You Need to Have Desire to Achieve Your Goals

In order for you to achieve the things you are capable of, you need to constantly be creating goals for yourself and creating a massive desire deep down to achieve these goals. There is nothing more important than having a desire deep down in you to achieve goals. Every single day you should have both long and short term goals that are fueled by desire. The larger your goals are, the greater your desire needs to be.

A wish is far different than a desire. Everybody has wishes, but wishes are meaningless without desire:

• I am sure every single freshman entering a college class each year wishes that s/he would get all “A’s”. However, only a small fraction of these people ever end up with all A’s. The people who get all A’s figure out how to make it happen. They work harder than most of their other classmates. They often take classes they know they will do well in. They push themselves to get the best results they possibly can, and get these sorts of grades because of the incredible effort they put in.
• Every single person wishes that they had all of the money they wanted to fulfill all of their dreams. However, only a small fraction of people ever have all the money they want. The people who do have all the money they want have a massive desire to get these results. This desire enables them to work more than others and to see opportunities where others see none.
• Most people wish that they could make a huge impact on the world by doing something positive. However, only a small fraction of people ever do this. Instead, they have no particular desire to do anything of major significance and just meander through life watching other people in the world who have managed to do great things. They may sit on the sidelines and criticize these people. They may watch others living lives from a distance. The people who are out there achieving great things are the ones who have the most desire.

You will not have the career that your are entitled to claim for yourself if you are only wishing for it. Wishes cannot give you what you are seeking. When you have a wish, however, that is backed by a desire, you will start to achieve what you are looking for because you will create opportunities for yourself and your desire will drive you to excell.

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice gets trapped in a wonderland and not knowing how to get out, she moves between here and there. One morning she reaches a crossroad. She stops at the crossroad, confused over which road to take. She looks around her for advice and sees a white cat sitting on a boulder enjoying the warmth from the rising sun.

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ questioned Alice.
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’
‘I don’t know where. . .’
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

This parable shows that without a desire and a goal you will just wander aimlessly through life. When you replace wishes with desire, then the map becomes clear. Rather than wandering aimlessly through life you will have a destination and the path toward your goal will always be in front of you.

When I was in college, on two separate occasions, different people that I was extremely competitive with announced that they were planning on going to the same law school. This story is not notable for one particular reason. It is instructive because of the way I reacted to this, and the lesson it taught me about desire.

The smartest guy I knew from my childhood was attending the University of Michigan when I ran into him one evening in a restaurant in Detroit. From the time I was around 5 years old until I graduated from elementary school, this guy had infuriated me to no end. We would always get the #1 and #2 grades on every test we took in each class we were in together. The problem was that no matter how hard I tried I would always be #2. If he was a 97, I would be a 96 or a 95. It happened for several years of my life. His name was Josh and his dad was a professor at a local college. He was a really smart kid that consistently did better than me in every course.

I had not seen Josh from the time I was 12 years old until I ran into him at that restaurant one evening. At the time we were both around 21. Josh announced to me that he was planning on applying to, and going to, the University of Virginia Law School. I have no idea why he had chosen this law school other than he told me he it was inexpensive compared to other schools. Josh was attending the University of Michigan at the time, and I was attending the University of Chicago. I had heard nothing about the University of Virginia Law School but the second he announced that he was planning on applying there, my radar went up and it immediately became something that I too decided I was interested in. I decided that if he was interested in attending this particular school, it must be a really good one. I felt the fire of competitiveness well up in me because I has spent a good portion of my boyhood competing with him. I was a couple of years away from being far enough along in college to apply to law schools, but at that moment I knew I had found a worthy desire and goal. Josh told me how hard the school was to get into and that it had been his dream to attend this school for several years. In that instant I started thinking that I should probably do whatever I could to attend this school as well.

When I got back to school my girlfriend introduced me to a friend of hers who was incredibly smart. He had acheived a perfect score on his LSAT’s and had some of the most incredible grades I had ever heard of anyone getting at the University of Chicago. My girlfriend and this individual had a strictly platonic relationship. However, I had been hearing for the past year of dating her how incredibly smart and talented this particular guy was. It was starting to piss me off a little. Since I had the experience of running into Josh a few months previously, I was understandably even more intrigued when this incredibly smart friend of my girlfriend announced that he too planned on going to the University of Virginia Law School. I was at a dinner with him and several other people, and everyone was sort of hanging on his words. Everyone seemed interested in what he was going to do. This guy was older than me by a few years and when it was time to apply to law schools, he got into the University of Virginia Law School and just about every other law school he applied to. But he chose the University of Virginia. For the next year or so I had to listen to my girlfriend talk about what a great law school this was. Between that and my competitor back in Michigan, it was all too much. I decided that I too was interested in this law school and became determined to do everything I could to get in.

At this particular point in my life it looked as if the last thing I should be doing was going to law school. I had been having a great time in the asphalt business during the summers, and was enjoying this particular line of work more than anything. In fact, I could not wait to get out of school each year so I could do asphalt work. But this particular goal energized me to no end.

When I first learned about this school I had probably a B+ average in school. Once I realized I would need almost all A’s if I stood a shot in hell of getting in this school, I started arranging my life so I got all A’s. I have no idea how I was able to do this until this day. Before taking various classes, I would call up the Dean of Admissions at the University of Virgina Law School and ask them if this was a good class to take. I think he was amused at me calling him, but they remembered me. As a third year college student I went to meet the Assistant Dean of Admissions when he came to a law school fair in downtown Chicago, and I chatted with him for a long time. I told my teachers that would be writing recommendations for me in the future that I wanted to go to this law school. I took classes from people who had gone to the college there. I did everything within my power to establish an affiliation with the school, even though I was very far away. What I was did was create an incredible desire to go to this school.

I even visited the school and spent a day attending classes. I did this on my own without an invitation from the school, and then wrote the school a letter telling them how important this experience had been to me. I dropped names in the letter of the students I met.

During my last year of college I wrote another 10 page, single spaced letter to the Assistant Dean of Admissions as to why I should be let into the school. I remember that I had the letter photocopied at Kinkos and when I picked up the letter there were other students working there who had read it. They were making fun of me and laughed when they gave it to me. However, what I had done was create an incredible desire to go to this school, and put everything I had behind this desire. I had even gotten a job in Washington DC my last year of college, so that I could live in Virginia to establish residence for a year if I did not get into the school initially (having residence in Virginia would have assisted me in getting into the school because there was a preference for in state students at the time). In summary, I did everything within my power to put myself in a position where I would get into the school, and when the time came to apply I was accepted despite not having test scores anywhere near what I should have had and some other factors that worked against me.

