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.

You Do Not Necessarily Need a New Reality

What You Will Learn In order to do your best work it is important that you always keep your mind focused on the here and now. Believe that you can achieve the things you set out to do on your own and not necessarily with the help of others. You also need to believe that you are already complete and do not need any radical change within yourself. Accept things the way they are – you do not need a new reality.

Lately I have been coming across a lot of Indian gurus. In fact, a few months ago I had one speak at my house. I also happen to live directly next door to a house owned by a well-known Indian guru. Several times a week this guru’s followers come by and maintain his yard and do all sorts of work around the property. In addition, I see these white-robed Indian gurus walking around my community of Malibu, California regularly. Just a few days ago my wife saw the actor Owen Wilson walking around with one of them. These Indian gurus have been in favor for a long time. Even the Beatles had one, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

The Indian guru may be viewed as somewhat exotic in the United States, but in reality most of us have our own gurus. In small and large towns across America each week people gather and listen to priests, rabbis and pastors talk, and people seek them out for counsel. Other people visit psychologists, coaches, psychiatrists, yoga teachers, self-help practitioners, motivational speakers and the like. Or people study various disciplines in an attempt to get guidance. Some people look up to and worship those who are rich and famous.

I have no idea why this is, but most people seem to have been born with the sense that they are somehow incomplete. Whether it is through religion, bodies of knowledge, or gurus–most people are generally seeking some answers about the state of their spirit, psyche and place in the world, and are in search of something that will “complete” them.

One of the most common messages of all religions is that we are living in this world without any understanding what is real. We see the world in many ways; however, religion often tells us that what we are seeing is not actually reality at all. Reality is found within ourselves: we do not see this reality because we are confusing the world–its sights, sounds and other indicators as being reality. Reality is actually far different from what we can see, hear and touch. It is more peaceful, happy and meaningful. In Sanskrit there is even a word for the confusing but untrue nature of the world we are experiencing, ‘maya’, which means illusion. The idea is that most people are experiencing the world as an illusion–not for what it really is.

Legions of religions, academic and nonacademic bodies of knowledge, gurus and people have drawn us to the idea that they can help us “see through” the illusion of reality created by our senses, so we can understand what the true nature of reality. The presumed promise of seeing through the “maya” is and always has been something akin to attaining peace, love and understanding. There are many ways that religions, gurus and various bodies of knowledge go about leading man to this state:

First, there is the relatively uncommon practice (to Westerners especially) of seeking knowledge within, without any outside help: Buddhists believe that each person has the capacity to see this truth by taking the time to meditate and examine his or her mind each day, and also by learning and understanding the teachings of the Buddha. The idea of Buddhism is that everyone can see the truth if they work at their own minds. Buddhists do not require money from their followers, or any formal allegiance to a particular leader or body of knowledge. They simply require that people “look within”. The problem with “looking within” is that it can take years of meditation and a great deal of solitary work. This is the sort of work that Buddhist monks are doing in monasteries. The “breakthrough” has to come from the work of the individual, and cannot by obtained by receiving the blessing of another, for example.

The term that Buddhists use for this breakthrough is reaching “nirvana”–the goal of all Buddhists. Nirvana is believed to be freedom from the ego (i.e., an “individual-centered” existence) and freedom from mental suffering. When someone reaches nirvana, Buddhists also believe that he or she is enlightened, and is freed from greed, anger, hate and other similar negative emotions. While nirvana can be explained, to be truly understood it must be experienced. This Buddhist idea is the most rarely experienced form of truth seeking. It is not at the sort of truth seeking that most people are comfortable with, because it relies on us exclusively and does not require that we do much other than look within ourselves.

Some people that I know, who have practiced Buddhism, have voiced the complaint that it is too much work. For example, I have a relative who used to go to a Japanese monastery and spend months there at a time. The entire time no speech was allowed in the monastery; people were simply not allowed to talk to one another. The reason for this was that the monastery and its monks believed that people needed to be looking within, not distracting themselves by seeking approval, knowledge and reassurance from others.

The other, more common methods used by people to connect with this higher understanding of reality are through other people, bodies of knowledge, or even altered states of consciousness, as achieved through drug use. Most religions and disciplines require that you give your allegiance to a body of knowledge, leader, guru, or a church. You are usually required to give money and other things in order to find this sense of “grace”.

• You may need to study and apply one branch of psychology,
• You may need to study and practice one branch of Yoga,
• You may need to pray to a certain god several times a day,
• You may need to go to attend and give money to a church,
• You may need to give money to a guru,
• You may need to put on Nikes and take poison, so that you can be picked up by a passing spaceship, which is supposedly going to bring you the knowledge that you seek.

All of these are methods of gaining this understanding, or a sense of grace, through someone or something outside of you. For example, Christians are urged to surrender themselves to Jesus Christ. Other religions require that you give a percentage of your income to find grace. Still other religions require that you follow certain diets. This, in my opinion, is where it gets interesting because, in all of these examples, people look beyond their ability to achieve enlightenment through themselves; instead, they rely upon others, who are all too eager to dispense advice and bring people this “peace” that they seek.

I do not think there is anything wrong with following religion, gurus and so forth. What I do know is that no one can agree on what the right answers are and, if you are to believe most religions and bodies of knowledge, according to them, they are right and all other bodies of knowledge are wrong. There are so many religions, so many gurus and so many ways that people go about finding inner knowledge and peace that it would probably be impossible to even come up with a comprehensive list. There are probably tens of thousands of methods that people use to find this knowledge and peace. It seems to be never ending.

In order to experience the greatest level of success in your career and life, I believe that there is no approach that is the correct one for finding this “knowledge” of what will make you happy. If you hitch your wagon to the right religion then you may, in fact, find a great deal of happiness. Or, if you “look within” effectively enough and are self-reliant enough, you may also find happiness.

The difference between the two approaches is that one is self-reliant and the other depends on others in order to find peace. The question is whether you can find what you are looking for alone, or whether you should surrender and follow another. This is one of the more fundamental struggles in our lives and careers, and it is something that virtually everyone goes through.

An alternative to both of these methods is deciding that everything (including yourself) is “ok the way it is”, and just going about your business, being focused on your goals. This method allows you not to be distracted by looking within, or following another. This method allows you to accept everything the way it is. However, most people are constantly looking for answers and change. What would happen if you stopped looking for answers and change? What would happen if you just relied upon yourself and upon what matters to you right now? What would happen if you allowed yourself to not be restless?

Most people spend a great deal of time being restless instead focused. They put their hopes and dreams for happiness on people, religions and things that are outside of themselves. Others isolate themselves under the belief that isolation will help them find something magical within themselves. But what if you stopped searching, and what if you just went through life accepting things the way they are?

In order to do your best work it is important that you always keep your mind focused. You need to focus on the here and now, and to believe that you can achieve the things you set out to do. You need to believe you are already complete. You need to realize that you can accomplish things on your own, and that you do not necessarily need to rely on other people, or some big change within yourself. You should accept things the way they are. You do not necessarily need a new reality.

Your Career is More Important to You Than Anyone

What You Will Learn You need to protect your ability to earn a living at all costs, and you need to make sure that no one is going to slow you down. The sooner you understand that your career is not as important to anyone else as it is to you, the better. Even if it appears like you have no options, you need to be very careful about the people with whom you cast your lot.

