Be the Person You Are Capable of Being

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ”Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson

Several years ago, I was writing a newspaper article about a movie critic and political commentator, Michael Medved. Medved was asked why George Bush had lost the election to Bill Clinton. Medved said something along the lines of, ”Months before the election he had some of the highest approval ratings of any American president. In order to understand this, you just need to look at simple psychology. He lost because he wanted to.”

I thought about this statement a lot because it is true in so much of our lives. We decide how far we want to go and then end up sabotaging ourselves at some point along the way. There are numerous reasons we do this, and I would like to review some of those reasons below.

When I was about 15 years old, I was always getting into trouble. One night, I went out with my best friend and took down about 20 street signs around town in the middle of the night. I might have even been drunk. We did this on motorcycles. We were absolutely insane! I did end up returning the street signs to the city a couple of days later when my mom’s boyfriend found them in the garage.

I also want to note that, in this particular period of my life, I had so many friends it was unbelievable. The phone rang constantly. I would get calls in the middle of the night asking me to go somewhere and have fun. I grew up with a lot of wild kids. When I was 25 years old and living in New York City, I turned on the television and saw a kid I knew from my adolescent years on 20/20. He was in prison on a charge that was almost silly. One guy I knew was thrown in juvenile detention for a few months after he stole a meter maid’s cart and led police on a chase.

I moved to Bangkok, Thailand, at the age of 15 after my father was transferred there. I was enrolled in an international school and quickly realized I did not have a lot of soul mates interested in being wild. There was simply no place for that sort of behavior in this new environment. I had fun, but the people weren’t wild like the friends I had back in the United States. A lot of my classmates were from Taiwan and Japan, and they were very serious about school. Some were from places like Nepal, and many were from Israel. The idea of being a social misfit simply did not work there.

For weeks I was very depressed. It was as if I was going through some form of withdrawal. I had no friends interested in being wild and no one at the school liked me for the wild guy I was. I could not even call my friends back home. Instead of continuing to be wild, I had no choice but to fit in with the kids at the international school.

So I started applying myself. I ran for an officer position in the student council and won. I tried out for varsity soccer and made the team. I exercised daily. I started studying a lot. I worked as hard as I could. By the end of the year, I was a straight ”A” student and had the highest grades in my class. I became a completely different person.

When I returned from Bangkok in the summer after my year of school, I announced to my friends back home that I was different now, had much better grades, and so forth. I expected all my friends to be proud of me. Instead, they no longer wanted to socialize with me. They did not want to be friends with someone who took himself so seriously. They were interested in the person I was before. Throughout that summer I was depressed because these people were no longer interested in being my friend.

One morning around 7 a.m., a bunch of former friends showed up at my house in a van. They came in, woke me up, made some jokes, and then left. They seemed very wired, and on the way out one of them punched a hole in the screen door. They did not seem to know what they were doing. I found out later this group of friends spent the summer traveling around in the van doing cocaine, and the van was known as the ”coke van.” I have never done drugs at all and these guys had entered a completely different realm. None of these guys ever did anything with their lives.

Despite feeling isolated, I continued working hard and doing the best I could in school and in life. I ran for student government positions again and won. I continued to improve myself. As I improved, I found myself growing apart from the people around me. This is what happens as you keep improving. People around you are not always comfortable with this, and you outgrow them, or grow in different directions.

I want to make a point I believe is extremely relevant: as you grow, do not look back. Your future will always be better than the past you leave behind. There are people who won’t like it when you grow, but your growth should motivate them to improve as well. You will find some people will grow right along with you, just in different ways.

I once received an email from one of our very talented employees requesting that I not point out something very good that this person did in their job. The person was afraid of looking too talented in others’ eyes. The mistake many of us make is not allowing ourselves to be all we can be.

I want to be clear on something else as well: if you start living the life you want and try to be as successful as you really want to be, you will often face external opponents. However, the largest obstacle you will ever face is yourself. Never stand in the way of your own success. Embrace your capabilities.

In the movie To Die For, Nicole Kidman plays a reporter motivated to have an important career as a television journalist. In this movie, Kidman’s husband tries to prevent her from becoming a well-known and successful reporter. Parents, spouses, peers, and numerous others influence us every single day, and often this influence is an attempt to keep us down.

Never allow others to keep you down. The decision to excell is your own. You can do, be, and have everything you want. Now is the time to take charge of your life and be everything you are capable of being. You are one of the most special people ever. I can assure you that what is waiting for you is much better than never reaching your full potential.

About 10 years ago, I was at a bar in Detroit with my girlfriend. I was about to leave when I passed a table of people with whom I’d been friends before I began working hard and applying myself. I used to think they were the coolest people. While I will not get into specifics, I didn’t want to be associated with those people anymore. None finished college and they did odd jobs like clean boats for a living. Deep down, I knew if I had not moved to Bangkok and taken charge of my abilities, I would probably have had a very similar life.

Take charge and do everything in your power to be the person you are capable of being. You will like where you end up.

You Need to Sell, Sell, Sell

A strange misconception among many people, especially professionals, is that there is something wrong with selling. When I talk about selling, I am referring to any number of sales activities:

-Selling yourself in an interview

-Selling yourself in a cover letter to an employer

-Selling yourself to a client

-Selling yourself to any other person

-Packaging yourself in a ‘’sellable” way

In every single interaction we have with others we are selling. The more you sell, the better you will do in your life and career. The best and most successful people are always selling. You should have no preconceived notions about the value of selling because it is among the most important skills you can have. If you understand sales, you understand and control your life.

Several years ago, I was sitting in the office of my friend, who was a window washer. While he was on the phone, I picked up a magazine about window washing from his table. In it, I read an article which appeared to be part of a series. The series was about a man with a window washing squeegee and a towel who was transported to various American cities with no money and given the task of getting back each day. He might be transported from Chicago to Miami one month. The next month they might send him from Chicago to a small town in Oregon. He could be sent anywhere in the country. The article was titled something like this:

Give me a squeegee and a towel and send me to any American city with no money. By the end of the day, I will have a steak dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town, spend the night in a nice hotel, and take a flight home in the morning.

After being dropped off in a city in the morning, the window washer would go from business to business asking to wash their windows. Regardless of the city, he would always make enough money for his steak, hotel, and flight home. When I read this in the early 90s, flights often cost close to $1,000, so what this window washer was doing was really impressive. Without any knowledge of the city he was in and with no contacts, he would end the day with clients and plenty of money.

I remember this series exceptionally well because it inspired me to understand the power of sales and how it can completely change your life regardless of your other skills. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go.

I want you to take a moment and think about the power of the window washer’s story. What makes this story so remarkable to me is that being a window washer requires no education and no investment. All it requires is the ability to wash a window, which is teachable in a few minutes, and to find people who will pay you to do this. The ability to sell the service is obviously among the most important elements of this job.

What impressed me so much about this particular story is it shows if you have the ability to sell, you can make something from nothing. When you have the ability to sell you are in control of your life and what happens to you. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune – if you are after these things.

I believe selling is the most important career skill you can have. All people are involved in sales, even if they do not realize it. However, there is some sort of bias against effective sales people. It is often considered ”uncouth” or not businesslike to be good at sales. People often feel if they try to sell something it will reflect badly on them. People feel sales is a low-class profession. When I hear people talk about sales like this it nearly makes me sick. Selling is the most important possible career skill imaginable, and the most important people in the world are absolute masters at sales.