The point is that once you set goals for yourself you can achieve practically anything. You need to “get angry” and put some passion behind your goals in order to achieve them. In this particular instance, I used all of my competitive urges and directed them towards this school. I am very glad I did this in this particular instance, because there were a lot of really nice people at the school and attending has enriched my life immeasurably. Without this goal, however, I never would be where I am today. Without having made this goal an obsession I am 100% confident I never would have gotten into the school. I gave the school a filing cabinet of information about myself when I applied, and I am sure they too saw that I was obsessed. We want to be around people who like us.

I want your career and life to change. I want you to get obsessed and focused on a goal. This is the only conceivable way your career is going to go to the highest level possible. Find a goal that charges you up and go all out in achieving this goal. Create desire. Nothing happens without strong desire. If you are meandering in your life, everything will change if you get a strong desire.

Several years ago I was in Chicago visiting a recruiter from our firm there. My company was small at the time, employing around 6 or 7 people at most. I was a recruiter at the time, and enjoyed my job and was committed to it. But the idea of getting people jobs had not yet become an all consuming desire. A woman from the Chicago area had been calling me in Los Angeles asking me to help her with her job search for weeks. I told her that I would meet with her the next time I came to Chicago. The woman had been an attorney at Motorola for most of her career and had recently experienced a series of incredible tragedies. Her husband had just died of a heart attack while playing tennis. Her son was handicapped and her mother was dying in her house and was hooked up to respirators as she was living out her last days. Worst of all, Motorola had recently done a massive downsizing and eliminated her job. She had no savings and incredible expenses associated with taking care of her handicapped son.

I remember that I met her at the Sears Tower for coffee. She looked very professional, but in her face I could see a tremendous amount of pain. We talked for over an hour and she repeatedly asked me what I could do to help her. At the time, employing normal recruiting methods, there was absolutely nothing I could do to assist her in getting a job. The situation saddened me and made me feel like my life was meaningless and that I was a failure. Here was someone who wanted to work, who I could not help. It was an awful feeling and it made me feel in many respects that the profession of recruiting was not what it should be doing if I could not help every single person out there. I thought of my own mother who was also widowed by her second husband. I thought of all the people out there who want to work but cannot, and over the next several weeks my desire to help this woman and others turned into an obsession. I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to ensure that people who wanted to work could. I remember sitting with that woman like it was yesterday and how she cried. I remember how it was so hard not break down in tears and hug her.

While I am not telling you about this to sell services, over the next year I started companies such as Legal Authority (to assist attorneys with marketing themselves by direct mailing employers) and LawCrossing (which gathers every open job it can find on the Internet and puts these jobs in one place). Within one year I had increased the size of the company from 7 to over 100 people and it kept growing. I soon launched businesses like EmploymentCrossing (to gather jobs in every field) and EmploymentAuthority (to assist executives with mass mailing) because my desire to help people get jobs had become an obsession. I really became obsessed with what I am doing and still am to this day. I have become both loved and hated for my obsession. In business, I frequently do everything I can to push people out of my way who stand between me and this obsession. Simultaneously, I have done everything within my power to ensure I am getting people jobs.

I want people to know how to get jobs, not just from understanding how to search, but how to control their minds. I write about this daily. I read books faster than I can order them. I do teleseminars. I work on my own mind, so I can help others. My desire to get people jobs is a massive obsession. It is all I think about. I think about it 7 days a week, and I work seven days a week.

Has this been good for me? Yes. My life has meaning and I feel like I am accomplishing something of great significance. I want to work all the time to forward your goals and I frequently get up at 3:00 am, then 4:00am, then 5:00am turbocharged to go to work because I am so enthusiastic about trying to help you. I need to force myself to go back to sleep, so I can get a decent night’s rest. I think about people like the woman who could not find a job and what I can do to change that every day.

You need to have an all consuming desire for what you are trying to achieve. You need to find a desire which moves you. No matter how smart you are, no matter what has happened to you in your life, you can do great things if you put a massive desire behind your wishes. Wish big and create a desire, and your life and career will never be the same.

You Need to Bring a Singular Focus to Everything You Do

What makes a person really good at something? The answer to this question is identical to the reason for exceedingly high success in any profession.

There are people who are really good at finding jobs. People who are good at finding jobs bring an incredible level of focus to their search. This is the level of focus I want you to bring to your job search as well. In order to get the position you are seeking, you need to be focused and follow one very simple rule.

In order to be good at your job you need to be focused as well. No one becomes good at something and stays that way without focus. If you understand the rule I am about to share with you, you too can be at the very top of your chosen field.

Those Who Do One Thing Well and Those Who Do Many Things: The Fox and the Hedgehog. The Greek poet Archilochus wrote: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox” based on Archilochus’ quote analyzes the differences between foxes and hedgehogs. Berlin believed people can be classified as either foxes or hedgehogs.

In the fox and hedgehog parable, the fox is always trying to get the hedgehog. Day after day, the fox is in pursuit of the hedgehog, devising means to catch the hedgehog. The fox is, by all appearances, a highly intelligent, crafty and resourceful creature. Indeed, compared to the rather dull hedgehog, the fox appears to have every advantage. The hedgehog is a small, awkward animal that lives a simple life and spends his days taking care of his den and finding food. Each day, the fox tries a new scheme to catch the hedgehog and each time the hedgehog simply bundles up into a ball of sharp spikes—foiling the fox’s attempts.

Berlin believed foxes “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle.” As a consequence of this outlook, foxes “lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision.”

In contrast, Berlin believed hedgehogs “relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance….”

Jim Collins, a noted management theorist and a former professor at Stanford Business School, discusses the concept of the hedgehog and the fox based on Berlin’s famous essay in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Collins notes his conclusions formed from Berlin’s essay by Princeton professor Marvin Bressler during his interview with him:

“You know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and the division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’”

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand”? No, the hedgehogs are not simpletons. They have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.

Do you have any fox and hedgehog stories? As a young attorney, I spent approximately one year working almost exclusively for a partner at a world class law firm who never lost a case. The partner also had the reputation for burning out associates very quickly. While I could spend considerable time dissecting how this attorney operated, the simple fact is the only thing that mattered to this attorney professionally was ethically winning every case he took. Everything else was superfluous.