I went to high school in an area called Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and lived with my father there during high school. Up until ninth grade I had lived in a city called Grosse Pointe, Michigan, which was about an hour long drive away. Since I had grown up in Grosse Pointe, many of my friends still lived there and I spent many of my weekends there visiting.

One day I received the most amazing telephone call from a friend of mine in Grosse Pointe. A girl that I (and just about every other guy I knew) had been incredibly interested in for a long time had stopped by my buddy’s house with his girlfriend, and told him that he should call me because she wanted to go out with me that night. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend of 5 or 6 years, who was a freshman at the University of Michigan. She was still in high school as was I.

“Are you kidding?” I asked my friend.

“No. You need to get over here right now. We’ll all go out. I do not think you understand … no one has ever gone out with this girl except for her ex-boyfriend. I have no idea why she picked you, but you need to get over here right now!”

I could hardly believe my luck. This seemed too good to be true. In fact, it hardly made sense. I did not know the girl very well and had only been listening to stories from other kids that were obsessed with her, for as long as I could remember. My friend handed me the phone and the girl got on the line and said she was thinking that it would be fun if we all hung out, and that I should come over right away.

I jumped in my Yugo and started making the one-hour drive from Bloomfield Hills to Grosse Pointe. I was about half way there and I noticed that my car was slowing down. Then I heard a loud grinding sort of sound and the engine lost all of its power as I steered the car to the side of the road. When I tried to start the car nothing happened and all I could hear was a clicking. The engine would not turn over.

In a panic sort of state I popped the hood and checked the oil. There was no oil in the engine, which is apparently why the engine had seized up. I had completely trashed the car by forgetting to check the oil. The car was rendered useless–with only 23,000 miles on it. I remembered back to when I had first purchased the car and was very proud of it. One time a man approached me as I was pumping gas, and he told me he was from Yugoslavia and used to have the same car when he had lived there.

“This car will not go more than 25,000 miles,” he had said.

The Yugo was stopped dead beneath a freeway bridge and I decided that the best thing I could do was to go to a gas station and call a taxi. It must have taken me close to a half hour to find a gas station. I called home, but nobody was there. The taxi showed up within a few minutes.

I was, of course, upset about the incident with the Yugo since it was my only car, but I was not all that worried, since I had a large van that I used for my asphalt seal coating business. The van was very nice and I had gotten a great deal on it. It was not something I could drive on a daily basis, though, because after having done several asphalt jobs with the van, I had gotten tar all over the interior. I had to be careful where I sat.

I took a taxi back home and it ended up costing me sixty bucks, which was all the money I had had available for going out that night. I called my friend:

“Where are you?” he asked. “We are all waiting for you!”

I explained to him that I did not have any money, that my car had broken down but I would be leaving in my van right away. My friend sounded annoyed about having to loan me money to go out, but simply told me to hurry up. I started driving again and, incredibly, halfway into the drive the van started making strange noises, losing power and so forth. Within a few minutes the van had broken down, started smoking out of its engine, and literally rolled to a stop directly behind the Yugo, alongside the freeway. It made absolutely no sense.

I was extremely depressed about this whole situation and did not know what to do. I had no money to call a taxi and now I had no way to get to my friend’s house to go out on my dream date. I hiked again to the gas station and told the people there the incredible story about how I had broken down another car, literally right behind the Yugo. They looked at me as if I were insane and clearly did not believe me. They were kind enough to let me use a phone.

I first called my friend in Grosse Pointe. He could not believe me either. He said they were going out without me–and he did not have a car.

“It would kind of be awkward if your first date was her picking you up at a gas station, eh?” my friend said. He was absolutely right. I did not want that. I never got another chance to go out with the girl. Within a week she had another boyfriend.

I called a rich friend of mine who drove out to pick me up. An hour or so later he pulled up in his brand new BMW convertible, wearing Ray Bans and looking somewhat stoned. He had been smoking pot with some other friends. I sat down in the convertible and the guy suddenly got agitated:

“Jesus Christ!! Look, you got a speck of tar on the leather! THIS IS NOT THE YUGO!!”

I got out of the car and busily tried to clean his prized leather seat. The mark on it was no larger than a fingernail and it came out quickly. As we drove back towards my house, my friend started telling me that he thought it would be fun to go into partnership with me in the asphalt business. Since I literally had no money, and no truck, to me getting a partner seemed like a good idea. I was at a very low point and felt like I needed help to get out of the hole I was in.

The business at the time was quite small and involved me passing around various flyers, giving estimates and going out and seal coating people’s driveways, repairing cracks and doing asphalt patches. Apart from the fact that my van had just broken down, the business was going very well and my friend wanted in on it.

For less than a few thousand dollars he bought in to the business and was suddenly a half owner, entitled to half of all of the revenue that came into the business (after expenses, of course). I was excited about having a partner, and working with a partner really took a lot of the stress off my back. Now I had someone to talk with about various things that were going on in the business and, most importantly, I had someone with whom to share the workload.

With the money he invested in the business I bought an old camper to do the work in. While buying the camper I was propositioned in a very strange way and the man selling it made some really crude remarks about other matters, which really freaked me out. Driving away after paying for the camper, I literally felt sexually violated, just because of the things that were said to me during the purchase. After having owned the camper for some time, one day I picked up an old sleeping mattress in the back of it and found several pairs of little girls’ underwear. The event was so bizarre that I had blocked the event out of my mind until just now. Old campers formerly owned by perverts are bad news.

My first day of work with my new partner left us both completely covered in tar. Someone who worked on my partner’s estate had recommended that at the end of each day we clean the tar off of our skin using Brillo pads (steel wool) and liquid Lysol. I am not sure why this recommendation was made; however, before we started work that day we made sure to buy plenty of Brillo pads and liquid Lysol. I remember it was a particularly hot day and we both got a ton of tar on ourselves, which baked on with the heat. At the end of the day we found a hose on someone’s property we were not working on and started cleaning ourselves with steel wool and Lysol. It was so painful I can still feel the sensation of the pain of the steel wool digging into my skin, and the burn of the alcohol from the Lysol.

We scrubbed the tar off of our faces using the steel wool just as we had scrubbed it off of our arms. Since the day had been so hot, the tar did not come off easily. The water from the hose we were using was extremely cold. It must have taken us at least 15 minutes of scrubbing to get all of the tar off. What was so funny about this was that my “partner” acted like we had received some really good advice.

“See, I got it all off!” he exclaimed as we drove away. His arms were all scratched up and so was his face. He had small scratches in a few places that were bleeding. In fact, it looked like he was having a severe allergic reaction. His face was turning all red. I dropped him off at his BMW convertible and he drove off.

The next day he called me and told me that he was breaking out in hives and had all sorts of major scratches all over his face from the steel wool. I saw him that evening and, sure enough, he was having an allergic reaction. We were scheduled to do a job the next day. The next morning, quite early, he called me:

“I do not feel like working today. We’re just chilling out today. Natalie got a new horse and I was thinking about going over and seeing it, getting high and drinking some beers later,” he said.

We had been friends for several years and, in fact, were good friends. There were several people’s driveways that we had scheduled to complete that day and for me this situation was quite serious. I had made promises to complete the work and, in addition, I needed the money. As these thoughts raced through my head I reacted in a way that, from what I remember, may have been a bit too aggressive.

“How can we run a business if you are only going to work the days you feel like it?” I asked him.

There was a long pause. At that moment I realized that for him the business was simply something fun. It was not a mission, not something that was very important to him. He had been discouraged by the Brillo pads and Lysol.

