• They do not believe they can achieve everything they want to achieve in their careers
• They do not believe that they can win various fights and so they back down and never fight
• They do not believe they are qualified for a job so they never apply
• They do not believe they have a good enough education so they set the bar low for themselves
• They do not believe they have enough experience so they do not set their sights high
• They believe others are better than them and resign themselves to this
• They believe so many things about what they are capable of that limit them their entire lives and careers

I want to be very, very clear with you that the problem of you becoming everything you want to be is your problem, and it is all in your mind.  You are preventing yourself from being the person you are capable of being due to all sorts of limiting beliefs that are holding you back.  If you believe you are capable of being something, you can do it.  If you do not believe you are capable, then you probably cannot do it.  You are in charge of your mind.  The power to be, do and become who you want to be is all in your mind.  You need to take control of your mind and become and be the person you want to become and be.  It is as simple as that. In my garage at home, I have what is called a “sensory deprivation tank.”  Essentially, this tank is filled with salt water that I can go into and meditate in.  The entire tank is dark, and when I am inside of it, I cannot hear anything.  My body floats, and I can think through various issues I am dealing with.  People may think this is weird or strange, but I do not care.  All I know is that meditation is something that has benefited me, and I continually do things to help me become a better person.  I do not think I would have have been able to become who I am today  without meditation.  There is nothing more important to me, personally, than making sure I control limiting thoughts in my mind and this is why I go into this tank to meditate.  I have been doing this for some time. Everyone has an incredible number of limiting thoughts that they are contending with.  There is no doubt you do as well. I am sure there are countless people out there who have told you that you are incapable of doing this or that, that you should only try this or that, and more.  You need to banish this sort of thinking from your mind.  This sort of thinking does not help you one bit.  In fact, it is this sort of thinking that will keep you in a state where you are not reaching your potential for the rest of your life.  That’s right.  Limiting thinking will keep you in a state of not reaching your goals for the rest of your life. Every few months, something unusual happens in my office.  I will be sitting in my office and the receptionist will come into my office and announce: “There is someone here to see you.  They understand they do not have an appointment, but they apparently believe it is important that they speak with you.” I will then send the secretary scurrying out to get more information and will find that the person sitting in the lobby is a job seeker who is coming to see me personally about getting a job in a law firm.  This is something I am sure happens in recruiting firms all over; however, every time this happens, I am amazed by the power of the human spirit and the people who are doing this. In several cases, the people sitting in the lobby waiting to speak with me have flown in from other parts of the United States.  They are always impeccably dressed and have their little portfolios containing their resumes.  In most cases, the people who are doing this do not have very good qualifications.  They have not gone to the right law schools, and they do not have the pedigree that would allow them to get the best jobs.  But they keep showing up because they believe in themselves. These are my heroes and the people with the spirit to achieve.  What is inside of them will lead them to great achievement. One of the most unusual things I have seen in my life, in working with countless job seekers and others, is that so many people go into interviews and other situations expecting not to get the job.  That’s right.  They flat out expect to lose and not get the job when they go into an interview.  People simply do not believe they will get the job. “What’s the use of trying?” many people tell me. You need to banish that sort of thinking from your mind.  You need to believe in yourself and that you will get the results you want in your life.  This is the only way you are ever going to get the job you want or reach your full potential. THE LESSON You can become whatever you want depending on your state of mind. You can reach as high as you want, as long as you are personally convinced that you can achieve your goal. Don’t listen to people who tell you that you are incapable of certain results; belief in yourself is the only way to obtain your full potential.

“Choose the highest motive to which you think your audience will respond. If the speaker feels it necessary to appeal to motives not of the highest grades he should see to it that before he closes he makes them lead into higher motives.” Professor Barker illustrates with Beecher’s Speech at Liverpool, in which the orator during our Civil War was struggling with a very hostile audience of Englishmen. He argued that if slavery were abolished in the South, England would find a better market there for her goods, but “he connected this appear with the far higher motives of mere justice and the good of humanity … What gives its significant to [this] suggestion … is that few men are willing to admit that they have acted from motives considered low or mean. Even if they suspect this to be the case, they endeavor to convince themselves that it is not true. In an audience each man knows those about him see what moves him in a speaker’s words and therefore he yields most readily to a motive which he knows is generally commended–religious feelings, charity, devotion to one’s country, etc. . . . Since, then, men yield more willingly to motives generally commended, and since unanimity of action is more easily gained when the highest motives are addressed, this corollary to the suggestion last made may be formulated: The larger the audience, the higher the motives to which an appeal may be made.”

Similarly, in James Winans’ 1911 book Public Speaking, Principles and Practice, he writes:

While motives are frequently mixed, we need not cynically attribute right actions to selfishness, ambition or fear of public opinion. The average man really intends to do the right thing once his sense of responsibility is aroused. While most of us let down a bit when not under observation, we have certain principles of conduct, duty, honesty, honor, courage and generosity, in accordance with which we must live if we are to retain our self-respect. … The moral is: Do not fear to appeal to the best sentiments in your hearers. Assume they are better rather than worse than they are. They may respond to lower motives, but may also rise gladly to a higher plane.