A case would generally start with this attorney being given a fact pattern which seemed insurmountable. These were the types of cases the attorney generally handled. The reaction of most attorneys would be to settle the case after a few short hours of research. But this attorney refused to give up. He kept pushing. He would question every single aspect of the case and the law. We pulled every legislative record necessary to determine if the law was being implemented the way it should be – even if there were 30-plus years of case law against him. He carried this fanatical focus and attention to detail to the extreme. This push could go on for months or even years.

After numerous months of researching the seemingly inconsequential—and questioning the truth—something would emerge that enabled this attorney to win the case. It always worked that way.

Another great attorney I know, who is considered one of the top lawyers in America, once told a client in my presence: “If I take this case, I will eat, sleep and drink this case. It is all I will think about.”

This is the essence of the hedgehog as I see it. Any person or group of people who achieve greatness in any calling generally do one thing and are focused on doing one thing. They do it the absolute best it can be done.

Many people and organizations go through their existence trying different things and pursuing different goals. Their thinking abilities in this regard are often flawed, in my opinion.

Truly stellar law firms and truly exceptional attorneys also tend to be hedgehogs. The firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, for example, has made its name doing essentially one thing. Conversely, the great majority of law firms in the country have far lower profits, but work in numerous areas of the law. Wachtell’s profits per partner are also higher than any other similarly sized firm in the world. The top partners in the best law firms also tend to be hedgehogs who do one thing really well. They are also quite focused on their careers. Few of these partners probably dreamed incessantly about going in-house when they were practicing, for example. They focused on the here and now and being the best at what they do.

When you search for a job, do one thing and do it well. At its core, the difference between people who are best at looking for and finding jobs can be related to the distinctions between the hedgehog and the fox. In order to really succeed in your job search, you need to be concerned about one thing and one thing only: Getting the best job possible for you. Everything else is superfluous.

In order to do what you do well, you cannot do multiple things at once. You cannot look for shortcuts and you simply should not do anything to which you are not 100% committed. You need to focus on what you do in a strong, singular way, blocking out all distractions. Once you do this everything else falls into place. In order to explain the process of being a hedgehog, I would like to tell you about something I love–legal recruiting.

At its highest level, legal recruiting is a very sophisticated and serious business. While the average legal recruiter makes less than $100,000 a year, there are a small handful of legal recruiters in the United States (less than five, I believe) who make well over $1,000,000 a year. These recruiters move around practice groups, important partners, some associates and are even instrumental in merging entire law firms. These recruiters can call managing partners of large national law firms and get through right away. As professionals, these recruiters are given a high degree of respect because they can influence the future of entire law firms.

There is a contrast to recruiting at its very highest level, however. People go into legal recruiting for a variety of reasons. When I started legal recruiting several years ago, it was my perception that the great majority of legal recruiters were not bringing the high level of focus needed to truly excel in this business. As recently as 2000, what was once ranked as one of the top legal recruiting firms in the United States did not even have a formal office. Moreover, I would frequently reach my recruiter in the middle of the work day on her cell phone when she was doing trivial things such as buying a dress.

There also appeared to be no organization in the profession and few legal recruiters even truly knew the type of work their candidates did. Most recruiters did in-house placements, law firm placements and would even place legal secretaries and paralegals. Some recruiters also placed executives in corporations. In short, these recruiters would do whatever they could to make a fee.

When I questioned these recruiters about why they did this, their response was generally that they believed the money was good and they were “people persons.”

This is not to say all recruiters are like this. However, for the most part, the legal recruiting profession has not benefited from the high degree of focus and organization that characterizes many other professions. In addition, I believe there is somewhat of a bias in this country—which is largely a product of the fact most attorneys are so solidly middle class—that makes most attorneys believe they must practice law to have respectability in society. Anything less would be extraordinarily wrong to these sorts of people.

Accordingly, it’s not really a surprise that many legal recruiters went into the business feeling that they’d somehow failed in the practice of law. Indeed, one of the first legal recruiters on record went to an unaccredited law school in California and could not pass the bar exam even after numerous attempts. Accordingly, the job of a legal recruiter—even at its outset—was associated with failing.

I am not faulting the way this system works. Indeed, this is generally how most of the world works. This same analogy could probably be carried over to law firms. Not every young attorney is good enough to get into Wachtell. Not every young attorney is good enough to get into an AmLaw 100 law firm. Some attorneys do personal injury law—others do not. This sort of class system is all around us and pervades the profession.

The lesson I learned from talking to recruiters while practicing law is that very few were committed to practicing the art of legal recruiting like I had been taught to practice law. Far from being true advocates for their candidates and pushing their expertise—and questioning everything about the attorney job search process to reach true levels of excellence—most recruiters were simply happy to be doing something they enjoyed and did not regard as particularly taxing.

When I started legal recruiting, I worked seven days a week at it. I routinely started work at 5:30 in the morning and worked until at least 10 or 11 p.m. seven days a week. I am often so happy when my candidates get offers I get choked up. This business has invested everything it has—and will continue to do so—into making BCG Attorney Search the best it can be. We have attempted to translate the vision of the way recruiting should be throughout the country. Being exceedingly focused on what we do, and what BCG Attorney Search does, is the only way I feel recruiting should be done.

This is how the BCG legal recruiters think about their work. Doing our jobs to the absolute best of our ability is our single-minded obsession. This is the only thing that matters and it is something we take extremely seriously. Here at BCG Attorney Search, we practice legal recruiting the way we were taught to practice law.

The idea that legal recruiting is a break from the practice of law is about the most foreign concept imaginable. A good recruiter has chosen the recruiting industry as his or her profession. It is not a safety catch — it is the focus of their career. For them, recruiting is not just a unique alternative to practicing law, but an alternative just as challenging and demanding as any in the legal profession. It is a place in the legal community to be innovative and to work at the highest level of the profession. It is this drive that pervades their work on a daily basis. To a good recruiter, recruiting is a powerful and essential industry in its own right.

A good legal recruiter knows the market. In Los Angeles County alone, there are over 3,000 law firms. There are an additional 5,000+ companies that hire attorneys. These numbers grow exponentially as one covers the United States. In order for a recruiter to get a candidate a job, they need to know where the jobs are and where their candidates are likely to fit well. This is an extraordinarily difficult task. Indeed, the knowledge a recruiter must have at their disposal is profound.

