your debt to society, but at least you will have been given permission by society to move on.

Some relationships are like this as well.  One person does something wrong and for years the other person brings it up and does not let them forget it.  The punishment just keeps coming.  Just as soon as the person who committed the misdeed starts to feel better, the person who was offended will drag up the supposed misdeed in an attempt to make the person feel guilty once more.

One of the most insidious and dangerous things in the world is punishment.  You need to ask if you are punishing yourself for something in the past, or you are allowing others to continually and [unjustly] punish you for long-gone transgressions.  Punishment can undermine your life and success and the worst thing you can do is allow punishment to govern the course of your life. Never punish yourself.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

SEE JOBS ONLY FROM EMPLOYER CAREER PAGES

Resources
Search Jobs in Your Industry
Post Your Resume to 65+ Job Sites
Resume Service
Classified Ads
Job Search Course

No related posts.

Summary When I was growing up, one of my childhood friends was continually reminded by very serious Christian parents that any sort of physical contact with the opposite sex outside of marriage was wrong.  His parents promised all sorts of evil that would befall him if he associated physically with girls outside of marriage.  To top [...]

View the original article here

Refuse to Acknowledge Setbacks and Intimidations, and You Will Never Fail

 Loading ...The police pulled in behind us the second we turned into my mother’s driveway, and turned on their lights.  I was very frightened.  I thought I might be going to jail that evening. I was not sure.

I had assumed my mother and sister were staying in for the evening when we went joyriding in her car; however, I was quite wrong.  She had walked up the street to the ice cream parlor with my sister.  When she returned home, she assumed that the car was stolen because it was missing from the driveway.   She called the police.  The police caught me and I was mortified.  When my mother came home, she was furious with me; the whole affair deeply shattered my self-esteem.

In contrast to me, the guy I was with did not seem to care.  To the astonished policeman, he calmly said:

“There is nothing you can do with us.  We are 13 years old.  What are you going to do?  Just call my mom so she can come pick us up and we can get this over with.  Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? ”

He then looked over at me: “You need to calm down.  Who cares if we went joyriding?  I am sure this cop and your mom did the same thing when they were our age.”

At the age of 13, I had been talked into going out joyriding with a guy my age, who lived a few doors down from me. He was the most persuasive guy I had ever met.  This particular guy is the only person I have ever known who was completely oblivious to setbacks and obstacles.  Literally nothing ever got in his way.  Ignoring setbacks and obstacles are two personality traits that can take you incredibly far in your life.  In fact, if you can ignore setbacks and obstacles, your life will change in profound ways.

At the age of seven he had gotten a pacemaker.  Prior to this, his health-related problems were so severe that he spent weeks at a time in hospitals.  He never grew as much as other kids did and was always much shorter than us as we grew up.  Every few years, he would have to go in and have a new battery put in his pacemaker and this would require opening up his chest.  Despite health problems and a short stature, he made up for it with the strongest attitude I have ever seen from anyone—before or since.

I knew a few other kids who had bad health problems when they were growing up.  They would always tell other kids all sorts of stories about these health problems and define themselves by these health problems.  Many were depressed by their health problems and used them as excuses for not participating in or making the most of their lives.

If you wanted to talk to the guy with the pacemaker about his health problems, he would ignore you.  If you pressed him, he would get a little hostile.  He did not want to acknowledge any weakness he might have had.

At the age of 12, the guy I got pulled over with started a successful landscape business, purchased a pick-up truck and a trailer, and drove around without a driver’s license mowing lawns all over town.  At the age of 16, he bought himself a $20,000 sports car for cash.  By the age of 18, he was rumored to have over $300,000 in the bank from his various businesses.

When he was 13 or so, he even turned into a loan shark to younger kids.  If they did not pay, he slashed the tires on their bikes and intimidated them in other ways.  He loaned me $500 to purchase a moped when I was around 14.  He stopped by weekly to collect his money and interest.  About 6 months into this deal, all I was paying him was interest.  My mother grew annoyed with his constant visits:

“He has already paid you back,” she told him.  “Leave him alone or I’ll talk to your mother,” she told him.