“I’m going out to do the work today,” I told him. And I did.

Later in the afternoon, he stopped by and said hello while I was working on a driveway on his street. He was dressed nicely and I remember he kept his distance from the truck, driveway and myself. He obviously didn’t plan to do any work.

“How much are we making on this one?” he asked me as I sweated in the sun and continued working on the driveway.

The next day, a Sunday, he called me looking for his “cut” of the money from the work. I gave him his cut.

In our partnership together, he went out with me once more and then that was it. For some time, until he finally did not ask anymore, I gave him half of the money that I made from going out and completing the jobs. He ended up making much more than his investment and did very little work. We graduated from high school that year and towards the end of the summer, before he was ready to go off to college, he called me on the phone. He had spent his summer hanging out with a very wealthy kid that lived near us, out in the country. He had a quarry near his property. For fun, the two of them had figured out how to rig explosives that they had stolen from a trailer on the quarry site–to blow up Porta Potties. It apparently was very fun and dramatic.

“We want to blow up the camper. I own half of it. Can I come pick it up?” he asked.

“No,” I said. The camper was the only way I could complete jobs. It was an awkward conversation and not a particularly pleasant one. I was deeply offended that someone would want to blow up the vehicle I depended on to earn a living. My job was so unimportant to my “partner” that he wanted to blow it up with dynamite.

Since that bad episode when I was in high school with a partner, I have always been very suspicious about people who want to share in my work: I want to make sure they too are going to contribute as much as I do. You should be cautious about partnerships too. The fact of the matter is that virtually no one is going to work as hard in your career as you. If you depend on others to do your work, you will likely be sorely disappointed.

Throughout the years I have been approached by countless people that want to work with me on an equal basis. Some of these people are people you likely have heard of (most are not); others have been companies that have offered me tens of millions of dollars to share in my work, and still others have been people that are far more skilled or experienced in certain matters than I am. However, whenever I have pushed these people and organizations, and spent a great deal of time with them I have realized that they never will work as hard, or be as committed as I am to what I do.

I do not think that my experience is unique. In fact, I would say that almost everyone out there would never be as committed to your career and your livelihood as you are. You are never going to find the answers to your success and what you need in someone else. It has to come from you. The answers always need to come from you.

I am not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with partners. What I am saying, though, is that you need to protect your ability to earn a living at all costs, and you need to make sure that no one is going to slow you down. Your career is not as important to anyone else as it is to you. The sooner you understand this, the better off you will be. Even if it appears like you have no options (like how I felt when my truck and car both broke down) you need to be very careful about the people with whom you cast your lot.

The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends and Family

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.

-Tacitus (c. 55-120 A.D.)

What You Will Learn Watch out about taking up a job with the help of family and friends. Nepotism is usually considered a negative term and can serve to create resentment in all employment environments. Your friend or family member’s act of kindness could ultimately result in a strained and imbalanced relationship. You are safer getting a job without the help of family and friends.

“Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact them.” In the legal recruiting realm, this is one of the more common things we hear after informing an attorney that a certain law firm has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it is exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. The reason for this is simple: despite what you think, the involvement of friends or family members in your job search may actually hurt you because they may not want to help you get a job. Moreover, all employers know the severe problems that can arise when friends or relatives work together. Due to this, simply going through a close contact is often something that is counterproductive to your job search. Second, even if you are one of the few people who are able to get a position through a friend or family member, you could run into a great deal of trouble and harm your relationship with that person in the process.

When you are seeking a job through a friend, you may be surprised to find that he or she will not help you get a job with his or her organization. Moreover, the organization may actually look upon you negatively and not hire you if you try to use a friend or family member to get a job.

One of the most common things that people think is that friends are their best allies in a job search. After all, the job market is a harsh place. Who better to help you with your job search than a friend employed inside a firm for which you would like to work? A friend certainly recognizes all of your strengths and appreciates you for the person you are. In addition, the thought of depending upon a stranger when you have a friend or family member close by does not make a lot of sense. Certainly you can always trust a friend over a stranger, right?

I have been a legal recruiter for several years. I have represented more candidates than I can count. In all of my time as a legal recruiter, I have never once had a candidate get a job through a friend. Incredibly, I have actually gotten several candidates jobs with firms where they thought that they had friends inside who were helping them with their job searches-”insiders” who never managed to get their friends interviews. Moreover, when I think back on my own life, I do not think that I have ever gotten any job by having a friend or relative help me.

The issue with using friends to try to help you with your job search is that you never know your friends as well as you think. Almost instinctively, many friends are competitive with one another. When you are dealing with people close to you, you will often agree with them just to avoid argument. In fact, if you spend more than a couple of hours with your family or a group of your friends, you will find this sort of thing occurring probably every few minutes throughout each conversation. Friends and family also often do their best to laugh extra hard at each other’s jokes and cover up their unpleasant qualities. Your friends and family will most often say they love your taste in music, your choice of clothing, your house or apartment, your writing, and most everything you take seriously. It is possible your friends and family mean this. It is also possible they do not.

The thought of asking a friend to help you with a job search is, in effect, an attempt to shield yourself from the harshness of the world. The same enthusiasm your friends and family have for you in the personal realm, you may imagine, will directly translate to an eagerness to help you find work with their organization. I would offer at the outset that this is a possibility, and you may not be wrong in thinking this. Notwithstanding, this is often not the case.

One of the more common things that happens when people ask a friend or family member for help is nothing. The friend or family member gets your resume and thinks about it and then (for whatever reason) decides he or she does not want to forward it to the powers that be. You cannot imagine how common this is. If you have forwarded a resume to a friend inside a company recently, call the company about it. In more than 50 percent of cases, your “friend” will not have even forwarded the information. He will pleasantly tell you that he will, but he doesn’t. Your friend will often lie and tell you he forwarded the information when he did not. Again, I have seen this more times than I can count. The number is more than 50 percent (with the possible exception of firms which pay “bounties” for employees who bring candidates to their company).

Your guess as to why this occurs is as good as mine. Perhaps your friend or family member simply does not want the two of you working in the same office. Perhaps your friend does not want to take responsibility for what you might do if you were hired. Perhaps (just perhaps) your friend honestly does not think as highly of your capabilities as you do. While your friend may not tell you that he resents you because you once had, did, or said such and such, you can believe this can come out if you come to him seeking assistance with getting a job. Again, you will not even know this has come out-it just will. The firm may never see your resume.

Assuming your friend or family member does forward your resume, be prepared for all sorts of brutally honest assessments of your character and talents of which you personally may never have been aware. Most friends speak about one another with other groups of friends when the other is not around. Not all of this conversation is pleasant. Do you have any idea what your friends are saying about you? I can almost guarantee you that some of it is negative. You probably do not know even 10 percent of the negative things your friends and family say about you when you are not around. I have a question for you: do you want any of this negative information to be communicated to your potential employer?

There are reasons why organizations do not like to hire friends and family members of their employees. Nepotism has traditionally been considered a negative term. The word originates from the Latin word nephos, which means nephew, and was created to describe Pope Calixtus III’s hiring of nephews as cardinals. The first anti-nepotism policies probably originated in the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages or Renaissance, when resentment began to build against incompetent people being appointed to high clerical offices. To this day, nepotism is something which can serve to create resentment in all employment environments. In this instance, I define “nepotism” as the hiring of friends as well as relatives.