When you think about how most recruiters operate, you may wonder how a recruiter in Los Angeles could possibly monitor over 3,000 law firms. This is especially true if the recruiter also makes in-house placements. How on earth could a recruiting firm comprised of maybe just two or three individuals monitor all this activity? Meanwhile, firm names change, people leave their jobs, and so forth. Accordingly, the answer to this question is that most legal recruiters do not.

Because most legal recruiters do not monitor the entire spectrum of the market, they generally monitor only a few firms. The firms they monitor are also, incidentally, ones with which you’re familiar. In addition, they also have a few key relationships.

At BCG Attorney Search, we divide the United States into numerous regions and station recruiters in those regions. We believe it would be impossible for a legal recruiter to know what is going on in different areas of the United States at one time.

To be good at your job and your job search you need to bring a singular focus to it. The lesson here—and the lesson of the fox and the hedgehog—as I see it, is you need to do what you do as well as it possibly can be done. This is also the lesson of BCG Attorney Search and our present and ongoing success. This is also the lesson you need to understand in your own job search and career as well. The more focused you are the more successful you will be.

The Importance of Being Well-Liked in Your Job

One of the most persistent problems people in the work world have is their failure to collaborate with, and learn from, their co-workers. Several factors are necessary for success in any job and in advancing your career. Being well liked and collaborating are two of the more important factors.

This is at odds with many people’s personalities. Salespeople thrive on competition and being number one. Attorneys, accountants, and engineers, among many others, were once quite competitive at academics and spent a lot of time studying to get an edge over their peers. In some work environments, many people work alone.

Regardless of your job, you are part of a social dynamic inside your organization. Beyond any other single thing – including your work product – the largest obstacle to anyone’s success is a social dynamic turning against you. If your co-workers do not like you, word will spread and your career in your organization may be doomed. If a group of superiors do not like you, the same thing will occur.

Being well-liked in a work environment is an important thing in any job. If you are not liked by your peers, your superiors may think clients will not like you either. If superiors do not like you, you will not get a lot of work. If you are isolated from others within your organization, it is far easier to let you go in times of economic uncertainty. You need to always be in a position where others want to do you a favor and help you out.

There are several keys to being well-liked at work. The most important of these are (1) not getting actively involved in cliques, (2) never saying anything bad about any co-worker, no matter what, (3) making your superiors feel important, (4) listening (do not talk too much) and asking about others, (5) participating in ”group solidarity” activities, and (6) keeping your head down and smiling.

One of the most dangerous things you can do is get actively involved in cliques at work. While there is nothing wrong with being part of a social group, work is likely the wrong place to do this.

First, cliques, like all social organizations, go through their ups and downs. A unifying trait of cliques is the cohesive bond that’s created due to a shared set of circumstances. One of the most unifying types of circumstances cliques experience is when bad things happen to their members. When bad things happen to the members of a clique, the clique tends to come together and unite against the ”negative outside forces” that created the bad circumstances. Rest assured bad things will happen to members of your clique inside virtually any organization.

In most companies and organizations, approximately 50 percent of employees will leave or be fired within the first two to three years. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, many people leave under bad circumstances because they have done something wrong. In addition, a lot of these people will be angry with the organization and its superiors, and the superiors will know they are angry.

If you or a group of very close peers have been seen spending a great deal of time with someone who leaves under bad circumstances, the perception will be that you are angry as well. The firm may even believe you are thinking of leaving for the same reasons. You do not want to be associated with this. You will be perceived as being on the wrong team.

Also, if you are involved in a clique there will be others who, by the very existence of your clique, will feel excluded. They may not be invited to certain lunches, may hear about you doing things outside of work with other clique members, and may walk by the office and see you and other clique members speaking. This will make them feel excluded. When people feel excluded, they generally have a response.

The most typical response inside organizations is the people who feel excluded may form their own clique. Alternatively, they may decide that, since your group is not interested in them (rightly or wrongly), their best course of action is to work harder, kiss up to superiors more, or look better than members of your clique in some way.

Finally, most of the people who advance were never part of cliques. The reason? They did not have the time! Most of the highest-ranking employees in organizations worked extremely hard when they were younger to the point where they had figurative blinders on to everything and everyone that was not relevant to their advancement. Most have very little to fall back on in their professional life other than their work product. Moreover, many of these higher-level people realized cliques were bad news and did not participate in them for that reason.

People advance inside companies because they are extremely committed and never want to telegraph any sort of message that would question their commitment to the organization. When you join a clique, you immediately communicate the message you are not like your superiors were when they were in your shoes.

In addition to not joining cliques, you should never say anything bad about your coworkers, no matter what. In most organizations your interaction with others will invariably involve rumors, statements about other people’s actions, and interesting stories about events in your co-workers’ personal lives. In addition, the professional competence of other associates will be frequently discussed among groups of people.

The reaction of most people is to listen intently and contribute their own negative feelings about the individual in the story. After all, relaying another’s misfortune may give you the sense you are doing very well. Furthermore, most people love telling these sorts of stories and sharing rumors with each other. There are numerous problems with this.

First, you have no way of knowing if the person you’re talking about will eventually hear what you’ve said. If word gets back to that person, he or she will be upset with you. They may be eagerly waiting for you to mess up so they can tell others about your misfortune. You never know. If you are able to avoid this, when you do something that merits gossip, others will be less likely to speak negatively about you.

Second, you do not look like a nice person when you engage in gossip. In fact, to most individuals with serious leadership potential you will look very weak. The weakest people are typically those most interested in gossip. The next time you are in a group, watch how the negative people react to gossip. Oftentimes they will even smile because they are so happy someone else has something negative associated with them. Do not allow yourself to fall into this trap. If you do not engage in gossip, others will respect you more.

Third, be extremely careful when saying negative things about others in your organization, especially subordinates. If you engage in bad mouthing your subordinates, they will find out. If you upset your subordinates, they can create a tremendous amount of difficulty for you in the organization. Most attorneys, for example, make mistakes that staff members cover for every week. Upset a legal staff member and you can kiss that shielding goodbye. They will ensure as many people know about your errors as possible. More importantly, they can tell partners other associates do not like you and more. They can do this in a manner that makes them look good and you bad. You do not want to fight this war. Whatever field you may be in, it is never a good idea to upset your staff members.