Every time there is a presidential election in the United States, the winner is determined by the ability to sell to the public the idea he or she would make the better president. The winning candidate debates with his or her opponents, gives speeches, creates taglines and slogans, and travels all over the country trying to spread his or her ideas. When the candidate gets into office, he or she travels all over the world trying to sell those same ideas to other countries. The President tries to sell these ideas to the congress and the senate. The President tries to sell to constituents.

If you are the CEO of a corporationyour job involves sales. Think about auto industry CEOs traveling to Washington asking for money. Their ability to obtain money involves their ability to sell to politicians. They too are in sales.

The most important jobs involve sales, as do the least important. If you want time off from a job your ability to get that time off will depend on your ability to make a sale. If you want a raise, it may depend on your ability to sell your superiors on the reasons why you deserve a raise. Every single thing we do is about making a sale. Getting a good grade in school is often about making a sale. Everything we do is about making sales.

I used to know a guy who sat in his apartment all day not doing much of anything. He watched television and occasionally made a few phone calls. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and had about five or six beers each night. He was also single and probably always will be. He had had a pretty lousy career. He was at least 40 pounds overweight and, despite being in his mid 30s, he had not had a girlfriend since he was in high school. What was this guy’s problem? He did not think it was cool to sell himself. He would not sell himself to an employer, a potential mate, or anyone. He did not care. I have not spoken to the guy in a long time, but I remember he was always making fun of people who sold stuff, making fun of commercials on television and making fun of people trying their hardest to do well in life. This guy was someone who needed to learn how to sell.

Think about the people you know who are not selling themselves or putting their best foot forward. What would be different for them if they did? How would your life change as well?

Selling yourself is about more than simply telling others how good you are. It’s also about showing others the value you can bring them. Things like being fit, being enthusiastic, taking care of yourself emotionally, taking advantage of opportunities presented to you, are all related to sales. Because you are paid by the market you are a product, and because you are a commodity you need to sell yourself and do so exceptionally well every chance you get.

A huge mistake a lot of people in the job market make is forgetting they are a product. Yes, you are a product. Everyone is a product. We are products because in order to make money and add value to the world we have to get people to ”buy in” to whatever services or skills we are offering. Regardless of the job you have, people need to like you and/or what you are personally selling if you are going to reach your full potential.

Selling yourself will really help you stand out in your job or in your job search. This means packaging yourself in the right manner. This is all about how you look and how you come across. In the most competitive jobs, employers can afford to be incredibly picky. If you go into a high paying investment bank, for example, you will see most new recruits are fit, sharp, and enthusiastic. Most investment banks can hire anyone they want, and they hire the people who make the best impression. This is how it is in a competitive industry such as this. In fact, one of the first times I met a group of investment bankers I thought they were male models – these people are very good at packaging themselves. What I want to see you do is make the most of who you are. This means packaging yourself to the best of your ability, always being at your best, and selling yourself.

I want you to develop your sales skillsand not be afraid-ever-to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life may be, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.

Finish What You Start

If you drive less than an hour outside of any major city in America, you will very quickly begin to see a different world. Typically, in the best neighborhoods and areas the lawns are well maintained and there is not much to see beyond trees, flowers, and shrubs. When you start getting into poorer neighborhoods outside of major cities, however, you begin to see things like automobiles on blocks rusting in front yards and the landscape looks a lot different. I’ve ridden through these neighborhoods with wealthy people from larger cities. At least once I heard someone say something like, “Why don’t they clean up that mess?”

I know exactly why they do not clean up that mess because I have some family members who live in the country who also collect vehicles on their front lawns, and behind their homes. They do not clean the mess up because they are in the middle of trying to restore and fix those various vehicles. There is a story to every car and truck that is in a state of disrepair. One needs a new transmission and will be fixed soon. Another needs some complicated engine work. Most of the cars were purchased on a whim and for cheap when they were already broken. Everyone believes they will one day fix the car or truck and when they do they are going to make some good money.

It is almost as if the unfinished car or truck gives the person who owns it value. It makes them feel as if they are important because they have some untapped wealth or power of which they’ve not taken advantage. Isn’t this how many of us are in our own lives? We have untapped power of which we’ve not taken advantage, and we’ve started things we have not completed.

One evening I was at a mall and I saw a poster advertising surgery for women to lose weight. I saw the most stunning before and after pictures. A woman was at least 350 pounds and so large you could hardly make out her face. After the surgery, she had lost about 200 pounds. Her transformation after losing the weight was amazing. She was very attractive, and she looked much happier. What was so striking to me was the difference in potential the two pictures represented. One woman looked like a supermodel and the other could not fit into clothing you would find in an average mall. Why would someone want to pass up the incredible potential they have in their life? This is only one example of potential.

People start diets and never finish.

Others tell themselves they will start exercising and never follow through.

Others start school and never finish.

Others plan to start a business and never follow through.

Others tell themselves they will start saving and never follow through.

Others start a novel and never follow through.

Others start taking the path to a better life in one of a million ways and never follow through.

In fact, I think following through and finishing what you start is one of the most important things you can do. Why don’t more people follow through? What is it about following through that scares so many people? Why don’t more of us finish what we start?

I know so many people with so much potential who could be incredible artists, lawyers, programmers, businesspeople, and more who never complete what they start. I know people who are chronically unemployed because they never finish what they start. I can think of whole groups of people I know of who are brilliant and talented but have lives of complete mediocrity because they never finish what they start.

Before you read any further, I want to make sure you are aware of one thing: the only thing separating the people with the most important and meaningful lives from those who have average lives or fail is that the latter fail to finish what they start.

When I was practicing law I remember being at a cocktail party with numerous partners and associates from the law firm where I worked. One of the associates was joking with the partner that the law firm had only made two partners in the entire 14 years it had been in Los Angeles. The partner looked at the associate and said, “That’s because you guys get too scared you will not make partner and always leave before we have a chance to nominate and vote on you.”

I thought that was an interesting statement because, regardless of the truth of it, the partner was saying that no one who worked there ever followed through by staying on the job. They got too scared and left. Perhaps those associates went somewhere they were positive they would make partner. The thought of all of those careers that were stalled by not following through was an interesting one to me. Maybe those associates like to say to themselves, “I would have made partner if I stayed around, but I did not like it so I left.” I do not know. However, what I do know is this situation is not much different from those people whose personal worth is tied to the fact that if they fixed up the cars on their front lawns they would have a lot of money. If only.

Once you go inside the homes with cars rusting in front of them on blocks you will see additional projects that are half finished. You will see a bathroom that is being remodeled, and that has been for a long time. For years the family may have been taking a shower in a bathroom where there is no tile on the floor. This epidemic is not just confined to rural areas, it also exists in cities. People do not collect cars on their front lawns in cities because the police and authorities in these areas do not allow it. Go inside many homes in cities and suburbs and you will also see a huge collection of unfinished projects.

I want to be clear about something with these unfinished projects: it is not just about the money. You can tile the average bathroom with inexpensive tile for less than $30. You can rebuild a transmission quite inexpensively if you know what you are doing. It just takes time.