Reducing corruption and increasing efficiency are the primary reasons many organizations have anti-nepotism policies. Corruption has always been a concern in this realm. If individuals who are friends or relatives work together, organizations fear that these individuals may collaborate to advance their own interests rather than the interests of the organization. Nepotism can also lower the morale of those who supervise relatives or friends of high-level members of the organization, those who work with them, and those who feel that rewards or promotions have been bestowed in an unfair manner. One or two friends or relatives may react negatively (and contrary to the interests of the organization) when another is criticized or disciplined. Finally, perception is a serious problem. Other employees will often perceive unequal treatment of a friend or relative regardless of whether or not this is the case.

While a great deal could be written about nepotism, suffice it to say that it is something many employers are concerned about. Using a perceived “in” with a firm to try to get a job may actually hurt you because of the firm’s own feelings about nepotism.

It is important to note that not all firms will be against nepotism. For example, in smaller, family-owned firms, nepotism is often common because it provides an efficient way to identify dedicated people. Nepotism may also foster a dedicated, family-like environment that boosts the morale of everyone-relatives and friends alike. A good example is the Central Intelligence Agency, which actually encourages the hiring of married couples. Having both spouses free to discuss classified information actually can reduce the strain of a high-stress career.

While nepotism may have its place, it is important to note that more often than not it is something that can scare away employers. It is, therefore, better off avoided in the job search.

I review a lot of the resumes that we receive from throughout the United States each day at our recruiting firm, BCG Attorney Search. There are two things that I frequently see: (1) associates (i.e., younger attorneys) who obviously do not have the qualifications to work inside a certain law firm, and (2) associates working for small law firms that are owned by their father or mother (with their own last name in the masthead) who are secretly looking for jobs. Each and every time I speak with these associates, I find that they are in positions because of family members and are extremely resentful of those family members for whatever reason. They have lots of negative things to say about them and desperately want a new job with the same salary and level of responsibility. Not once in my career have I seen someone from this class of associates who was qualified for a job even remotely as good as the one he or she was in at the time. Nevertheless, these associates always resent and, in most instances, hate the family member who got them the job they were unqualified for to begin with. Moreover, these associates refuse to go to a less-prestigious firm or job. Most often, in fact, they believe they should be working for an even better organization.

If you accept a job through a friend or family member, watch out. More importantly, watch yourself. In the end, you will likely be your own downfall. It is your friend or family member’s act of kindness that will ultimately unbalance your relationship.

The typical pattern that happens when someone is hired by a friend or family member is as follows. First, the people hired are grateful for being hired, but generally want to feel as if they deserve their good fortune. Accordingly, the friends or family members hired will look for all sorts of justifications to show the world and demonstrate to themselves that they deserve their good fortune.

One response from the people hired may be to believe that their being hired is a “payback” of sorts for everything that they have ever done to be kind to their friend or family member. They begin a process of justifying their hiring by everything they have ever said or done for the friend or family member.

Another response may be for the people hired to begin comparing themselves to others in the firm and believing that they are more intelligent than all of those other people. Therefore, the hired friends or family members justify their positions by often unjustly attacking their fellow employees.

The most common reaction, though, is that the hired friend or family member will become resentful against the person who helped him or her get the job to begin with. The receipt of a favor can come to mean, in the hired friend or family member’s eyes, that he or she was hired due to this and not based on merit. There is what I would term “hidden condescension” in the act of hiring a friend or family member that grinds at the new employee all the time.

Whomever you are working for likely cares more about (1) getting the job done and (2) doing the job as well as it can be done than about having friendly feelings flowing between the two of you. Your status as a friend or relative of someone does not mean that you are automatically the one who can best do the job. If you cannot do the job in the best manner, more resentment is going to arise when your friend or family member asks another person to help with a given task.

One of the more brilliant statesmen of the 19th Century, Napoleon’s foreign minister Talleyrand, decided that his boss was leading France to ruin. Talleyrand therefore decided that he needed to take Napoleon down. Obviously, the task of overthrowing Napoleon would not be a small one. In order to carry it out, Talleyrand desperately needed to enlist the assistance of someone he could trust. Instead of turning to a friend for help, Talleyrand turned to his worst enemy, Fouché, the head of the secret police.

Fouché had even previously tried to have Talleyrand assassinated. The brilliance of Talleyrand’s choice was that it provided Fouché with the opportunity to reconcile with Talleyrand on an emotional level. In addition, there was nothing Fouché would expect from Talleyrand, and, quite the contrary, Fouché would work hard to prove that he was worthy of Talleyrand picking him for the task. When people have something to prove, they will work harder than those who do not. Compare this to what could have occurred if Talleyrand simply went to a friend for help.

Talleyrand chose Fouché because he knew that their relationship would be based entirely on their mutual self-interest in removing Napoleon and not be poisoned by personal feelings. While their effort to topple Napoleon ultimately failed, they were able to generate much interest in the cause and have a good relationship going forward.

Like Talleyrand, it is important to realize that getting a job and working in a job on equal ground and in an atmosphere of mutual self-interest is crucial. Personal feelings obscure the fact that there is work that needs to be done in an efficient manner. In a work environment where everyone is evaluated and judged on merit, more productivity and honesty on all sides can only ensure good business.

One of the more disturbing phone calls I have received over the years was from the Dean of Career Services at a second-tier law school. The dean had read an article I wrote which advised attorneys on how to get a job in a tough legal market. The dean told me that the first place everyone should always look to get a job was with his or her family. The dean then told me that people should go to events and “make friends” with other attorneys and then ask them for a job (a.k.a. “networking”). As I listened to the dean speak, it became abundantly clear to me that she did not like any manner of getting a job that did not come through friends or family. In her view, getting a job through a friend or family member was far better than getting a job through a “stranger.” It is natural when looking for a job to contact the people you know to see if they can help you with your job search. In fact, I would guess that most attorneys early in their careers contact a family member, a personal friend, or an acquaintance when seeking a new job. Most people I have worked with as a recruiter (who have contacted me for assistance) have been clear with me that before contacting a recruiter they contacted a friend, an acquaintance, or another person they were connected with in some social manner to see if they could help with a job search. Moreover, most attorneys who have been practicing for a year or more have at some point in time told a friend that they would try to assist him or her with getting a job at their law firm.
While it may sound hard to believe-and contrary to the advice of the dean-you actually may be safer getting a job without the help of family or friends and working in an environment without family or friends. You do both at your own risk. Most of the time, I believe the risks far outweigh the potential long-term and short-term rewards.

Are You More Specific–or More General?

What You Will Learn Most people are either very specific or too general in the way they treat information. At times, those interested in details can get too tied up with them and lose track of the bigger picture. General people are comfortable in managerial roles while those interested in the specifics prefer to be explained everything in a logical sequence. Your professional success depends on whether you understand yourself well and choose a workplace that harnesses your natural inclination.

One summer I was working in New York City for a big law firm and was told to go see an important partner about an assignment. I went into the partner’s office and was handed a file:

“We have a deadline of next Thursday. Make sure we have filed the proper form with the SEC.”

“What sort of file are you talking about, and what is the deadline?” I asked. Keep in mind that I was a law student and had no legal experience whatsoever.

“I do not have time for this bullshit,” the partner said picking up his phone. “Just make sure the fucking form is filed.”

Terrified to ask for any further instruction after this exchange, I started asking other young attorneys in the firm if they knew what I should be filing. After around three days of bothering all sorts of attorneys, I came up with a list of around 15 possible forms I could potentially file. At one point, I had to make a telephone call to a stockbroker in the Caribbean for assistance with the question (I have no idea why this was even relevant). After a few days of this I finally went to see the partner again, after making an appointment with his secretary.