You should also consider the feelings of your superiors. Your superiors hired you because they need you to work. They simply cannot do all the work themselves. That is why your job exists. You help them make money and make them look good. Everyone in this world, including you, wants to feel important. You need to make your superiors feel like they are important. If you do this, they will like you and will reward you. It is that simple.

You need to be a soldier, not a general. Soldiers carry out orders and do not question them. Generals give orders, hold authority, and are rewarded for strategy and a job well done. When you work for a superior, you want him or her to be rewarded for your excellent work. You will, in turn, be rewarded.

One of the biggest mistakes young people make in many organizations is presuming they are generals who have a great deal of latitude with decisions and whose advice regarding strategy and more is welcome at any time. It is not. No matter how smart you are, if you are dealing with someone who has substantially more experience than you they probably have a reason for doing things the way they do.

I realize how this language sounds. Nevertheless, when you are younger, your job is to make your superiors look good. You do not make your superiors look good if you constantly question their motives, don’t follow orders, and create your own protocol. You’ll have ample time to be a general later. Before you are a general, though, you must be a soldier.

Your superiors, like you, face a lot of people who make them feel unimportant, whether it’s one of their own superiors, a judge, or a spouse. Your superiors want to surround themselves with people who make them feel good. If the method of advancing to higher levels is a secret to you, I will tell you how it works. Just like you surround yourself in your personal life with people who make you feel good, so too do your superiors in their professional lives. When they like people, they want to help them. Being well-liked by superiors requires that you make them feel important.

It is possible to figure out how to accomplish this by listening. You need to listen to your superiors and coworkers. It is amazing how most of us really like people who ask us about ourselves. People love to talk about themselves. To most of us, we are the most interesting people in the world. Most of the smartest people I have ever encountered are individuals who do a lot of listening and ask others about themselves. Moreover, if you do a lot of listening, you can learn a tremendous amount and grow. Avoid the temptation to talk about yourself.

Very few people take the time to listen to others. If you listen to others and their stories they will like you better. They will also think you are interesting, even if they do all the talking. Think about the people you find interesting. Most likely they are the ones who let you talk about yourself the most.

You should never volunteer a lot of information about yourself or your personal life. Unless you are somehow scandalous or someone with remarkable personality traits, very few people care to listen to what you have to say anyway. I hate to say this, but it is largely true.

You can learn a lot from listening. The more you listen, the more you learn and the more you can help your career. No matter the size of your organization, if you listen you will learn far more than you could on your own. This knowledge will greatly help your career.

To gain the best knowledge you need to spend time with the right people. You need to go to your organization’s parties. You need to be there whenever the organization does something as a group. This is essential. If you are not there, you will telegraph the message that you do not like your co-workers. Go to company functions.

Finally, keep your head down and smile. One of the most remarkable things I ever witnessed was an election in an organization of which I was a part. It came time for the organization to elect a president, and there were several candidates. The problem was, each of the candidates was part of a particular faction of the organization and had enemies. The person who ultimately won was never involved in any organizational conflict, was involved very little overall, and had the fewest friends within the organization. However, the person participated in the organization’s activities, had several acquaintances in the organization, never said anything bad about anyone, and never participated in gossip. This person won the election by a landslide.

And so it is with most organizations. The people who advance are most often the same as this individual. To advance, you need to be non-confrontational and well-liked and keep out of trouble. The best way to do this is to keep your head down, do good work, and be associated with making people feel good. If you do this, and nothing more, you will have a lot of stability in any organization.

Doing a job well is about more than the quality of your work. It is about how well others like you. A discussion about being well liked and what it involves could go on and on. Certainly, a course in human relations could be much more involved than the little we have touched on here. If you follow the above rules, though, you should do just fine.

Character-Building Thought Power

In his book, Character Building Thought Power, Ralph Waldo Trine draws a clear distinction between good and bad habits. In the process he raises questions as to whether we have control over habit-forming and character-building, or is it just a matter of chance. This book is extremely thought provoking and a ‘must-read’. Enjoy it.

–Harrison

Character-Building Thought Power

By Ralph Waldo Trine

The Book

UNCONSCIOUSLY we are forming habits every moment of our lives. Some are habits of a desirable nature; some are those of a most undesirable nature. Some, though not so bad in themselves, are exceedingly bad in their cumulative effects, and cause us at times much loss, much pain and anguish, while their opposites would, on the contrary, bring as much peace and joy, as well as a continually increasing power. Have we it within our power to determine at all times what types of habits shall take form in our lives? In other words, is habit-forming, character-building, a matter of mere chance, or have we it within our own control? We have, entirely and absolutely. “I will be what I will to be,” can be said and should be said by every human soul.

After this has been bravely and determinedly said, and not only said, but fully inwardly realized, something yet remains. Something remains to be said regarding the great law underlying habit-forming, character-building; for there is a simple, natural, and thoroughly scientific method that all should know. A method whereby old, undesirable, earth-binding habits can be broken, and new, desirable, heaven lifting habits can be acquired, a method whereby life in part or in its totality can be changed, provided one is sufficiently in earnest to know and, knowing it, to apply the law.

Thought is the force underlying all. And what do we mean by this? Simply this: Your every act – every conscious act – is preceded by a thought. Your dominating thoughts determine your dominating actions. In the realm of our own minds we have absolute control, or we should have, and if at any time we have not, then there is a method by which we can gain control, and in the realm of the mind become thorough masters. In order to get to the very foundation of the matter, let us look to this for a moment. For if thought is always parent to our acts, habits, character, life, then it is first necessary that we know fully how to control our thoughts.

Here let us refer to that law of the mind which is the same as is the law in Connection with the reflex nerve system of the body, the law which says that whenever one does a certain thing in a certain way it is easier to do the same thing in the same way the next time, and still easier the next, and the next, and the next, until in time it comes to pass that no effort is required, or no effort worth speaking of; but on the opposite would require the effort. The mind carries with it the power that perpetuates its own type of thought, the same as the body carries with it through the reflex nerve system the power which perpetuates and makes continually easier its own particular acts. Thus a simple effort to control one’s thoughts, a simple setting about it, even if at first failure is the result, and even if for a time failure seems to be about the only result, will in time, sooner or later, bring him to the point of easy, full, and complete control. Each one, then, can grow the power of determining, controlling his thought, the power of determining what types of thought he shall and what types he shall not entertain. For let us never part in mind with this fact, that every earnest effort along any line makes the end aimed at just a little easier for each succeeding effort, even if, as has been said, apparent failure is the result of the earlier efforts. This is a case where even failure is success, for the failure is not in the effort, and every earnest effort adds an increment of power that will eventually accomplish the end aimed at. We can, then, gain the full and complete power of determining what character, what type of thoughts we entertain.