My mother is someone who was always attracted to dreamers and she dated a lot of them while I was growing up. These were men who always told her tomorrow was going to be far different from today. They were on the verge of getting rich, they were going to build a house on the water, something was going to change and change soon. My mother had relatives all over Michigan who did things like drive trucks and work in factories in the country, but she had a small house in a nice suburb. The whole outlook of never finishing what you started came right into our house with these men who were dreamers. Most of them were contractors or were involved in contracting, and they would start one project after another and keep the projects going for years. One project might involve replacing the kitchen floor. A few hours would be dedicated to ripping up the floor on a Sunday and a few years would pass before a new floor was installed. For years we would get splinters and eat in a kitchen with no floor.

In the interim, they’d start numerous other projects. None of these would be completed either.

What was the meaning of all of these uncompleted projects? Why did so many things consistently not get done? What was happening?

The answers to these questions are complicated. However, I believe a large part of it is a desire not to be held accountable for the result. If the kitchen remodel is completed, we will have to call the result our kitchen. If all of the cars are fixed, we will have to explain why we do not have any money. If we finish college, we will have to be accountable for getting a high-paying job.

How many people have you met who have started a novel and never finished it? Almost everyone knows someone like this. Have they not finished the novel because they do not know how to write? Have they really had writers block for the past eight years? The legions of people with unfinished novels are legendary. I think so many of these novels go unfinished because if they did finish them, the person will have to come to terms with the fact they are not the next great novelist, or they are not as important as they would like to believe they are deep down.

Many of us want to represent ourselves as something other than what we are. Finishing what we start forces us to confront who we really are. So we are afraid to finish what we start. This brings me to you and your job. Do you finish what you start? I have supervised and worked with hundreds of people over my career, and the number one characteristic I have seen in the very best people is they finish what they start.

Finishing what you start is the most important thing you can do in any job. The people you are working for need to know whatever work you are given you will finish. Every week for the past several years I have had a series of teleconferences with various individual employees in my company. The purpose of these teleconferences is to solicit various ideas about our businesses, to go over projects that have been assigned, and to assign new projects. They are the most effective method I know for making our company strong, ensuring the continual promotion of the good people, and pressuring the average people in the company to “shape up or ship out.” These teleconferences are simple and there is really nothing to them but ensuring that people finish what they start. I believe that cycles of action and finishing what we start are the most important things that can happen in any company.

Several years ago, before I conducted these weekly teleconferences, I found most of the projects I assigned never ended up getting completed by certain people. It was a constant source of anger for me when things did not get completed and, after a while, I would simply give up on many people.

The typical teleconference goes like this: we start going over the assignments for the current week and explaining them. Then we go over the assignments for the previous weeks and the person with the assignments provides an update. The spreadsheet may look like this:

Assignment Weeks

Write a letter to all previous EC clients re: sale 7
Call Franchise Tax Board re: new tax ID number 7

Certain employees never have any task go more than one or two weeks, and others have their assignments open for months at a time. The people who complete tasks are the people who remain at the company and work there year after year. In the past I have hired people from other great companies, great schools, and people with a lot of “flash” who could never complete an assignment.

I have also hired others who did not look as good on paper but who always finished an assignment. Our company has no venture capital or borrowed money and must support itself with real revenues. In our company, the only thing that really matters is whether or not projects are completed. If a project is not completed, our company does not make any money. I believe the downfall of many companies begins when there are more people not finishing tasks than finishing them. There are people who are in the habit of not finishing what they start. The same employees who do not finish what they start are often the people who have the most doctors’ appointments and waste the most time during the day. They spend their time in a nonproductive zone. I do not judge people who do this because I am also guilty to a certain extent of not always finishing what I start. The fact of the matter is, however, the way to do the absolute best in your job and life is to make sure you always finish what you start no matter what.

When you do not finish what you start at work you are sending the message the task and the company are not important enough to you. In the business world, if you do enough of this people will stop taking you seriously. People do not have confidence in people who do not finish what they start. Companies do not promote people who do not finish what they start.

Everyone, regardless of who they are, must be accountable for finishing what they start. When Hillary Clinton was running for president, one of the images I could not stop thinking about was when she pledged to fix the healthcare program in the United States when her husband had been president years previously. After a great deal of effort, she failed completely. I saw her at a news conference and she said something to the effect that “I do not know why anyone even tries. You cannot get anything done with these people in Washington.”

To me this was a striking statement. It was striking because she had essentially “thrown in the towel” and given up. I wanted to see her succeed. After this sort of attitude, I felt it was very unlikely she could have really thrived in Washington. For example, when Al Gore lost the run for president he kept fighting for his belief in fixing the environment – even without public office. I wonder what Hillary Clinton would do with healthcare reform if she were not in office. My feeling is not a lot.

Finishing what you start says a lot about your character and leaves a huge and lasting impression on everyone around you. It is extremely important you are always finishing what you start. The results you will have in the world and the impact you will make will be in direct proportion to your ability to finish. Everyone can finish what they start if they really put their minds to it.

The rewards for completing what you start are huge. When you complete what you start, you learn about your capabilties. You learn lessons you can use to take the next step and grow.

I believe most people will do a lot more to avoid pain than they will to experience pleasure. For many people, completing a task may represent the potential for being criticized or judged for something, which is painful. People want to avoid pain. Success, however, could be compared to creating constant failure and forcing yourself to grow in response. If you finish a task and do not believe what you have done is good enough, then you will learn lessons that will drive you forward to do as good as possible the next time. The important thing is that you finished. Growth only happens when you are completing tasks.

Create Rules that Make You Feel Successful, Not Unsuccessful

I attended a private high school named Cranbrook-Kingswood. There was a lot of competition to get accepted. A couple of years before I started there, the founder of Little Caesar’s Pizza, Mike Ilitch, made a large donation to the school with instructions to build an indoor hockey rink. Mike loved hockey, and his son had also been very good at the sport. I believe he may have also “required” the school, as part of his gift, to have an exceptional hockey team.

The school went out and recruited the best hockey players from all over the United States and Canada and gave them free tuition, room and board and, most of all, admission to the high school. In order to ensure these same kids could graduate, the school created special classes for some of them in mathematics and other disciplines they could pass. I want to be clear that several of the hockey players were extremely intelligent and did not need these classes. However, many of them had come from backgrounds where athletics, and not academics, had always been stressed.

I first found out about this special program when I became friends with a kid from my neighborhood who played hockey for my school. He had been a star hockey player in his public high school his first year and was living a dream of sorts. He loved hockey and was doing fine in school, and the girls loved him. One day after practice, a scout from my high school approached him and told him if he wanted to attend private school and play hockey there he could do so and tuiton would be free. He accepted. My friend and his family were incredulous because they had known other kids who were far more intelligent who had applied and gone through a rigorous admissions process and were not able to get into the school.

My friend’s instant admission to the school was incredible to me because it took months for me to get into the school. I had to take tests, come in for interviews – even my parents were interviewed.

The guy I was friends with was kicked out of the school for bad grades after one year. He was a big handsome guy who the girls in his school really liked a lot. After getting kicked out he really struggled, however. His self esteem dropped and he migrated into aggressive partying. He also had several auto accidents while drunk. I think he even stopped playing hockey.

