Plant Yourself in Good Soil
There is nothing more important to your long-term success than finding and keeping yourself in a healthy environment. I have known so many people out there with incredible talent who insist on remaining in the wrong environment and, consequently, they never end up reaching their full potential in their careers and lives. If you work alongside or spend your time with people who are negative or lazy, who lack motivation, dislike work, and do not believe there are great possibilities for them out there–you will begin to absorb this negativity. You simply cannot spend time around negative [Read more]
Fast Cars, Puppies, Potential, and Building a Life of Meaning
I love to read car magazines. Four or five years ago, I remember reading about how much money Daimler Chrysler was making selling cars that were manufactured with an extra-powerful engine called a HEMI (well before the company went bankrupt). One automobile magazine said that the HEMI cost the company no more than $500 extra to build and install in a car, and that they made more than $5,000 in profit from each installation. This weekend I was traveling, and I picked up a couple of automobile magazines in the airport. I was astonished to learn that companies like Mercedes [Read more]
Change Your Thermostat
One day several years ago, I was sitting in my office in Los Angeles when two barefooted women walked in. Their feet were dirty, and I can assure you, it is not normal for women to walk around downtown Los Angeles without shoes. Both of the women had scabs on their face and were in their late 20s or early 30s. They were dressed like prostitutes and they both looked quite frightening, their eyes glassy and hair unkempt. They did not smell good. All it took was one look to see that the women had been living on the streets, [Read more]
The Dangers of Complacency
The most important thing you can do in your pursuit of success is avoid complacency. Never allow yourself to settle down and accept your results as finite. You need to surround yourself with people who will continue to challenge you to become better. Whom you choose to surround yourself with plays a major role in what you will achieve and what will happen to you in your life. Surround yourself with mediocre people and you will likely face mediocrity in your own life; surround yourself with people who accept nothing but the best from themselves and others, and you are [Read more]
Frustration, Rejection, Sylvester Stallone, and Rocky
A few weeks ago, I interviewed a guy for a job, and he has been e-mailing me every few days since the interview. He was highly qualified for the position and had great credentials. I have decided that I am not going to hire him and I will tell you why: The day of the interview, he had apparently just walked off the job he had held for the past three years–because the company was going to make payroll later than usual. When he said this to me in the interview, I thought about it for some [Read more]
The Danger of Driving Sharp Bargains
Every time I have ever seen someone drive a sharp bargain, it has ended up coming back at the person in some negative way. People who get paid more than they are worth, or who receive more benefit than they provide, always run into problems and have difficulty achieving success. The most successful people in the world are, for the most part, the ones who give more value than they receive. They contribute so much value that people want to do business with them, to buy their products and services over and over again. When I was practicing law, I [Read more]
Seek the Experience and Knowledge of Others in Your Job Search
Back in college there were men I knew who would always shadow other men at parties. The first man would typically spend his entire evening drinking and talking to a woman he met at the party. At some point he would have had too much to drink and would start losing his focus. At that point, the shadow would appear, talk to the girl and, oftentimes, end up going home with her. Since the woman was usually also a little drunk at this point, she was not processing if she liked the shadow as much, and she was discounting the [Read more]
Vested Interests: Ask Yourself, “Does This Really Serve Me?”
One thing you often find is that there seem to be a great number of people out in the world whose chosen business is to make your life and circumstances, whatever they may be, seem much worse than they are. In fact, in your day-to-day life, you are probably already continually surrounded by various people whose personal interests lie in making you feel bad about yourself and the world in general. Your success and ability to get on will in large part be determined by your ability to sift through all of this negative information coming at you. [Read more]
Women and Men, Planning, and Unemployment
In my days of practicing law, some of the other young male associates were extremely secretive about sharing their personal lives with anyone in the firm. There were two things they did not necessarily want everybody to know about:
- Whether they were involved in a serious relationship, and
- Whether or not they had purchased a house.
These associates were concerned that if the partners in the law firm knew they were in serious relationships and/or had homes, the partners would be more likely to consider them shackled to the job, and therefore at the mercy of the law firm. If a man had a significant other [Read more]
Bad Manners, Rumors, and Your Career
One of the risks you face as you progress in your career is rumors. People may make up various falsehoods and share incorrect (usually negative) information about you. These falsehoods can spread like wild fire and can literally destroy your career overnight. It is even more dangerous when there is an element of truth to these rumors and you do not speak out against them. Rumors can be created by your competitors, by someone who does not like you, or simply by a colleague for seemingly no reason at all. Regardless of the source of information, once [Read more]