I began listing out the possible forms it could be once I got in the guy’s office, and explained to him that I had spoken with a certain associate that had suggested these forms.

“Jesus Christ!! This company is traded on three separate stock exchanges. What a jackass!”

He picked up the phone and started yelling at the associate and then said, “Get out of here!” to me, and I hustled away. The funny thing about this was that this partner had never given me the slightest inclination about how to go about doing the assignment. He had a reputation for doing this with associates, and no one liked to work with him. He had a very global nature to the way he assigned work, and he never gave details. There are people out there who are very general and there are others who are very specific.

Part of being a really good recruiter is giving the candidates you are working for as much information as possible. Throughout my years of recruiting, I have learned that there are also essentially two types of job seekers out there: Those who are concerned with a great number of specifics and those who think more globally and generally.

Several years ago, an important partner at a large law firm called one of our recruiters on the phone, and the recruiter suggested that the partner apply for a job at a certain firm. The partner did not want to know anything about the law firm. In fact, he told the recruiter the details about the firm were “irrelevant”, that he did not want to waste his time with details, and would just meet with the law firm. The recruiter made him an introduction to the firm, and the partner said he would handle it from there.

Within 10 days our recruiter had placed the partner at the firm, and had earned a $250,000 fee. The entire transaction had taken less than an hour of the recruiter’s time. In most cases like this the recruiter would have spent hundreds of hours of his time, working with the partner and helping him choose firms. Even then, the transaction might not have gone through. In this particular case, though, the partner just said he “felt like” he would be more comfortable working at the other firm. He did not have a lot of questions for the firm when he interviewed with them, and the entire move was very painless for everyone involved.

There are people out there who are very general about their approach to work and the world. They are not interested in hearing about and learning about a lot of details. They are people that you could call “big picture” thinkers who only want to hear big pieces of information. In fact, they may be bothered by details. Global people:

• want to understand the forest and not the trees;
• believe that the details about things are not as relevant or important;
• prefer to think about the overall situation, not all the details associated with it.

Global people will not follow a lot of structure and may describe their day in no specific order when speaking about it. When being given assignments or things to do, global people will mostly be more interested in hearing just a general overview of the work they need to do.

In contrast to global people, there are specific people. The specific sort of person typically prefers a lot of details about everything. They like small bits of information and are often not concerned at all with the “big picture”.

One of the best attorneys I ever helped find a job turned me into a full-time researcher in the process. He had come out to Los Angeles from a big city on the East Coast to interview with a multitude of law firms over several days. Prior to coming out to Los Angeles, he had sent me a list of at least 50 items that he wanted investigated. These items included things like

• public and private schools in various areas of Los Angeles;
• commute times from these areas to areas he might be working in at various times of the day;
• male/female ratios in the firms he was considering;
• attrition at the firms he was considering;
• news stories about the firms, from over the previous two years;
• average partner compensation at the firms;
• billing rates of the firms;
• average age of partners at the firms.

This particular attorney was well known and well qualified enough that the odds were pretty good that just about every firm he was interviewing with would be hiring him if he let them. He had taken a week off from work to come out to Los Angeles to work, and his entire week was action packed. I had picked him up from the airport on late Sunday morning and spent the entire day chauffeuring him around Los Angeles to look at various neighborhoods. Although I am not a real estate agent, I had printed up home listings for him in his price range, and drove him by several of them. During the five or six hours I was driving him around he gave me several additional “research assignments” to do for him that evening.

After dropping him off at his hotel, I was up until at least 11:30 doing research for him online and faxing all sorts of documents to his hotel room (laptops were not popular then and older people especially preferred faxing information when travelling). For the next several nights, after coming back from interviewing with law firms that day, the attorney would call me and give me additional research to do about the firm he had interviewed with, and I would tell him about the firm he was scheduled to speak with the next day. The number of details that this attorney wanted was so profound that over the next week I spent several hours each evening doing research for him.

What was so funny about this particular partner is that he was so interested in various details that by the time his offers started rolling in, he became incredibly critical of each firm–so much so that he completely forgot the very important reason he was moving to Los Angeles (to be closer to his kids, who had just moved there with his ex-wife). In fact, the global reason for moving to Los Angeles became completely overwhelmed by these details, which seemed incredibly insignificant to the big picture: he wanted to see his kids grow up. He became completely overwhelmed and obsessed with so many small details that, even in speaking to him on the phone, I felt like I was going insane trying to piece through the morass of incredibly small minutia that he had deemed relevant to his job search.

This is how specific people are, though. They love details and are more concerned with details that the overall picture. Specific people:

• are more interested in the trees than the forest;
• believe that the global way of looking at things is shallow, and even a lazy form of thinking;
• often times cannot understand and/or see the larger picture, in terms of how things work;
• are very good at understanding small bits of data and information.

People that are very focused on specifics typically provide lots and lots of details when you are speaking with them. In fact, specific people love details, order and so forth. When you speak with specific people they typically relate information and things to you in an exact order of how they occurred, and make sure that they give you lots of details about everything. It is fun sometimes interrupting salespeople who are “specific” in terms of how they sell things, because they are always interested in relating each step of a process to you and if they are thrown off, they feel like they need to start again.

Understanding whether you are a global or specific sort of person is quite relevant to your career. It is important that you are in a position that makes the most of your skill of being either general or specific.

If you are a general person, you will be more comfortable with a managerial role, and working in an environment where you are given tasks in such a manner that the “big picture” is explained to you. In addition, you will not want to be given a lot of details and will prefer to be in an environment in which you understand how your tasks are a part of the overall work that the organization is doing. You are unlikely to have a lot of tolerance for being forced to explain all sorts of small details.

If you are a specific person, the opposite is true. You will prefer working for a manager who explains tasks to you specifically and with a lot of details. In addition, you will not want generalizations. Instead, you will want to understand the logical sequence in which the work should be done. You will typically require a lot of information before acting on a task, and will always want to make sure that you understand specifically how things work, and what you should be doing each step of the way. You are a meticulous person.

In my experience, people are generally either predominantly specific or predominantly global. It is important that you are working in a job and environment that makes the most of your natural inclination. It is also important that you recognize the importance of people who make the most out of your skill set.

Are You More Motivated by the Opinions of Others–or Your Own?

What You Will Learn There are two types of people in the world – externally motivated and internally motivated people. Externally motivated people are those who are motivated by others opinions. Internally motivated are those whose own opinions and way of thinking is most important in making decisions and designing their careers and lives. It is important that you understand the sort of person you are. Make sure to do the work that makes the most of your natural tendency.

When I first moved to Los Angeles I found myself spending the occasional Saturday or Sunday going to Beverly Hills with a girlfriend to look in clothing stores. One of the stores that I usually ended up in was a store like Barneys, which carries both men’s and women’s clothing. Instead of sitting idly on couch near a dressing room, reading fashion magazines with the other occasional bored male, I typically would go upstairs and look at men’s clothing. What always fascinated me about the menswear I saw during these trips was that it seemed drastically different each year. One year baggy pants would be in and the next year pants that fit men like gloves would be in.