Shall we now give attention to some two or three concrete cases? Here is a man, the cashier of a large mercantile establishment, or cashier of a bank. In his morning paper he reads of a man who has become suddenly rich, has made a fortune of half a million or a million dollars in a few hours through speculation on the stock market. Perhaps he has seen an account of another man who has done practically the same thing lately. He is not quite wise enough, however, to comprehend the fact that when he reads of one or two cases of this kind he could find, were he to look into the matter carefully, one or two hundred cases of men who have lost all they had in the same way. He thinks, however, that he will be one of the fortunate ones. He does not fully realize that there are no short cuts to wealth honestly made. He takes a part of his savings, and as is true in practically all cases of this kind, he loses all that he has put in, Thinking now that he sees why he lost, and that had he more money he would be able to get back what he has lost, and perhaps make a handsome sum in addition, and make it quickly, the thought comes to him to use some of the funds he has charge of. In nine cases out of ten, if not ten cases in every ten, the results that inevitably follow this are known sufficiently well to make it unnecessary to follow him farther.

Where is the man’s safety in the light of what we have been considering? Simply this: the moment the thought of using for his own purpose funds belonging to others enters his mind, if he is wise he will instantly put the thought from his mind. If he is a fool he will entertain it. In the degree in which he entertains it, it will grow upon him; it will become the absorbing thought in his mind; it will finally become master of his will power, and through rapidly succeeding steps, dishonor, shame, degradation, penitentiary, remorse will be his. It is easy for him to put the thought from his mind when it first enters; but as he entertains it, it grows into such proportions that it becomes more and more difficult for him to put it from his mind; and by and by it becomes practically impossible for him to do it. The light of the match, which but a little effort of the breath would have extinguished at first, has imparted a flame that is raging through the entire building, and now it is almost if not quite impossible to conquer it.

Shall we notice another concrete case? A trite case, perhaps, but one in which we can see how habit is formed, and also how the same habit can be unformed. Here is a young man, he may be the son of poor parents, or he may be the son of rich parents; one in the ordinary ranks of life, or one of high social standing, whatever that means. He is good hearted, one of good impulses generally speaking, a good fellow. He is out with some companions, companions of the same general type. They are out for a pleasant evening, out for a good time. They are apt at times to be thoughtless, even careless. The suggestion is made by one of the company, not that they get drunk, no, not at all; but merely that they go and have something to drink together. The young man whom we first mentioned, wanting to be genial, scarcely listens to the suggestion that comes into his inner consciousness that it will be better for him not to fall in with the others in this. He does not stop long enough to realize the fact that the greatest strength and nobility of character lies always in taking a firm stand on the aide of the right, and allow himself to be influenced by nothing that will weaken this stand. He goes, therefore, with his companions to the drinking place. With the same or with other companions this is repeated now and then; and each time it is repeated his power of saying “No” is gradually decreasing. In this way he has grown a little liking for intoxicants, and takes them perhaps now and then by himself. He does not dream, or in the slightest degree realize, what way he is tending, until there comes a day when he awakens to the consciousness of the fact that he hasn’t the power nor even the impulse to resist the taste which has gradually grown into a minor form of craving for intoxicants. Thinking, however, that he will be able to stop when he is really in danger of getting into the drink habit, he goes thoughtlessly and carelessly on. We will pass over the various intervening steps and come to the time when we find him a confirmed drunkard. It is simply the same old story told a thousand or even a million times over.

He finally awakens to his true condition; and through the shame, the anguish, the degradation, and the want that comes upon him he longs for a return of the days when he was a free man. But hope has almost gone from his life. It would have been easier for him never to have begun, and easier for him to have stopped before he reached his present condition; but even in his present condition, be it the lowest and the most helpless and hopeless that can be imagined, he has the power to get out of it and be a free man once again. Let us see. The desire for drink comes upon him again. If he entertains the thought, the desire, he is lost again. His only hope, his only means of escape is this: the moment, aye, the very instant the thought comes to him, if he will put it out of his mind he will thereby put out the little flame of the match. If he entertains the thought the little flame will communicate itself until almost before he is aware of it a consuming fire is raging, and then effort is almost useless. The thought must be banished from the mind the instant it enters; dalliance with it means failure and defeat, or a fight that will be indescribably fiercer than it would be if the thought is ejected at the beginning.

And here we must say a word regarding a certain great law that we may call the “law of indirectness.” A thought can be put out of the mind easier and more successfully, not by dwelling upon it, not by, attempting to put it out directly, but by throwing the mind on to some other object by putting some other object of thought into the mind. This may be, for example, the ideal of full and perfect self-mastery, or it may be something of a nature entirely distinct from the thought which presents itself, something to which the mind goes easily and naturally. This will in time become the absorbing thought in the mind, and the danger is past. This same course of action repeated will gradually grow the power of putting more readily out of mind the thought of drink as it presents itself, and will gradually grow the power of putting into the mind those objects of thought one most desires. The result will be that as time passes the thought of drink will present itself less and less, and when it does present itself it can be put out of the mind more easily each succeeding time, until the time comes when it can be put out without difficulty, and eventually the time will come when the thought will enter the mind no more at all.

Still another case. You may be more or less of an irritable nature naturally, perhaps, provoked easily to anger. Someone says something or does something that you dislike, and your first impulse is to show resentment and possibly to give way to anger. In the degree that you allow this resentment to display itself, that you allow yourself to give way to anger, in that degree will it become easier to do the same thing when any cause, even a very slight cause, presents itself. It will, moreover, become continually harder for you to refrain from it, until resentment, anger, and possibly even hatred and revenge become characteristics of your nature, robbing it of its sunniness, its charm, and its brightness for all with whom you come in contact.