“If you talk to my mother, I will beat him up and I will also put sugar in the gas tank of the moped and ruin it when he is not around.  I would not do that if I were you …” he fired right back.

Such audacity out of a guy his age was amazing.  I remember at the time seeing my mother tick off a small smile when she was confronting him.  How could someone his age have the balls to confront an older person like that?

I do not think there was anyone around our age who was not afraid of him.

I can now see at my age that what made him so successful was a fierce and compelling and unrelenting life force.  Nothing frightened him.  Nothing discouraged him.  Nothing got in his way.

In everything he did, he was successful.  He may not have been the best athlete, but he had a reputation for trying harder than everyone else.  He may not have been the best looking guy, but he always dated the most desired girls (even when they were over a foot taller than him).  He may not have been the best student, but he worked the best he could to get good grades.

He just did not back down at anything.  Ever. I do not think he knew how to back down.

When I was around 22, I heard that he had gone to college and gotten into all sorts of problems with sports bookies.  He had to drop out of college due to massive gambling debts with dangerous people.  He lost all his money and then some. He was beaten up, threatened with death, and forced to work seven days a week for years to pay the debts off.  He eventually went back to school and now has a productive and successful life.  In fact, he is now very successful again.  Of course he is.  His spirit is unbreakable.

This guy never cared about anyone or anything that got in his way.   Literally nothing held him back.  What he had was a psychology that simply did not recognize any sort of obstacles and refused to see any sort of limitations in his life.  Had one of his legs been chopped off, he would have kept going and I do not think anything would have been different for him.  Were he suddenly shunned by everyone, I do not think anything would be different for him.

I have known hundreds of very successful people throughout my life and career and most people can generally be intimidated, or made to back off, by someone or something.  You take the person out of their comfort zone, and they very quickly start getting nervous.  You put them in a situation that they are not comfortable with and they immediately get nervous.  Everyone can be intimidated and scared quite easily.  Threaten them with a lawsuit, and they may back off.  Threaten them with a punishment, and they will back off.  Virtually everyone can be intimidated and made to back off.

Most people throughout their lives experience a massive amount of setbacks:

They fail in various relationships.They lose jobs.They lose money.They experience medical problems.And, of course, eventually they die.

You certainly have experienced a huge number of setbacks that are so numerous that it would take you months to simply list them if you were honest with yourself.  Everyone has experienced a massive amount of setbacks in all areas of their lives: Whether you are the leader of a country, or are currently in a prison, you probably have experienced an equal amount of setbacks.  Setbacks are just part of what happens to everyone in the course of their lives.

In addition to setbacks, I am confident that others intimidate you on an ongoing basis:

You are intimidated by bosses.You are intimidated by companies and people you owe money to.You are intimidated by your co-workers.You are intimidated by your friends.You are intimidated by your own (irrational) fears about various circumstances.

Everyone is intimidated by others and made to feel frightened and back off.

The quality of your life and existence will be determined by how you deal with setbacks and intimidation by others.  If you refuse to acknowledge either setbacks or intimidation, you are going to experience massive success.  The whole world, as a natural phenomenon, is always working to place setbacks in your way and to intimidate you and lead you to believe one thing or another.  This is the “game” of the world.

The way to win the game is to refuse to be the one who acknowledges setbacks and intimidation.  This is the test of your character.  How much is within you?  How much can you take?  You need to have an unconquerable spirit that refuses to acknowledge setbacks and intimidation.

For someone who never knows when they are beaten, there is no such thing as failure.  The world belongs to the person who gets up time and time again, keeps going when everyone else would quit and goes forward when everyone else is retreating.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

SEE JOBS ONLY FROM EMPLOYER CAREER PAGES

Resources
Search Jobs in Your Industry
Post Your Resume to 65+ Job Sites
Resume Service
Classified Ads
Job Search Course

No related posts.

Summary The police pulled in behind us the second we turned into my mother’s driveway, and turned on their lights.  I was very frightened.  I thought I might be going to jail that evening. I was not sure. I had assumed my mother and sister were staying in for the evening when we went joyriding in [...]

View the original article here