Before going to the school he’d been a star hockey player and was very happy with his life. After going to the school, he became very unhappy. The more I got to know him, the more I realized he was unhappy because he was not on the path to attend a prestigious college, was not smart enough to pass the classes in a private school, and, despite being a good hockey player and getting a scholarship to the school, he had failed. It was as if being in a good environment had taught him how to be unhappy with his life and who he was.

At Cranbrook-Kingswood he learned a bunch of rules about what success meant – ones completely different from the rules he’d known before attending the school. Rules like:

1. It is important to do well in school; and,
2. You are only successful if you are on the path to going to an important college.

In the environment from which he’d come, none of this mattered. All of a sudden, in this new environment, all of it mattered, and he felt bad about himself and self-destructed. Imagine having the rug pulled out from under you like that. It must have felt horrible. He went from all to nearly nothing just based on the rules he had learned.

Over the years I met many of these hockey players, and I came to believe that, for many of them, going to this school did not serve them well. While they could have been extremely happy in most environments, going to a school where academics and getting into college were stressed so much set them up for feeling badly about themselves. They learned that to be successful, you need to do well in school and not in hockey. I am not sure how well these rules served them. I think they learned to think about themselves in a way that was not empowering.

As the head of a legal recruiting firm, I used to spend several hours a day reviewing resumes of attorneys who were applying for jobs for which our firm was recruiting. In addition, I would take phone call after phone call from these same attorneys about various jobs and their attempts to get a position. Sometimes these attorneys would show up in our office and want to talk about getting a job.

The hopes and dreams of attorneys are something I have come to understand quite well. No matter if the attorney is in law school, has been practicing several years, or is a partner in a large law firm, there are certain “rules” most attorneys measure themselves by that tell them if they are successful or not. These rules most often involve:

1. The size of the firm they are working at.
2. How prestigious this firm is considered by the legal community.
3. How much money their firm is paying relative to other firms.
4. The quality of law schools and pedigrees the attorneys have at the firm for which they’re working.
5. After several years, whether or not they are a partner in a prestigious law firm.
6. When they are a partner in a law firm, whether or not they have a lot of business.

This is, of course, not the rule for every attorney but it is for most of them. For the most part, attorneys judge how successful they are based on how they stack up under this criterion.

One of the hardest things about going to a top law school is the competition inside these schools is quite intense for the top jobs. Every year students in these schools compete for the jobs paying the most at the largest law firms. At the top law schools a higher percentage of the students get the jobs with the highest paid and best firms than at the lower ranked law schools.

While I do not know the exact numbers, I believe over 85% of the law students graduating each year will not get the jobs with large law firms that pay top market salaries. Instead, they get jobs (if they get one) in smaller law firms that pay 50% or less than what the jobs pay in the largest, and most prestigious law firms. In the smaller law firms the work is most often for smaller and less prestigious companies, as well. Nevertheless, the attorneys inside these law firms are doing work that is essentially no different than in the largest law firms.

I have been in the legal recruiting industry for a long time. What I have noticed is the attorneys from the best law schools are always governing their lives and their career with the following rule: “I will not be successful unless I am practicing law with a large law firm.” In addition, attorneys with small law firms who went to bad law schools spend a lot of effort trying to get into the larger law firms. They, too, do not feel successful unless they are practicing law with a large law firm. Somewhere along the line they picked up the “rule” that they will not be successful until they are working in a large law firm.

Most legal recruiters around the United States spend their time trying to help attorneys realize the dream of working in a large law firm or remaining employed in a large law firm environment. Attorneys panic when they feel they may not be able to remain employed in a large law firm. Because the “rules” most attorneys have about their careers and lives require them to be in a large law firm, many of them are extremely unhappy when they are not doing so. They literally use this rule to set themselves up for lifelong unhappiness.

It’s crazy. Instead of being happy practicing law, a lot of attorneys spend their career feeling like they have failed. You need to have rules for your life and career that empower you.

I try to spend my time around people who are the happiest. What I have noticed is the people who are the happiest have the fewest rules about the way things should be, and who they should be. If you ask yourself what it takes to be successful you may say:

1. I need this kind of car.
2. I want this sort of job.
3. I want this sort of house.
4. I want this sort of mate (or, for many people, I want my mate to be a certain way).

These are the rules many people require of themselves for being happy and feeling successful.

Other people may just tell themselves they will be successful and happy as long as they are alive.

This is the most amazing thing. Who do you think is happier? The person who is happiest is the person with the easiest rules to meet and the least stringent rules.

You determine your level of happiness and success based on the rules you set for yourself. If you set rules which are difficult to meet and you will never meet, you will experience lots of pain. If you set rules for yourself rules that are easy to meet you will experience lots of fulfillment. It is up to you what you do with your rules. You are in complete control of how you feel about yourself and whether or not you believe you are successful.

My definition of success requires that I experience very little pain and tons of pleasure. I set rules which empower me rather than hurt me. I set high standards for myself, but require very few rules in order to be happy. People who feel the most successful typically have the fewest rules.

We are constantly asking ourselves the question “What does this mean?” and do this on a daily basis. If we see someone smile at us, we assume they are nice and friendly. If we see someone grimace at us, we assume they do not like us. We have rules for our environments and how to interpret the things happening all around us. The rules we formulate about the world and our surroundings have a giant impact on how we feel. In the case of the hockey player, he learned rules that suddenly cast a shadow over what was a very happy and successful life. Have you allowed rules to do this to you?

What I want for you is to use rules to make yourself happy. I want you to have fewer rules and make success something you are always feeling, instead of constantly needing to be something different. The more success you feel, the more good things will come your way. Like attracts like. You need to feel good about yourself and your life, and the more of this you feel, the more you will attract. The more negative you feel, the more negativity you will attract.

When I look around me, I see so many people who do not allow themselves to be happy due to the rules they set for themselves.

I live in a large city and, when I go to small towns, people tell me they are unhappy and wished they lived somewhere else. When I meet people who went to bad schools, they tell me they wish they had gone to better schools. I used to hire lots of writers in our offices in Los Angeles who had experience in the entertainment industry. I stopped doing this long ago because they all felt lousy about themselves and never gave their work their all. They had “rules” that said they were only successful and doing well if they were selling huge screenplays to major motion picture studios. Anything less was failure. Consequently, they never gave the job with our company their all.

Your rules for what it means to be successful will largely control how you feel about yourself and your job. One of the worst things that can happen to someone is to be in an atmosphere where they are surrounded by the most successful people imaginable when they are not the same way. I remember once speaking with a man who had grown up, been friends with, and gone to school with a couple of people who ended up becoming very famous—one was a United States Senator, the other was a governor of a huge state, and the other was the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. This person had never been anywhere near as successful as these people, but he still had a good career. How do you think this person felt about himself? Instead of feeling like he had a good career, he could only compare himself with the people he knew who had become incredibly successful. He felt like a failure his entire life. What a lousy rule to have for ourselves.

What has to happen for you to feel successful?

Rules control so much. They literally control our sanity and how we feel about ourselves on a daily basis. Every upset you have ever had in your life with another person is probably due to them violating some rule you had about such and such, or vice versa.