If, however, the instant the impulse to resentment and anger arises, you check it then and there, and throw the mind on to some other object of thought, the power will gradually grow itself of doing this same thing more readily, more easily, as succeeding like causes present themselves, until by and by the time will come when there will be scarcely anything that can irritate you, and nothing that can impel you to anger; until by and by a matchless brightness and charm of nature and disposition will become habitually yours, a brightness and charm you would scarcely think possible today. And so we might take up case after case, characteristic after characteristic, habit after habit. The habit of faultfinding and its opposite are grown in identically the same way; the characteristic of jealousy and its opposite; the characteristic of fear and its opposite. In this same way we grow either love or hatred; in this way we come to take a gloomy, pessimistic view of life, which objectifies itself in a nature, a disposition of this type, or we grow that sunny, hopeful, cheerful, buoyant nature that brings with it so much joy and beauty and power for ourselves, as well as so much hope and inspiration and joy for all the world.

There is nothing more true in connection with human life than that we grow into the likeness of those things we contemplate. Literally and scientifically and necessarily true is it that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The “is” part is his character. His character is the sum total of his habits. His habits have been formed by· his conscious acts; but every conscious act is, as we have found, preceded by a thought. And so we have it – thought on the one hand, character, life, and destiny on the other. And simple it becomes when we bear in mind that it is simply the thought of the present moment, and the next moment when it is upon us, and then the next, and so on through all time.

One can in this way attain to whatever ideals he would attain to. Two steps are necessary: first, as the days pass, to form one’s ideals; and second, to follow them continually, whatever may arise, wherever they may lead him. Always remember that the great and strong character is the one who is ever ready to sacrifice the present pleasure for the future good. He who will thus follow his highest ideals as they present themselves to him day after day, year after year, will find that as Dante, following his beloved from world to world, finally found her at the gates of Paradise, so he will find himself eventually at the same gates. Life is not, we may say, for mere passing pleasure, but for the highest unfoldment that one can attain to, the noblest character that one can grow, and for the greatest service that one can render to all mankind. In this, however, we will find the highest pleasure, for in this the only real pleasure lies. He who would find it by any short cuts, or by entering upon any other paths, will inevitably find that his last state is always worse than his first; and if he proceed upon paths other than these he will find that he will never find real and lasting pleasure at all.

The question is not, “What are the conditions in our lives?” but, “How do we meet the conditions that we find there?” And whatever the conditions are, it is unwise and profitless to look upon them, even if they are conditions that we would have otherwise, in the attitude of complaint, for complaint will bring depression, and depression will weaken and possibly even kill the spirit that would engender the power that would enable us to bring into our lives an entirely new set of conditions.

In order to be concrete, even at the risk of being personal, I will say that in my own experience there have come at various times into my life circumstances and conditions that I gladly would have run from at the time—conditions that caused at the time humiliation and shame and anguish of spirit. But invariably, as sufficient time has passed, I have been able to look back and see clearly the part that every experience of the type just mentioned had to play in my life. I have seen the lessons it was essential for me to learn; and the result is that now I would not drop a single one of these experiences from my life, humiliating and hard to bear as they were at the time; no, not for the world. And here is also a lesson I have learned: whatever conditions are in my life today that are not the easiest and most agreeable, and whatever conditions of this type all coming time may bring, I will take them just as they come, without complaint, without depression, and meet them in the wisest possible way; knowing that they are the best possible conditions that could be in my life at the time, or otherwise they would not be there; realizing the fact that, although I may not at the time see why they are in my life, although I may not see just what part they have to play, the time will come, and when it comes I will see it all, and thank God for every condition just as it came.

Each one is so apt to think that his own conditions, his own trials or troubles or sorrows, or his own struggles, as the case may be, are greater than those of the great mass of mankind, or possibly greater than those of any one else in the world. He forgets that each one has his own peculiar trials or troubles or sorrows to bear, or struggles in habits to overcome, and that his is but the common lot of all the human race. We are apt to make the mistake in this — in that we see and feel keenly our own trials, or adverse conditions, or characteristics to be overcome, while those of others we do not see so clearly, and hence we are apt to think that they are not at all equal to our own. Each has his own problems to work out. Each must work out his own problems. Each must grow the insight that will enable him to see what the causes are that have brought the unfavorable conditions into his life; each must grow the strength that will enable him to face these conditions, and to set into operation forces that will bring about a different set of conditions. We may be of aid to one another by way of suggestion, by way of bringing to one another a knowledge of certain higher laws and forces — laws and forces that will make it easier to do that which we would do. The doing, however, must be done by each one for himself. And so the way to get out of any conditioning we have got into, either knowingly or inadvertently, either intentionally or unintentionally, is to take time to look the conditions squarely in the face, and to find the law whereby they have come about. And when we have discovered the law, the thing to do is not to rebel against it, not to resist it, but to go with it by working in harmony with it. If we work in harmony with it, it will work for our highest good, and will take us wheresoever we desire. If we oppose it, if we resist it, if we fail to work in harmony with it, it will eventually break us to pieces. The law is immutable in its workings. Go with it, and it brings all things our way; resist it, and it brings suffering, pain, loss, and desolation.

But a few days ago I was talking with a lady, a most estimable lady living on a little New England farm of some five or six acres. Her husband died a few years ago, a good-hearted, industrious man, but one who spent practically all of his earnings in drink. When he died the little farm was unpaid for, and the wife found herself without any visible means of support, with a family of several to care for. Instead of being discouraged with what many would have called her hard lot, instead of rebelling against the circumstances in which she found herself, she faced the matter bravely, firmly believing that there were ways by which she could manage, though she could not see them clearly at the time. She took up her burden where she found it, and went bravely forward. For several years she has been taking care of summer boarders who come to that part of the country, getting up regularly, she told me, at from half-past three to four o’clock in the morning, and working until ten o’clock each night. In the winter time, when this means of revenue is cut off, she has gone out to do nursing in the country round about. In this way the little farm is now almost paid for; her children have been kept in school, and they are now able to aid her to a greater or less extent. Through it all she has entertained no fears nor forebodings; she has shown no rebellion of any kind. She has not kicked against the circumstances which brought about the conditions in which she found herself, but she has put herself into harmony with the law that would bring her into another set of conditions. And through it all, she told me, she has been continually grateful that she has been able to work, and that whatever her own circumstances have been, she has never yet failed to find some one whose circumstances were still a little worse than hers, and for whom it was possible for her to render some little service.

