The Way to Power
L.W. Rogers’ Self Development and the Way to Power is a marvelously inspiring book that speaks of happiness as a product of wisdom. Rogers states that a person is either a slave of nature or a master of its law. He believes that suffering is unnatural and an imposed negativity. Every one is supposed to be happy and hence they must discover their innermost powers and develop them in order to live a healthier, wealthier, and happier life. This book contains a strong message and can benefit you immensely. It is my pleasure to be sharing it with you.
–Harrison
SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND [Read more]
Ask Yourself Empowering Questions
The power of the questions we ask ourselves determines the power we have in our lives. It’s estimated approximately 60,000 thoughts cross our minds daily. It’s what we do with these thoughts that determines our level of happiness, success, and achievement in the world. When negative thoughts cross your mind, the worst thing you can do is allow yourself to wallow in them. You need to turn those negative thoughts into positive ones. The best way to do this is by asking yourself empowering questions. I want to tell you a story about one of the most [Read more]
Never Get Too Comfortable
One of the greatest causes of failure stems from people experiencing success in their careers. Whether it is being given a new title, a raise, a position of increased job security, or other success, people often suddenly decide they have earned the right to relax. Security and comfort are certainly desirable results and may be a significant part of achieving your goals. However, when you focus on your comfort or bask in your success, you stop growing. Executives and others who begin to relax or let their guard down quickly get crushed. They usually end up [Read more]
Never Worry About What Others Think
Being concerned with what others think is one of the biggest mistakes people make. Rather than focus on who they want to be, and what they want to do, many people live their lives more concerned about how they look to others. Deep down inside you is someone who is capable of achieving great things and becoming a great person. This is the person you should be. Several years ago, I remember turning in a paper to Saul Levmore, who is now the Dean of the University of Chicago Law School. I was taking a class with him while I was at the University of Virginia Law School and had not spent a lot of time with him [Read more]
Concentrate on the Positive, Not the Negative
The most successful people concentrate almost exclusively on the positive and not the negative. In fact, the negative hardly influences them at all. You need to see the world and the people in it as happy, prosperous, and good. Like attracts like. If you look for the negative, then negativity is what you will see. If you look for the positive, then positivity is what you will see. I had an interesting discussion recently with Dr. Surendra Pokharna, an Indian physicist, as we toured some Jain temples in India. Dr. Pokharna said that most people are busy responding to the negative energy of others, and he believed this was quite prevalent in the United States. He is correct. Many people also spend a lot of their time sending out negative energy. Using an example from physics, Dr. Pokharna explained that every force of energy creates an equal and opposing reaction. Therefore, if you [Read more]
Always Be Willing to Readjust
About a year ago, I was sitting in my office and a registered letter arrived for me. The letter was from a large financial institution saying they could no longer lend me funds to provide student loans, and they would stop lending to me within the next four weeks. I had grown my student loan company into a large business over the previous few years and was doing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans annually. From my office, I looked out and saw at least 10 very nice people whom I liked a great deal sitting [Read more]
Find the Best Target Audience for Your Skills
When I was about 13 years old, my parents sent me to a small, private school. Children from the wealthiest families in the Detroit area attended there. The school was unusual in that it went out of its way to assist the wealthiest students and seemed to pay less attention to others. I was friends with one of the wealthy kids, and the headmaster actually used to go over to help him with his homework. Despite the difference in the way the wealthier kids were treated, there were some extremely good things about the school. Upon entering [Read more]
The Madman
The Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer, Khalil Gibran in his book ‘The Madman’, presents a thought provoking collection of short parables and poems ranging in length from a single paragraph to a few pages. With a touch of class which is so unique to Gibran and that which is visible in all his works, an ironic light is cast on the beliefs, aspirations and vanities of humankind. The unrivaled scriptures in the emotions that Gibran’s writings invoke are truly amazing and I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy and gain immensely from this book.