I have very few, if any arguments, with my wife about anything. However, if she gets excited while talking about something while eating, she will often speak while chewing. When I was growing up my mother used to go ballistic and get incredibly angry with me if I opened my mouth and spoke while chewing food. She would call it a sign of disrespect and, in one case, I think she actually made me sit next to the dog on the floor while eating as punishment. In fact, my mom was so angry, it was as if I had committed a crime.

Years later, I find myself also getting angry when I see people I am close to eating with their mouths open. I take it as a sign of disrespect, among other things. I want to be clear that I know this is completely irrational. The only reason I am reacting this way is because of the rules I learned when I was younger. Here I am, decades later, having a happy meal with my wife and suddenly this rule about the way things should be comes up and prevents me from having a good time. Do you have any rules which are impacting your life like this? I bet you do.

Make the rules you have for your life and your career empower you. Make your rules represent success and not failure. You need to feel good about this life and your life. Work hard and enjoy your life. Do not allow your rules to hold you back.

Learn from Every Experience You Have Ever Had

One of the greatest things you can do for yourself is to learn from every single experience you have ever had. Each and every day you are having experiences, and you choose what to do with them. The wisest people are the ones who see every experience as an opportunity to learn. Smart people can transform even the smallest experiences into lessons that drive them to become better at everything they undertake in the future. You, too, can learn from your experiences and, in so doing, benefit tremendously.

In every experience, there are things that did and did not work for you. Your objective is to learn from what happened. The more you learn from your experiences, the more effective you will be at whatever you do in your career and life.

Think back on your career: there are things that have happened from which you can still learn. What lessons can you use to drive yourself forward? How can you get better at what you want to do now?

Every experience, no matter how trivial, offers a chance for you to learn. I’d like to tell you a story about just such an experience of mine and how I shaped my life by learning from it.

Years ago, when I was in college and about 19 years old, I was sitting in the television room of my dorm at the University of Chicago. As I sat there with a friend of mine, Danny Weisberg, a commercial came on for a real estate seminar led by a man named Tom Vu. In the 30-minute commercial, Tom Vu was shown driving around in fancy cars and on boats with beautiful women while talking about his real estate seminar.

As I watched this commercial with Danny, I was incredulous when, near the end of the commercial, Tom Vu said something to the effect of:

“I came to the United States from Vietnam with no money, and the only job I could get was as a man who refilled peoples’ water glasses in a country club. One day, a very rich man came into the country club and sat down at a table. I asked him to tell me the secret to his success and he told me it came from only three words. He whispered them into my ear. Those three words changed my life!”

“All this I got from three words. Come to my free informational seminar and I will teach you the three words,” said Vu.

At 19, there was nothing that Danny and I wanted more than to be surrounded by beautiful women, drive fast cars, and live in mansions. Therefore, we decided we would get up early on a Saturday morning and take the ‘L’ train from Hyde Park all the way to the downtown Chicago Hilton to see Tom Vu’s free seminar. Getting up early the morning after a Friday night party was something that I usually never did in college – not even for an exam! In the spirit of fun, however, we decided we would get up early and go see Tom Vu that weekend.

When we arrived at the Hilton, we were sitting next to a single mother who had brought two children no more than three years old with her. I noticed the children were dirty. The single mother told us how she hoped this would be a profound experience. We also sat near two men who appeared to have come to watch Tom Vu in order to heckle him. The two men had beers in their hands, despite the fact that it was still morning. There were literally thousands of people crowded into the Hilton ballroom for the Vu seminar. There were so many people, in fact, the only place we could get seats was at the very back of the ballroom, at least 30 or 40 yards away from the stage. But that is exactly where we should have been.

About 15 minutes after the seminar was scheduled to start, Tom Vu entered the back of the banquet hall in a bathrobe and was followed by a woman who started massaging his neck. She was saying stuff to him like “You can do this!” and “You control your future!” and other motivational encouragements. After a few minutes of this, some music started and she pulled off Tom’s bathrobe, revealing a business suit he was wearing. Tom Vu then rushed to the front of the stage to a standing ovation.

The men drinking next to us roared with laughter. The woman with the children put down one child so she could stand and clap.

Over the next hour or so, Tom Vu told the audience that if they paid him a couple thousand dollars, he would teach them how to buy distressed real estate and resell it at a profit. At the end of this sales pitch, Tom Vu got slightly teary-eyed and said:

“Now, does everyone want to hear those three words?”

The crowd roared and stamped their feet.

“Don’t give up!” Tom shouted. “The three words are don’t give up!”

I must admit I was really swept up in the passion of that moment. Despite the ethical considerations of whatever Tom Vu’s business practices were, I realized right then and there that there was a huge lesson in those three simple words. One should never give up.

Giving up was the greatest mistake one could make. If you gave up, you almost certainly welcomed failure.

Hearing those words that day had an immediate impact on me. I realized I had gotten up early in the morning to come see Tom Vu and had wasted my time listening to him, because I certainly could not afford to go to his paid seminar. So, I told myself that I would at least learn from this piece of career advice, and would never give up in anything I did.

And I have refused to ever give up. I believe this particular lesson has not only served me well, it’s profoundly altered the course of my life. Let me tell you how.

When I was in college, I wanted to go to law school. In order to be accepted by the best law schools, I knew I would need to get a near perfect score on the law school admissions test (LSAT). I studied for this test but, no matter how hard I studied, I could never get even close to a perfect score. Therefore, I kept delaying the test over and over again. I delayed it until December of my third year of college. By the time I finally scheduled the real test, I had taken enough practice tests to assess how well I would do.

I got sick just before taking the test. I cancelled my scores and retook the test in March of that year. I still did not do as well as I had hoped. By the time I got my results, almost all the law schools had accepted students for that year, and they told me I had simply taken the test too late. Notwithstanding this, some schools told me they would let me know later in the summer if they had an opening for me.

In considering this, I did everything within my power to ensure I did not give up on the schools that told me there still might be hope. I was remembering the lesson I learned from Tom Vu. I wrote, I called, and I had teachers and others write on my behalf. I graduated from college knowing there was very little hope I would go to law school and, instead, I decided I would probably stick with my then current life as a pavement contractor.

Working in the asphalt business was extremely hard work. Many people who do this kind of work get cancer or die very young because of the hazardous chemicals involved. For example, I was working with hot tar, which gives off gaseous fumes that stick inside your lungs. I would often get so burned from chemicals that I would have to peel a layer of my skin off of my arms or feet.

As the summer progressed, I continued to drop short notes to the law schools with whom I was still corresponding. However, I still needed to make a living, so I continued building up my asphalt business. My friends were all contractors and I was associating and spending my life entirely with people who used their hands to make a living. I was enjoying my life.

One night I was out with another contractor and my girlfriend, having pizza and beer. When I returned home there were a few messages on my answering machine. I checked the first message and it was from someone who told me he’d noticed I was becoming very busy with my asphalt business, and that he and “other people he knew” wanted to meet with me. It was a person I’d heard about over the years. Essentially, he was with the mafia and he was demanding I pay money in order to operate in a certain area of Detroit. It might have been a prank call, but I doubted it. I think back on that message to this day because it was a sign of where my life was going. The moment was truly a crossroads because the next message was from a law school administrator, telling me classes would be starting in two days and, if I wanted to attend, I was welcome.