It is always funny going into the men’s sections of these clothing stores because you typically will see men in their 50s with pot bellies, for example, trying to fit into the latest styles. They seem to me to be guys who have finally “made it” and can buy whatever they want, and they have decided it is important to be wearing the latest styles. They will typically be “brand whore” sorts of people that are more likely to be wearing Bvlgari glasses, Gucci belts, and other designer accessories than not. And then there are just other fashion-conscious men wandering around the stores.

It is incredible to watch the men here because they are always throwing around the names of the latest designers, and buying clothes that are ripped, bleached, and all sorts of things–for incredibly high prices.

• $500 tee shirts that are ripped? I’ve seen these.
• Men’s jeans made out of fur? I’ve seen these.
• A $3,000 men’s denim jacket? I’ve seen these.

Barneys has nice suits and normal clothing, of course, but it is the section of their stores that carries the trendy fashions that is most interesting to me, because there they are selling clothing that is here and “in” one minute, and gone the next. I have no idea who the people are that buy this stuff because I have never met one of them in my entire professional and personal career, but they are apparently numerous, and out there waiting to be found. They are intimately familiar with all sorts of fashion labels, and probably in most cases they spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on these fashions. There is an energy in Barneys as these men shop, because they move around with a certain discrimination and enthusiasm, which is unique to Barneys itself.

In Los Angeles at the end of the season these fashions become so undesirable that Barneys rents out an airplane hangar in Santa Monica and takes all of the “undesirable” old fashions there to sell at fire sale prices of 30% or more off of retail. The undesirable fashions are so tainted after a season that they do not even merit being sold in the store itself, and must be relegated to an industrial airline hangar far away from Beverly Hills. I can only assume that second-rate customers, who could not afford $500 for a tee shirt when it was “in-style” are flocking to airline hangars to, instead, purchase the tee shirts for $350.

An even more interesting thing about Barneys is that the salespeople also take themselves quite seriously. They seem to think that it is perfectly normal for a grown man to spend $8,000 on a leather coat, and they fastidiously follow their patrons around, complimenting them on one choice or another. In addition, Barneys even offers a personal shopper service to assist men in repeating this insanity year in and year out, as new wardrobes are brought in to replace the old ones.

One year I was standing around like an anthropologist, in absolute amazement as I watched a couple of men trying on $400 designer scarves that looked like pieces of white ripped sheets on an 80-degree day, and a salesman came up and started speaking with me. I have no idea what happened, and must have been overcome by the energy of the place, because within a few minutes I had given him my email address, telephone number and address. For the next few years Robert sent me email after email about new collections. He called my wife after I got married to tell her that there were “pre-sales” I should go to. He sent me cards in the mail too, and when he figured out how to use the attachment device in his AOL account, he started emailing me grainy pictures of shoes, strange looking ties and so forth. These communications from Robert were among the most entertaining I have ever received in my life, and I always looked forward to them.

One day I got a mass email from Robert, which was sent to around 1,000 other people, stating that he was “making a lateral move”, and going to work at a men’s clothing store called Joseph A. Bank. It was a conservative men’s clothing store. It made no sense because the new store he was going to work in could not have been any more different from the sort of stuff that Robert had been selling at Barneys. Robert called me a few months later from Joseph A. Bank to tell me about a special upcoming event involving sport coats:

“How’s it going?” I asked Robert.

“Ok,” he said.

“Listen, I do not know a lot about men’s fashion, but I think you are in the wrong sort of clothing store and should go back to Barneys. Your customers want hip, like from Barneys, and you went to about the most conservative men’s clothing store imaginable. Your customers are not going to follow you to the new store.”

“I never thought about that. Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I do not know if you know this, but Barneys was recently sold. They have changed the whole commission structure there. Morale is really low.”

I was not expecting to get into a long conversation with Robert about his job especially when, as of yet, I had never actually purchased anything from him. In fact, I was quite sure he did not even remember introducing himself to me while I had been standing, mesmerized, watching perfectly normal looking grown men flinging scarves over their shoulders and primping in front of mirrors several years ago. Robert and I spoke for several minutes and he admitted to me that, even with the commission adjustments at Barneys, he had been making far more money there than he was currently making at Joseph A. Bank. He thanked me for my career advice.

A few months later I got another mass email from Robert, stating that he had made another lateral move, this time to another men’s clothing store, Saks Fifth Avenue.

“NICE WORK!” I responded to the email.

They have marked down all of the Roberto Cavaleri’s 20% until the 1st. Please see me. He responded. Since I had only a vague understanding that Roberto Cavaleri was a designer, I figured Robert must have been doing well, especially since, in this case, the name of the designer was Italian and sounded quite high fashion.

My experience with Robert and Barneys gave me a real understanding of people because the world of men’s clothing says so much to me about who people are. In the world there are essentially two types of people: Externally motivated people and internally motivated people. People who are motivated internally will typically be motivated by the things that they believe are correct and right. In the realm of clothing, for example, they are likely to make decisions based on the things that they feel are right and correct, and not necessarily based on others’ influence. Someone internally motivated would pick out clothes that they like without being too influenced by the opinions of others, for example. They would not feel like they were doing something wrong if they were not wearing the latest fashions.

The second sort of person makes decisions in large part based on what others believe is the appropriate or correct thing to do. If the fashion powers that be declare that tight men’s pants are in, these sorts of people will wear tight pants. If the fashion powers that be declare that loose fitting, baggy and wrinkled pants are in, they will wear these. People who are highly motivated by others’ opinions often have an extremely difficult time making any decisions without relying upon the opinions of others.

In my experience, people out there are generally either motivated by others’ opinions, or motivated by their own opinions.

I have always had a fascination with artists because, in large part, the difference between a good and an average artist is that the better artist often tries to completely ignore the opinions of others. In high school I went to a school called Cranbrook-Kingswood, which also had an art academy attached to it, and lots of graduate students were studying art there. It is actually a pretty good art school, and it was always interesting to see the projects the artists worked on around campus. One thing that I noticed is that the artists were always trying to do projects that were completely shocking and different from anything else out there. For example, one day I might be walking through the campus and see a car painted all different colors and a man lying face-down on the car, wearing nothing but a swimming suite. This sort of thing would be considered an “art” project of some sort. The idea was that these artists were all really “thinking outside the box”, and were trying to do things that were completely unexpected and of their own making. They wanted to be doing a form of art that was informed by what was inside of them, not something that copied the opinions of others.

The pressure to conform to others’ opinions is a major one in our society. Numerous people out there are constantly trying to conform to what others think and believe is the right thing to do and, for this reason, most of their actions are chosen based upon what others feel and believe is the most important thing to do. The experience of the people who shop and spend their time in the “high-style” areas of Barneys is a perfect example of this. These people are trying to largely to do something (in this case, follow styles) based on what other people declare to be the “in styles” of the moment. They base much of their decisions about how to be and act on the opinions of others, and not necessarily on what they are likely to be comfortable doing. They are likely to constantly ask others for feedback about how they are doing.

• They may choose a restaurant and eat at a restaurant because it is considered the best place at the time, and they want to tell others that they ate there–but they may not necessarily really want to eat at the restaurant.
• They may choose a place to work because it is considered a good place to work by others, not because they feel comfortable working there.
• They will ask for approval at work in order to understand whether or not they are doing a good job–less so than simply understanding this internally.
• They purchase things that are recommended more so than the things that appeal to them, or which they like.

People who are external-focused always use sources of reference outside of themselves to understand whether or not they are doing a good job in work and in life. If you are an external-focused person, the chances are very good that:

• You prefer working in jobs in which you are constantly getting lots of feedback and being told how you are doing.
• You like it when people help you set performance goals.