When you are interviewing with companies it is always important that you ascribe good motives to the hiring of you. One of the most common hires that I make is in the legal recruiting industry. The legal recruiting industry, like all industries, is an industry where people can either make a lot of money or not much money. Since recruiting is somewhat of a sales-type position, many people applying to the work believe that what they are doing is all about sales, “closing” and making money. In terms of the way that I think about legal recruiting this could not be further from the truth. When I was younger I remember running an asphalt business and hiring people in drug rehabilitation centers in Detroit and teaching them about work and how to work for a company. Many of these people had grown up on the streets and had never worked in their lives. It is a real source of pride that I was able to make an impact, no matter how small, in the lives of these people. This is something I feel good about to this day because using my spirit and the energy inside me I felt like I was able to bring light into the lives of many of these people. When I became a legal recruiter I believed that I was also helping people. I felt that I was helping the people who had played by society’s rules make the most of themselves and that they deserved to have the best possible recruiter working for them. I felt that the work I was doing held a higher purpose and that I could positively impact the world by insuring that the attorneys with the most talent and soul ended up getting the best jobs. This is how I thought about my job and it is still how I think about my job today. Now that I run job boards and other career services I believe that I am creating opportunity and work for millions of people. I feel very good about what I am doing. I justify my actions and my life in terms of what I consider a higher purpose. This is why when people come in to speak with me for recruiting positions, for example, they demean me when they ascribe to me ideas such as they will make a lot of money in recruiting. When people cut corners in recruiting I feel the same way about their actions. If people are just focused on making money and so forth they typically do not do well in our organization. I believe people need to be working for higher motives. I do not consider myself special or all that unusual. When it comes right down to it, most employers will tell you that whatever they are doing there is some sort of noble purpose in what they are doing. A corporate attorney may tell you he prevents companies from being taken advantage of. A gas station mechanic will tell you he fixes cars so people can spend time traveling with their families. A stock broker will tell you he helps people invest money so they can retire. There is likely some noble and higher purpose to whatever any company or organization is doing. My challenge to you is to always think in terms of what the employer you are interviewing with or working for is doing that serves a higher purpose. When you understand this higher purpose, speak in terms of these in interviews and in your daily work. This will set you apart from most people and will put you on a higher and different plane than others. It will also make you appear to be a better choice in most instances for hiring and promotion. Everyone wants to be associated with what is good and noble. Being this person will have tremendous rewards for you in your career. THE LESSON Like everyone else, your employer wants to believe that he or she is a good person who stands for something positive in the world. Therefore, work to ascribe positive motives to your employer when in interviews, and think of in terms of how their work serves a higher purpose. Speaking about your and your employer’s work in these terms will put you on a higher plane than others, and will associate both of you with good and noble qualities.

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another. An uncle of R. U. Darby caught the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to dig and grow rich. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite. After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, and retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland. He then told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, and had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine. The first car of ore was mined and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then came the big killing in profits. Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again – all to no avail. Finally, they decided to quit. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised the project had failed because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! That is exactly where they found it!

Most people miss the gold in their life because they do not try their hardest. In this story, the Darbys trying their hardest would have simply involved continuing to drill and researching exactly what needed to be done. The world is composed of so many parts and so many variables. You can always find a variable to push through and will always succeed when you do. When I was about 10 years old the most important assignment we had in grade school that year was to spend three months writing a report about a country. I was assigned Russia. Over the next three months I made writing about Russia an important goal. I found every book in the elementary school library and even had my father take me to the downtown Detroit library on Saturday to check out as many books as I could possibly find. When the day came for putting my report together I had to put the chapters in multiple rooms because there were so many of them. It took three large binders to fit the entire report together and when all was said and done the report was over 400 pages. Why would I write a report like this? Why would any 10 year old do something like this? Personally, I did it because I learned somewhere along the line the best thing you can do is try as hard as you can, and that you do not always get the opportunity to shine and do your best. Most people never try as hard as they can or do their best. Who knows why this is? A culture of sorts exists that actually seems to be against people doing their best. Develop the habit of pushing yourself and always doing your best. I look back on my time in elementary school and know – as ridiculous as this sounds – that I always did my best. People who always do their best are sought out by others, and everyone wants these people to work with them, and for them. When I was practicing law some of my first clients were people who knew me when I was a very young man. They found out I was an attorney and sought me out from all over the United States. They did this because they knew whatever issues they had I would fight like hell for them and do my best. While kids may have made fun of me when I was in elementary school for working so hard, they practically lined up to talk to me once they knew I could go to work for them. For years after I stopped practicing law, I used to get calls from former co-workers who were starting their own firms. They wanted me to give up recruiting and come to work with them practicing law. They called me because they knew I would do my best. People want to work with people who do their absolute best. The rewards from doing your best far eclipse what waits for people who make a mediocre effort. Try your hardest in every single thing that you ever do, and make the most of your life. The rewards for not trying your best are few and far between. You can choose to live an average life and have average results if you choose. You will not inspire others around you if you do. People will not seek you out to do work. You will not respect yourself as much. Nothing makes me angrier than someone not trying his best. You have been gifted with a life and this life is your chance to make the most of everything. Try your hardest and never give up. Always do the absolute best you can with everything. This is what you are entitled to, and deserve.