I chose to go to law school.

I’m not sure if I ever would have gotten into law school had I not learned the lesson of not giving up from Tom Vu. I kept studying for the LSAT even when I was not doing as well as I wanted. I took it again after I cancelled my score. I kept writing law schools even after not getting accepted. In short, I did not give up, even after my life started going in another direction.

Had I been six months further into my asphalt business, it might very well have been impossible to go back to life as a student. I would have had more trucks, more equipment, more employees – my life might have turned out much different. Who knows?

I believe taking so much away from the single lesson of Tom Vu made a huge difference in the quality of my life. My first job after law school was one of the first times I had ever set foot in an office. I could not believe people got paid to work indoors and read and write! My entire working world up until that point had been hard and grueling manual labor.

There are numerous moments in your own life from which you can choose to learn a lesson, or not. Your own experiences present a wealth of learning opportunities on which you can build. I chose to learn from Tom Vu that day because I had invested so much time in the preliminary seminar. What can you learn from your past?

Learning from your past provides you with a solid and rich foundation for your future. You can learn from your past every day, and each day can provide a better experience for your future. Your past and its lessons set the stage for what you can do differently tomorrow. There is so much available that can enrich your future. Learn from your past and enjoy a happy future.

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 remarkable placements I ever made as a recruiter. This placement only happened due to the power of questions. Several years ago I had an attorney candidate from Asia who had managed to get only one interview in the United States. He desperately wanted to move to the United States, and the firm he had an interview with was the only firm in the country that did the sort of legal work in which he specialized. The man went into the firm on a Friday and interviewed for a full day. At the end of the day, I received a call from the hiring partner, who informed me the man had interviewed badly. He was almost 100 percent confident the candidate would not receive an offer.

When I heard this news, obviously I was very disappointed for my candidate. At the time, and for several months prior to this, I had successfully placed all of my candidates. I did this by always asking myself the following question:

“What has to happen for this person to get a job?”

When I hung up the phone with the hiring partner, I knew I had to act quickly to secure my candidate an offer. He was scheduled to fly back to Asia at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. I can tell you how most recruiters and other people would have dealt with this news: they would have gotten depressed, feeling as if their candidate had failed. Essentially, they would have told the candidate to have a nice life and would have then forgotten about the person entirely.

So I asked myself that golden question: “What has to happen for this person to get a job?”

This man had shown up for his interview dressed in a nice suit, looking very sharp, and had conducted himself with the utmost professionalism in his series of interviews. The firm did not know much about him personally. He lived in a small, 300 square foot apartment with his pregnant wife. He took a train two hours each way to work in the morning. He desperately wanted to work and live in the United States. This law firm was his only shot. If he did not get this job, he would probably have an extremely difficult time ever working in the United States.

When I asked myself what needed to happen for him to get the job, I realized he needed to pull out all the stops. He needed to let the firm know about his character beyond his professional demeanor. He needed to let them know about his hopes and dreams. He needed to make the firm understand they were the only thing stopping him from living in the United States. He needed to let them know about how he lived, about his dedication to his work, and about everything he could do to help them. This candidate needed to make an emotional connection so strong the firm would feel like they needed to hire him at all costs.

I got up at 7 a.m. on Saturday, called the candidate, and told him he needed to immediately come over to my office. He was groggy and had been out with his friends late the night before. He did not want to come to my office but I told him how important it was.

When he got into the office, I did not tell him what I knew about him not getting the job. I did not want him to feel negative. I sat down with him for at least an hour and asked him questions like:

“What are the best things about you the firm does not know?”

“How can you contribute to the firm in ways they do not yet know about?”

“What makes you special?”

“Why are you the best person for the job?”

“What are the best things your previous employers have said about you?”

We started working around 9 a.m. that morning, and he started writing a letter to each person with whom he’d interviewed. The first letters he wrote were short and did not accomplish much. By 6 p.m. the letters started getting longer and more emotional. By midnight the letters were excellent. By 1 a.m. the letters were strong enough and touched so many emotional nerves they brought tears to my eyes.

Part of this candidate’s “pitch” was that he had contacts with Japanese clients. I asked myself: “What can I do in this presentation to drive home this candidate’s point that he has contacts with Japanese clients? What can I do beyond what is in the letters?”

We went down to a Japanese hotel in Los Angeles, the New Otani, in the middle of the night to fax the letters to the firm. I wanted the firm to think he was working there and meeting with Japanese clients.  We spent over $200 sending faxes in the middle of the night from the New Otani. Then we took printed letters down to the firm’s security desk to ensure they were delivered to the partners of the firm first thing on Monday morning. My candidate barely ended up making his flight back to Japan.

On Monday morning the partners received the letters. From what I later heard, the letters were so effective that a couple of the people who read them cried. They were so blown away they made the candidate an offer. The firm spent tens of thousands of dollars moving him to the United States. The candidate is living here and is still practicing law today.

Without me asking the candidate the right questions, this never would have happened.

If you recently lost your job, there are several things you can do. One thing you can do is feel bad about yourself and pout. This is what most people do. They think negative thoughts and dwell upon this negative energy and stay depressed. Not much ends up happening for some time.

The alternative is to ask yourself questions like these:

“What can I learn from the experience of losing my job?”

“Why am I going to be a better person in the future, now that I have lost my job?”

“How can I find an even better job than the one I lost?”

You need to ask yourself questions that empower you and make you stronger. The answers to these questions will be some of the best career advice you will ever receive. Questions have a tremendous amount of power.

In order for you to get the job you want, the raise you want, and to reach the level of achievement you are seeking, you need to learn to make the best use of the thoughts that are crossing your mind.

When you are interviewing for a job, ask yourself questions like:

“What sort of answers to this question would help me get this job?”

“What was I like the last time I was at my best?”

“How can I convey my enthusiasm for this job?”

A year or so ago I started reading about meditation. I learned much of the goal of meditation is to balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The world and the objects in it have traditionally been defined by opposites:

-Male and female

-Light and dark

-Off and on

-Left and right

-Hot and cold

Our brains work this way, too. When we look at objects, we traditionally look for commonality, but also differences. It is the differences we see that most psychologists and others believe lead to our unhappiness and feelings of alienation from the world. We look for opposites.

The goal of meditation is to eliminate the distinctions we see as opposites in the mind and see how everything is connected as one. Over time, scientists who have studied those who meditate have discovered that the practice of meditation essentially balances the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

When you ask yourself questions, you need to ask questions based on finding bonds between you and others. Do not ask questions about why things are separate. The more you get in the habit of finding bonds of similarities and not differences, the happier you will be.

I urge you to look at every situation as an opportunity to ask yourself an empowering question. Empowering questions push us to grow. I want you to grow, and I want you to have the kind of career and life you want and deserve.

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 losing their jobs, or their careers quickly fade into obscurity. When you find yourself in a position that allows you greater comfort, security, you have an outstanding opportunity for further growth. Use this opportunity wisely. People are put in positions of responsibility and given higher incomes because they have shown growth in their current position. You never want to stop growing.

I would like to explain to you a pattern I have seen within my own companies and also among people I have known and worked with in the past as a legal recruiter.