People who are externally motivated look to what others are saying, and to the outside world for guidance in their life, and to understand reality. This is how a large proportion of the world is.

In contrast, people who are more motivated by their own opinions are more like the artists I described earlier. They simply judge the world and their own lives based on their own opinions about what is correct, or what is best for them–and mostly without referring to others’ opinions for guidance. These people’s opinions are generally based on what they believe, not on what others believe.

• They may seek out information from others when making decisions, but will ultimately make decisions for themselves.
• They are internally motivated, not motivated by others. They may not require management, for example.
• They resist feedback from others and, in fact, prefer little or no feedback.
• They know they have done a good job based on how they feel, not based on what others say.

In your career and life you are either more motivated by your own opinions about what is right and how things should work–or you are more motivated by the opinions of others.

I am sure you know of people who are always judging you, themselves and others based on what other people say is the correct thing to say or do. I am sure you also know of people who do not judge themselves and others based so much on what other people say is the correct thing to say or do.

Regardless of which sort of person you are, it is important that you embrace this person. You are almost certainly never going to change the sort of person you are, and understanding what sort of person you are is something that can allow you to make full use of your strengths. You may be best in a job that does not require the approval of others–or, you may be best in one that does. It does not matter. What is important is that you understand the sort of person you are, embrace it, and make sure you are doing work that makes the most of your natural tendency to be one sort of person or the other.

Why You Must Change–and How to Overcome Resistance to Change

What You Will Learn Two things act as the biggest obstacles to a better career and better life: resisting change and not taking necessary and relevant action. Resisting change can be highly damaging to your growth in your career and life. Instead of allowing your life to be controlled by external circumstances, choose to take action and bring about a change. Conduct a brutal self analysis if needed, to clear the blocks you have in your mind and to bring about change that is necessary.

Two of the largest impediments to us living better lives, having better careers and being everything we are capable of being are not changing, and not taking the action necessary to get us to a new place. The more consistent action you take, the more you can grow and the more you grow, the better you become. Since most people are motivated to improve and have better lives and careers, it stands to reason that in order to reach their full potential they also need to change, and in order to change they need to take action.

Many people do not change because they do not arouse enough desire within themselves to change. You need to become animated, angry and impassioned in order to take action and change. In order to overcome the lethargy that is keeping you from changing, you should always be aware of what will happen if you do not change and understand what will happen if you do not change, versus what will happen if you do change.

I am here to tell you right now that you need to change. If you do not change, you are going to live a very sorry life and have a very sorry career in contrast to the excellence that you are capable of. No matter how successful you are, and how well you may have done in your career and life until now, you have only reached 5% of all that you are capable of. My goal for you is for you to realize your full potential and tap into that other 95%. I have met people who were successfully able to tap into that other 95%, and the results they are able to achieve in their careers and lives are incredible. This is what you need to do.

Have you ever met someone who is much more successful than you, but who is not as smart, talented and so forth as you are? I meet people like this all the time. What these people have been able to do is recognize what must be done in order for them to change and to take action.

Several years ago I spent a day walking around a small southern town the day after a wedding. The wedding had been at a little inn in a sparsely populated beach community in the middle of nowhere, about 200 miles outside of Atlanta. Because everyone had to check out of the hotel by 12:00 the day after the wedding, we all decided to spend the day in the small town.

As we walked around that day we were struck by how depressing the place was. A good number of the stores were boarded up. People seemed genuinely “out of it” and the town was genuinely in very bad shape. There were abandoned factories all around the town.

The town had once been a giant “mill town” that made all sorts of fabrics and so forth, but apparently over the course of the past 25 years or so it had been completely decimated, as all of the jobs moved to China and the mills closed. None of the houses seemed to have been painted in a decade. The area was a mess. You could tell that the town had once been bustling, but that most of the people had left. The town was also quite isolated. There were no towns of more than 10,000 people or so for at least a few hours in any direction. I was with a guy who had spent a lot of his time living in the South, near this area and he said something that day, which I will never forget:

“What people always say about this town is that the only people left here are the people who are too stupid to leave. There are towns like this all over the South. For quite some time the stupid people have been breeding with other stupid people, and their stupid kids stay too. And the process repeats itself.”

This statement really struck me. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. This town was so dead that if you wanted a good job, an opportunity to get ahead and so forth, you most likely would have to be “stupid” to stick around. There are concrete reasons to stay in dying areas, such as family, investments in a house and so forth; however, if there is nothing going on there, your career is likely to be problematic and stagnant, if you choose to stay.

In fact, there are areas like this all over the United States. There are so few opportunities available and so few things going on in certain geographic areas that if you stick around, you are putting yourself in a very bad position, one in which you, and then your kids, are likely to have problems. For example, the graduation rate in Detroit high schools is around 25%. No matter how smart your children may be, there is a good chance that going to school in Detroit would not necessarily be in their best interest.

What interested me about the statement that the guy made about the small city in the South was the idea of the people who “stayed”. Staying in a bad situation is the equivalent of not changing–and not changing is the equivalent of not reaching your full potential. Not changing things when they are bad, or when you need to change, is among the most dangerous and problematical obstacles to you experiencing significant growth in your career and in your life.

What do you need to change?

In your life and in your career there is most certainly something you need to change:

• You might not be assertive enough.
• You might be in a bad job you need to get out of.
• You might be in a bad relationship.
• You might not be making the most of a skill you have.
• You might need to go to school and get training for a new job.
• You might need to start saving money.
• You might need to move somewhere to get a better job.
• You might need to lose weight.
• You might need to quit a destructive habit.
• You might need to spend more time with your kids.
• You might need to focus your efforts on one thing instead of multiple things.

Whoever you are and whatever stage of life you are in, I am sure that there is something that you need to change about yourself and your life. If you do not change there are going to be consequences. You are going to need to change if you do not want these consequences.

If you do change, there will also be positive consequences. There are several reasons that people do not change, and why you are not changing when you need to. Changing is among the most important things you can possibly do, and you need to understand why it is important to change:

People Say They Do Not Change Because “They Have Not Had the Chance To”. This is how most people approach the idea of change. Most people are victims in life. They spend their time waiting for circumstances to change–before they will change. For example, someone who is living in a town with no opportunity may make all sorts of excuses and justifications for remaining there, despite the fact there is no opportunity:

• They may say they are waiting to get out of lease so they can move.
• They may say they need to convince a boyfriend or girlfriend to move.
• They may say they need to save up money to move.

Someone who smokes cigarettes may blame not quitting on:

• a spouse who stresses them out,
• a boss they cannot stand,

…or something along these lines. You frequently hear people say things like:

“Once I get done with this difficult project, I will quit smoking.”

“She stresses me out so much that I cannot stop smoking.”

People who blame external circumstances on their refusal and inability to change are going through life as victims. This is something a great many people in the world do consistently, and it is extremely limiting– because the odds are very good that the world will never change. People often make others the cause of their conditions, instead of accepting responsibility for the conditions that they are in.

These rationalizations of why you are not changing could, conceivably, occur over your entire lifetime–and for most people they do. This is extremely scary and if you look at your world and your life, you are most likely going to see all sorts of examples of how you have justified and rationalized, blaming external circumstances for the sort of life you are living, the sort of career you have, and the other things that you are not changing. But external circumstances will never change. Instead, you must change.