–Harrison
The Madman
By Kahlil Gibran [Read more]
The Power of Gratitude in Your Job Search
Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude. -Wallace Wattles After years of counseling attorneys in their searches for new employment, I’ve realized most attorneys do not appreciate what they have, and are, for the most part, ungrateful. I think there is an epidemic of sorts of ingratitude among attorneys. Most do not appreciate their jobs and are enormously critical of themselves and others, regardless of whether they are earning $30,000 or $2 million per year. This lack of appreciation holds most attorneys back from reaching their full potential and results in a great deal of dissatisfaction within the practice of law. Most attorneys are extremely aware of what they do not have and what others do have. They are aware of where they are working and what their employers pay compared to other employers. They are aware of what other attorneys in their offices are working on, how many hours they have billed, and what sorts of cars they are driving. Because attorneys continually obsess over these sorts of things, few of them are able to find happiness in their careers. Compared to most professionals, attorneys are more aware of what they are lacking. This awareness probably has its roots in the way attorneys are taught to think and the way their arguments are constantly attacked and critiqued. A constant awareness of weakness, a constant need to be on guard, and a constant need to cover all shortcomings does not necessarily make for a happy person. In order for attorneys to be effective in their existing positions and to successfully obtain new ones, they need to express gratitude and appreciate what they have achieved, and what they are becoming. In this profession there is very little time spent on learning to appreciate the good, and a great deal spent on comparing and cutting down. Attorneys can use the power of gratitude to become more effective in their current jobs, job searches, and careers. As part of my job, I often find myself having conversations with colleagues regarding attorneys’ states of mind. Invariably, much of this conversation turns to issues such as how depressed many attorneys are, the prevalence of suicide in law compared to its prevalence in other professions, the fact the average litigator dies in his or her 50s, and the higher incidence of divorce among attorneys. The list of maladies goes on and on, and I frequently learn about new problems and pitfalls that appear within this particular career path. I cannot judge the specific origins of these problems. However, I can definitely say they exist, most likely because attorneys are simply too hard on themselves. Attorneys often inflict their critical views of the world – which they need in order to be good at their jobs – on themselves. Negative thinking does little good. There is a quote attributed to Buddha: “All we are is a result of what we have thought.” This is very true in the practice of law. By constantly focusing on what is negative about their jobs or careers, most attorneys attract more negativity to their lives and careers. When you focus on the negative in your career, you attract further negativity. For example, if you believe there are no opportunities in your law firm, your working environment will remain a place with limited opportunities – for you. When you see your world in a certain way, you perceive everything around you as something that supports your particular belief system. If you do not get a good assignment, you will believe there are no opportunities. If you see someone leave your firm, you will believe there are no opportunities. If you hear something negative about your firm from a co-worker, you will believe there are no opportunities. In 1957, Leon Festinger wrote A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. This book has generated thousands of studies and has offered an extremely influential theory of social psychology. According to Festinger, if two cognitions are relevant to one another, they are constant when one follows from the other, and they are dissonant when the obverse (opposite) of one cognition follows from the other. Because dissonance is uncomfortable for people on a cognitive level, people are motivated to reduce dissonance and avoid information likely to increase the dissonance. In Eddie Harmon-Jones and Judson Mills’ Cognitive Dissonance: Progress on a Pivotal Theory in Social Psychology, the authors write:
Dissonance can be reduced by removing dissonant cognitions, adding new consonant cognitions, reducing the importance of dissonant cognitions, or increasing the importance of consonant cognitions. The likelihood that a particular cognition will change to reduce dissonance is determined by the resistance to change of the cognition. Cognitions that are less resistant to change will change more readily than cognitions that are more resistant to change. Resistance to change is based on the responsiveness of the cognition to reality and on the extent to which the cognition is consonant with many other cognitions. Resistance to change of a behavioral cognitive element depends on the extent of pain or loss that must be endured and the satisfaction obtained from the behavior. An example used by Festinger (1957) may assist in illustrating the theory. A habitual smoker who learns smoking is bad for his or her health will experience dissonance because the knowledge that smoking is bad for his or her health is dissonant with the cognition that he continues to smoke. He can reduce the dissonance by changing his behavior. That is, he could stop smoking, which would be consonant with the cognition that smoking is bad for health. Alternatively, the smoker could reduce dissonance by changing his cognition about the effect of smoking on health and believe that smoking does not have a harmful effect on health (eliminating the dissonant cognition). He might look for positive effects of smoking and believe that smoking reduces tension and keeps him from gaining weight (adding consonant cognitions). Or he might believe that the risk to health from smoking is negligible compared with the danger of automobile accidents (reducing the importance of the dissonant cognition). In addition, he might consider the enjoyment he gets from smoking to be a very important part of his life (increasing the importance of consonant cognitions).
If you [Read more]
Never Focus on the Money: Focus on Your Higher Purpose and Contribution
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 byproduct of your contribution to your job. You will be paid in any organization 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 a.m. every morning to deliver over 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 [Read more]