I have worked with many people who have gone to top schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. The talent you need to exhibit to get into schools like these is phenomenal. You need to be academically gifted and have a long history of very high-level achievements. You also need to show talent in areas other than academics. People who attend top tier schools also have to work exceptionally hard to earn the academic marks and other honors needed to succeed once they are accepted.

What ends up happening to people who attend these elite schools is very interesting to me. A good many continue to work hard once accepted, while others think just because they were accepted, that’s good enough. The students who continue to work hard ultimately crush these students.

In the legal field, most attorneys in the top law firms worked hard in college and continued to work extremely hard in law school as well. Their hard work landed them positions in prestigious law firms. The competition to get a job with a prestigious law firm is even more challenging than what one must face to get into a prestigious college or law school.

Once in these prestigious firms, many of the new attorneys are already exhausted from having worked so hard in law school and college. Many believe that, because of their past achievements, they can now rest on their laurels. These new attorneys then end up losing their jobs very quickly, and many even leave the practice of law forever due to this experience.

My career advice is to never let your guard down. Whatever you have done in the past has only given you the right to compete on the playing field you are on now. No one cares about your past successes. If you do not perform your best, you will become expendable.

I have witnessed a very familiar pattern in the work world. People get a job based on their enthusiasm, past employment record, and other related factors. Once hired, they work extremely hard to earn praise and recognition. They are given increased responsibility at the company, more and more tasks, and people to supervise. As these people get more and more responsibility, the company traditionally begins to watch them less closely. At this point, these people have two choices:

-Step up their efforts and keep improving, or,

-Begin to coast and let others do the work, keep things the same as they are, relax, buy new things, take more vacations, and take time off.

The latter is what probably 50 percent of people do once they reach a certain stage or accomplish a certain goal in their careers. In my career I have seen far too many go this direction. What ends up happening when the person starts coasting is generally one of two things: one, the company fires them, or two, the company puts pressure on them to improve, and the person simply decides to leave, believing their status does not merit this sort of treatment.

Is this you?

This happens because too many people get too comfortable. You always need to be on your toes with any job.

Look at the headlines in the paper each day, and you will see business tycoons in their 80s and 90s who are winning and losing fortunes. They are still working. You will read about other prominent individuals challenging themselves in different ways. Ted Turner became famous for racing sailboats all around the world. Richard Branson has become known for trying to set records in balloons. These are some of the most successful men in the world. They are not sitting on a beach relaxing. They are challenging themselves in every way they possibly can. They challenge themselves in their work, and outside of work.

I live in Malibu, California. Up and down the 26 miles of coastline are some of the most magnificent homes you can imagine, some right on the beach. Some of these houses sell for $50 million or more. Some of the richest and most famous people in the world live in Malibu.

What is so remarkable about these houses is the fact most of them are empty almost every day of the year. People do visit these houses but, for the most part, the largest and most expensive of the houses do not have families in them year-round and their owners only drop in occasionally.

The owners rarely visit their multi-million dollar houses, but not because the properties are insignificant to them. The reason these people don’t visit their houses is because they simply do not have the time. They are always working. They enjoy their houses only for short periods of time and then they are back to work.

The most successful people do not allow themselves to slow down and get too comfortable. Using the old analogy of the world as a jungle, I leave you with this closing thought: animals, fish, and birds are always on the move. Whenever a lion is hunting, he looks for the weakest animal in the herd – the one that is not moving.

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 or gotten to know him very well. I had written a paper for him and was very enthusiastic about it. I called him on the telephone to discuss the paper and we spoke for perhaps 15 minutes about it. Saul knew I was enthusiastic about the paper. It was a good paper, too – in my opinion. Even before it’d been graded I’d sent it to various publications, and it was accepted prior to the end of the class.

At the end of the discussion, I asked him:

“What sort of grade do you think my paper is going to get?”

“I knew you were going to ask that,” he said.

“How did you know I was going to ask that?” I asked.

“Because you are more concerned about what others think of your work than what you think of it. You care too much about what others think. The grade is unimportant.”

I thought about this statement a great deal at the time, and was not sure I understood it, but I knew he was on to something. I have thought about this statement again and again over the years. After more than a decade of puzzling over it, I think I finally realize the depth of what he was saying.

Saul was saying that you need to be focused on your work, and not consumed by what others think about it. You can only do great things and achieve great success when you do not care what others think. You need to follow your heart and do what you think is right. You need to be loyal to exactly what you want to do.

Other people don’t know what makes you tick and makes you happy. Other people are more likely to criticize you than praise you. Other people often have their own agendas that involve you not following your dreams.

It is extremely important to follow your dreams and pursue what you want to do. I would like to tell you a quick story about how I got into the business I am in today.

Several years ago I was a practicing attorney and I did not like the work at all. When I gave notice and quit the law firm, I did so knowing that law was simply not what I wanted to pursue any longer. My family was very proud of me for being an attorney, and all of my friends and the people I knew were also attorneys. I knew very well if I left the practice of law I would lose a great deal. In addition to losing a way of life, I would be losing a great deal of income. I had contemplated not practicing law for months and months, and everyone around me was very quick to offer the opinion that leaving would be a huge mistake. I struggled internally for quite a long time with this decision.

When I discovered the practice of recruiting, I knew deep down this was something I wanted to pursue. It clicked with me and it was something I absolutely loved. I knew I would be good at it. My family, significant other, and everyone around me told me making this career change would be insane. When I went out to buy a computer to start the business, a family member was with me and told me such a purchase was reckless and irresponsible. I started my business with no plan and no idea what would happen. I did it only when I realized I had to listen to myself in order to be happy. I had to do what was most important to me.

Inside of you, and inside of each of us, is the person you want to be. This person is not controlled by what others think, and is allowed to come out and be extremely happy. It is my life and career advice to let that person “come out.” However, we are so programmed by what others think we are often afraid to be who we really want to be.

While I am not gay, I am moved by gay people who are able to come out and be themselves, despite the prejudices of society. I think it is extremely important for people to be exactly who they want to be without caving in to the influence of others. There are probably millions of people in the United States who are gay but who are afraid to come out and be themselves. These people may even marry members of the opposite sex and try to build lives as straight people, all the while not being who they really are. Imagine the pain such people must feel.

Do not let this happen to you. You need to be the person you want to be in your life and in your career. So many people go through life never being who they want to be or doing what they want to do.

Job searching is among the most important activities in your life because it is when you get the chance to discover exactly who you want to be. I encourage you to do this now!

Come out and be the person you want to be, and are capable of being. You do not need to blame people, circumstances, or your environment for liking, or disliking, your job and your life. Instead, you need to take charge of being exactly who you want to be and be that person. Do this without worrying about what other people think.

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 put out negativity to others, that energy is likely to come back from others in the form of their negative reaction to you. Similarly, if you receive negative energy from someone, you are likely to look for a means to put that negative energy back on him or her.

The things that happened in employment cases always amazed me when I was an attorney. Almost 99 percent of the time the person who’d been fired had done something to warrant it, and was also generally incompetent. Nevertheless, after being fired, the person filed a suit of some sort. In these cases, both sides are exchanging negative energy. The employer is angry over poor performance and fires the worker. The worker is angry over getting fired and comes back with a lawsuit. This is a simple case of negative energy being exchanged and manifesting itself as more negativity – equal and opposing reactions.