Everyone knows people who have gone through relationship break ups, divorces and so forth. The thing about people who go through these sorts of break ups is that when you speak with them they rarely blame themselves for the problems. It is always about the other person. Have you ever heard someone say:

“The relationship is ending because I am a horrible person. I have done everything wrong.”

Instead, people find all sorts of reasons to blame the other person for the relationship ending. They find reasons why the other person is at fault. They rationalize all sorts of reasons why the other person needs to change. It is never about the person themselves, and it is almost always about the other person who created the problem.

When you are looking for another job, or expecting a better career, you should never just sit there wishing and wanting for something else to change. Wishing and wanting will never bring you the results you are seeking. Instead, you need to take action in order to make things change–if you really want things to change.

Justification, rationalization, wishing and wanting are all things that prevent change from occurring. You should never allow your life to be controlled by external circumstances and, instead, you should control your external circumstances.

In Order to Change You Need to Understand What Will Happen if You Change, and What Will Happen if You Do Not Change. One of the most effective methods for changing is to be brutally honest with yourself about what will happen if you do not change, and what will happen if you change.

When I finished my first year of middle school, I received pretty much all “Cs”. I did not do well at all. My father was traveling on business all summer and I remember receiving a letter from him. The letter said, “If you keep this up, you can expect a life of mediocrity, and you will never be good at anything.” The letter was a bit harsh, but it woke me up because my father showed me what would happen if I did not change. That line in that letter was something that I remembered for years, and it ultimately ended up changing the course of my life. You need to understand what the consequences for you will be if you do not change.

If you are currently in a job wherein there is no opportunity, and which you do not enjoy, you can easily understand what will happen if you do not change. The odds are that you will continue being unhappy and not earning the income you are capable of earning. In addition, you will constantly be in a situation wherein you are not making the most of your potential. Because you are unhappy in your job, other areas of your life may also be negatively affected, including your relationships. In order to deal with the stress of your job you may even abuse food or other substances, and this will shorten your life span. Doing something you do not enjoy may ultimately shorten your life span and make you unhappy in numerous respects. You may not be respected by others as much as you could be, and you certainly will not set an example for future generations of your family.

In contrast, if you make the decision to “change” and get a new job, find a new way of doing things and move forward, you may find that changing was not all that difficult. You may find a job that you enjoy and you may become happier. You may make more money. You may have much more satisfaction in your job. You may become a better mother or father. Your life and career will be improved dramatically by changing, and you will set a good example for the people around you.

Constantly being aware of what will happen if you change and what will happen if you do not change can benefit you tremendously. In fact, the more that you pursue change, the better off you will ultimately be in your life when change is necessary.

In Order to Change, You Need to Understand the “Blocks” That Are Keeping You From Changing. One of the most persistent problems that people have with change is that they self-impose blocks, which prevent them from changing. These blocks are incredibly serious and harmful to people–and we all have them. These blocks involve all sorts of beliefs about the “correct” way of doing things, the “polite way” to do things, and so forth. The more blocks that we have, the more problems we are likely to encounter in our careers and lives.

Nowhere are “blocks” more prevalent than when someone is looking for a job. In my experience, I have seen these blocks literally prevent people from getting jobs, and put them into the dumbest situations imaginable. I know of attorneys who used to make $150,000 a year, who have stupid blocks regarding how to search for jobs, and they are now are doing things like working in concession stands. I read stories every single day about people who state that they “cannot find jobs”, and they are doing nothing about this. The papers are full of stories each day about people having problems finding jobs.

There are many ways to get jobs:

• One way is to look at advertisements in the local newspaper.
• Another way is to look at a free job board.
• Another way is to use a recruiter.
• Another is to look at a subscription-based job board that consolidates jobs from different job boards, recruiter websites and employer websites, like EmploymentCrossing.com.
• Another way is to look at a subscription-based job board that consolidates jobs from employer websites, like Hound.com.
• Another way is to proactively use a service like EmploymentAuthority.com to do a targeted mass mailing to every single employer who might hire you in your geographic area (or in other geographic areas).
• Another way is to cold call employers.
• Another way is to stop by the offices of every employer in your geographic area and ask for an interview.
• Another way to stop by the offices of every major employer in your geographic area and offer to work for free, in order to show what good work you do.

If you look at this list, however, you will see that each method of getting a job is progressively more difficult for most people to do. For example, many people refuse to pay money to look for a job and therefore would not use a service like EmploymentCrossing or Hound. Other people are “loathe” to mass mail their résumé, and do not think this is “dignified” or something that they should do. Still others would refuse to ever cold call an employer, because they might believe that this makes them seem desperate. Further, almost everyone would refuse to stop by the offices of a major employer and ask for an interview, because they have all sorts of beliefs about how desperate this would make them look, how undignified it would seem and more.

The thing is, though, that as you go down this list of methods of looking for a job, each one becomes more and more effective. It is more effective to use a service that consolidates job listings, and charges to look at them, than it is to not use such a service. It more effective to mail out your résumé to employers, regardless of whether or not they are hiring, than it is to simply sit around and hope that something turns up. There are some differentiations in the effectiveness of each of these job search methods, depending upon your qualifications; however, for the most part, the methods of looking for jobs that work best are those that most people “block” themselves from doing, for one reason or another. Overcoming your psychological blocks is one of the greatest challenges you will face in your success.

Many people who are professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and others have a real aversion to selling things. Instead, they believe that they should be respected for their knowledge and that people should just automatically seek them out for their services. Most of these professionals have what I would call a block that keeps them from selling things. This block ultimately does them a lot of harm. Many of the most successful lawyers, plastic surgeons and others are people who have the ability to “promote” what they do, even if they are not necessarily the most skilled. These very successful people are the ones who have figured out how to overcome this particular block, which pertains to selling.

A block could involve something that has happened to you in the past that is still affecting you now. You may have been fiercely rejected by a certain type of person or company in the past, and, as a consequence, you now avoid these people or businesses. You may have failed when you tried something in the past, and now you avoid it at all costs. You need to understand that these blocks are something that hold you back and can make your life much more difficult and unfulfilled than it needs to be. These blocks will prevent you from taking action when you should.

In Order to Change You Need to Overcome Resistance. The final obstacle to changing is resistance. Resistance is something that prevents most people from ever changing. The moment most people come up against resistance, they give up, step back and do not try as hard. Or, sometimes they feel resistance where there really is no resistance.

Regardless of what you need to change, you are going to come up against resistance in changing. The only way you are going to be able to change is if you learn how to overcome this resistance. Most people never are able to overcome resistance and, consequently, they never change. If you are trying to lose weight, for example, you need to overcome an internal resistance to dieting and exercising. Similarly, if you are trying to become better at anything, you are going to most often face resistance in doing whatever it is you are trying to become better at.

The reason that most people do not end up reaching their full potential and changing is because they are not focused enough to overcome the resistance that they encounter. In order for you to truly make progress and take action, you need to develop focus. Focus overcomes resistance. Successful salespeople, for example, know that in order to sell most people it does not require only one appointment and one call. It may require eight or more calls to the sales prospect. However, the salesperson’s focus ultimately overcomes the resistance that the prospect has.

Most people give up. They do not persist. You need strategies and beliefs that will allow you to persist and persevere, so that you can change. The best strategy I know of is being focused, and this focus will help you overcome the resistance you face whenever you make an effort to begin changing.

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Nothing that is worthwhile is easy. You must learn to change now if you are going to fully realize the 95% of your higher capability, which, as of now has lay untapped.