In my own experience, when someone has been fired, they typically lash out against their new employer, regardless of the circumstances, and quit within a year or two. In this case the equal and opposing reactions have continued as the employee has attempted to move forward with a new job. The problem in this case, however, is the employee has moved forward physically, but is emotionally stuck in a negative place.

According to Dr. Pokharna, the best response to negative energy is to simply allow it to flow through you – and then go elsewhere. Do not react to the negative energy at all. This is the strongest possible reaction you can have. By not reacting on a conscious or unconscious level, you are not acknowledging or empowering the negativity.

Dr. Pokharna also said in the field of bio-physics, studies show people who think angry and negative thoughts can actually alter the paths of their neurons and the makeup of their brains. This may even affect them on the genetic level.

In order to be successful and to reach your maximum potential, the best thing you can do is allow the negativity of others to simply pass right through you. If you do not react, many times their negativity may actually come right back to them.

Negative energy is something we often try to meet with additional negative energy. You should instead concentrate on maintaining a clear mind at all times, and look for the positive in each personal interaction. The ability to keep your mind focused on the positive will have far-reaching implications for your career, and will benefit you greatly.

Seize Every Opportunity That Comes Your Way

Around 5:30 p.m. one April day, I was walking down a hall in the University of Virginia Law School with a classmate. The school was pretty much abandoned, but we noticed a large meeting taking place in one of the classrooms. I didn’t know it then, but this meeting would be something that would permanently change the course of my life:

-It would determine my first and second jobs after law school.

-It would determine where I would live.

-I would meet my wife because of it.

-I would become the person I am today because of it.

You see, opportunity is like that. It comes out of nowhere sometimes. You need to be ready for that opportunity, and to seize it when it comes. Taking one simple step can make all the difference.

Your life and career begin with action. Nothing happens until you take action.

“Let’s check out what this is,” I said. I was bored and did not really feel like studying at the time. We went in to see what was going on and took a seat. The people in the meeting seemed very excited about something.

It was an annual election for a student group called The Law and Graduate Republicans. I had never been politically active, but as we got settled I began enjoying some of the banter. The people seemed to be taking this event seriously, and I could tell some had been coming to these meetings for a long time. This was my first meeting, and I’d only stumbled upon it.

The current president of the group began requesting nominations. There were positions for secretary, vice president, and president. He requested nominations for secretary, and as a joke, the guy I came with nominated me.

“I second that!” stated one guy in the audience. I had never met him and I am sure he did not know who I was.

I was on the ballot. The whole thing was so funny I could not stand it. I literally knew nothing about the organization.

I was competing against a few other people and did not even have a very good idea of what Republicans stood for. The first speaker made a five-minute speech. I was close to leaving, but decided to push through and give it a go. When it was my turn, I stood up and gave my speech. I am not sure what it was about. It probably had something to do with serving our country in a small community to assist the whole. I remember it was an average speech, though.

The important thing is that I gave the speech. I did my best with the opportunity presented to me.

To my astonishment, I ended up winning the election. The strangest thing happened next. I nominated the guy I was with for vice president – and he won as well! I think he had to compete against even more people.

When we were walking out of the meeting he said, “Now we need to find a Democrat meeting.”

It was an interesting year being the secretary of the Law and Graduate Republican Club. I still remember the late night call from the president, during which he cried over the phone about the death of Richard Nixon. I remember the organization’s events and the following year’s election. It was a very good experience.

During my year as secretary of the Republican Club, I ended up getting a federal clerkship with a Republican judge in Michigan. This judge was extremely Republican, and I am almost 100 percent confident I would not have gotten this prestigious job had I not had the Republican Club on my résumé. During my service to this judge, I got a job with a California firm. At the time, this firm only hired people who clerked for judges. Because of this, I moved to California. Once there, I got my second job from a very active Republican woman, and this job led me directly to what I am doing now.

To this day, I am still not very political. The point I am trying to make, however, is sometimes the strangest things can lead to advancement, which often come through small opportunities. It’s almost as if the universe puts opportunities where you least expect them, and if you take advantage of them, great. If not, that is fine, too. I believe opportunity appears to each of us in almost equal ways; the only difference is what we do with it.

I want to write a little bit more about the treatment of opportunity, where it comes from, and what to do with it, because I have seen many people drop the ball when it comes to opportunity. There is much opportunity, but so few people take advantage of it. There is a pervasive attitude in society that prevents people from making the most of opportunities.

Some people presented with the opportunity to work with a group like the Law and Graduate Republicans might think to themselves, “Why would I want to work for this organization for free?” They might think they were somehow being tricked into doing something for free. Even though I was not active politically, I knew at the time working for this organization could likely open up future doors for me. I knew one opportunity could lead to another opportunity. You need to look at everything like this.

You can also create opportunity for yourself by creating opportunity for others. I was having dinner once with our general counsel (our in-house lawyer), and I started to realize the way opportunity works: your past actions create future opportunity. Our general counsel had gone out of his way to get a good friend a job 12 years previously. His friend ultimately got a job with our company. After this, she did everything within her power to get him a job here, too. Opportunities you create for others can bring opportunity back to you as well.

You never know when opportunity will present itself. You need to be prepared when it does. If you are looking for a job, your next opportunity could appear at Starbucks, where you might meet the CEO of a large corporation. Your next opportunity could appear in a yoga class or on a train. Opportunity appears to people who are ready to grab it. The wonderful thing about this world, and its rules, is that it provides equal opportunity to all of us. It is simply what we do with it that matters.

Because I take my role of advising you on the best ways to get a job seriously, I constantly study successful people and how they become that way. I believe the lessons I learn can translate into lessons to share with you and make you more successful as well. One of the men I have studied is Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world.

I think about successful people from the perspective that you too can be as successful if you follow certain rules. Success leaves clues.

Recently, I read two books about Warren Buffett and both books point to the fact that Buffett learned a certain method of investing from Benjamin Graham at Columbia University, while taking business classes in the 1930s. After Columbia, Buffett was so impressed with Graham he went to work for him on Wall Street, until Graham retired. Buffett returned to his Omaha home and continued investing and fine-tuning Graham’s investment methodology. The way Buffett invests today is largely influenced by the investment techniques he learned from Graham.

I wonder how many other students took Graham’s classes and how many were enterprising enough to grab his method of stock market evaluation. And out of the people who understood Graham, how many were enterprising enough to work for Graham and learn more? And out of those students who went to work for Graham, how many took this methodology and held on to it for their entire career?

My feeling is Buffett is probably the only one.

Imagine this scenario: Buffett is sitting in a class with Graham at Columbia. Graham spends the entire semester lecturing about this or that, and one day he lectures about his investment methodology. Perhaps the lecture is no more than 45 minutes. Buffett is there in the classroom with other students, who are probably bored or worrying about other things. Buffett pays attention and realizes those 45 minutes could change the course of his life. Perhaps this is how the opportunity presented itself to Buffett – I do not know. What I do know, however, is Buffett took advantage of the opportunity presented through Graham’s teachings, and I am confident that most, if not all, of Graham’s other students did not.

This is how opportunity works. You should look at the world as a source of continual opportunity. Opportunity comes when you are ready for it and it is up to you to take advantage of it. Be ready.

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