Most heartily she appreciates the fact, and most grateful is she for it, that the little home is now almost paid for, and soon no more of her earnings will have to go out in that channel. The dear little home, she said, would be all the more precious to her by virtue of the fact that it was finally hers through her own efforts. The strength and nobility of character that have come to her during these years, the sweetness of disposition, the sympathy and care for others, her faith in the final triumph of all that is honest and true and pure and good, are qualities that thousands and hundreds of thousands of women, yes, of both men and women, who are apparently in better circumstances in life, can justly envy. And should the little farm home be taken away tomorrow, she has gained something that a farm of a thousand acres could not buy. By going about her work in the way she has gone about it the burden of it all has been lightened, and her work has been made truly enjoyable.

Let us take a moment to see how these same conditions would have been met by a person of less wisdom, one not so far-sighted as this dear, good woman has been. For a time possibly her spirit would have been crushed. Fears and forebodings of all kinds would probably have taken hold of her, and she would have felt that nothing that she could do would be of any avail. Or she might have rebelled against the agencies, against the law which brought about the conditions in which she found herself, and she might have become embittered against the world, and gradually also against the various people with whom she came in contact. Or again, she might have thought that her efforts would be unable to meet the circumstances, and that it was the duty of someone to lift her out of her difficulties. In this way no progress at all would have been made towards the accomplishment of the desired results, and continually she would have felt more keenly the circumstances in which she found herself, because there was nothing else to occupy her mind. In this way the little farm would not have become hers, she would not have been able to do anything for others, and her nature would have become embittered against everything and everybody.

True it is, then, not, “What are the conditions in one’s life?” but, “How does he meet the conditions that he finds there?” This will determine all. And if at any time we are apt to think that our own lot is about the hardest there is, and if we are able at any time to persuade ourselves that we can find no one whose lot is just a little harder than ours, let us then study for a little while the character Pompilia, in Browning’s poem and after studying it, thank God that the conditions in our life are so favorable; and then set about with a trusting and intrepid spirit to actualize the conditions that we most desire.

Thought is at the bottom of all progress or retrogression, of all success or failure, of all that is desirable or undesirable in human life. The type of thought we entertain both creates and draws conditions that crystallize about it, conditions exactly the same in nature as is the thought that gives them form. Thoughts are forces, and each creates of its kind, whether we realize it or not. The great law of the drawing power of the mind, which says that like creates like, and that like attracts like, is continually working in every human life, for it is one of the great immutable laws of the universe. For one to take time to see clearly the things he would attain to, and then to hold that ideal steadily and continually before his mind, never allowing faith — his positive thought-forces — to give way to or to be neutralized by doubts and fears, and then to set about doing each day what his hands find to do, never complaining, but spending the time that he would otherwise spend in complaint in focusing his thought-forces upon the ideal that his mind has built, will sooner or later bring about the full materialization of that for which he sets out. There are those who, when they begin to grasp the fact that there is what we may term a “science of thought,” who, when they begin to realize that through the instrumentality of our interior, spiritual, thought-forces we have the power of gradually molding the everyday conditions of life as we would have them, in their early enthusiasm are not able to see results as quickly as they expect and are apt to think, therefore, that after all there is not very much in that which has but newly come to their knowledge. They must remember, however, that in endeavoring to overcome an old habit or to grow a new habit, everything cannot be done all at once.

In the degree that we attempt to use the thought-forces do we continually become able to use them more effectively. Progress is slow at first, more rapid as we proceed. Power grows by using, or, in other words, using brings a continually increasing power. This is governed by law the same as are all things in our lives, and all things in the universe about us. Every act and advancement made by the musician is in full accordance with law. No one commencing the study of music can, for example, sit down to the piano and play the piece of a master at the first effort. He must not conclude, however, nor does he conclude, that the piece of the master cannot be played by him, or, for that matter, by anyone. He begins to practice the piece. The law of the mind that we have already noticed comes to his aid, whereby his mind follows the music more readily, more rapidly, and more surely each succeeding time, and there also comes into operation and to his aid the law underlying the action of the reflex nerve system of the body, which we have also noticed, whereby his fingers co-ordinate their movements with the movements of his mind more readily, more rapidly, and more accurately each succeeding time; until by and by the time comes when that which he stumbles through at first, that in which there is no harmony, nothing but discord, finally reveals itself as the music of the master, the music that thrills and moves masses of men and women. So it is in the use of the thought-forces. It is the reiteration, the constant reiteration of the thought that grows the power of continually stronger thought-focusing, and that finally brings manifestation.

There is character-building not only for the young but for the old as well. And what a difference there is in elderly people! How many grow old gracefully, and how many grow old in ways of quite a different nature. There is a sweetness and charm that combine for attractiveness in old age the same as there is something that cannot be described by these words. Some grow continually more dear to their friends and to the members of their immediate households, while others become possessed of the idea that their friends and the members of their households have less of a regard for them than they formerly had, and many times they are not far wrong. The one continually sees more in life to enjoy, the other sees continually less. The one becomes more dear and attractive to others, the other less so. And why is this? Through chance? By no means. Personally I do not believe there is any such thing as chance in the whole of human life, nor even in the world or the great universe in which we live. The one great law of cause and effect is absolute; and effect is always kindred to its own peculiar cause, although we may have at times to go back considerably farther than we are accustomed to in order to find the cause, the parent of this or that effect, or actualized, though not necessarily permanently actualized, condition.

Why, then, the vast difference in the two types of elderly people? The one keeps from worryings, and fearings, and frettings, and foundationless imaginings, while the other seems especially to cultivate these, to give himself or herself especially to them. And why is this? At a certain time in life, differing somewhat in different people, life-long mental states, habits, and characteristics begin to focus themselves and come to the surface, so to speak. Predominating thoughts and mental states begin to show themselves in actualized qualities and characteristics as never before, and no one is immune.

In the lane leading to the orchard is a tree. For years it has been growing only “natural fruit.” Not long since it was grafted upon. The spring has come and gone. One-half of the tree was in bloom and the other half also. The blossoms on each part could not be distinguished by the casual observer. The blossoms have been followed by young fruit which hangs abundantly on the entire tree. There is but a slight difference in it now; but a few weeks later the difference in form, in size, in color, in flavor, in keeping qualities, will be so marked that no one can fail to tell them apart or have difficulty in choosing between them. The one will be a small, somewhat hard and gnarled, tart, yellowish-green apple, and will keep but a few weeks into the fall of the year. The other will be a large, delicately flavored apple, mellow, deep red in color, and will keep until the tree which bore it is in bloom again.

But why this incident from nature’s garden? This. Up to a certain period in the fruit’s growth, although the interior, forming qualities of the apples were slightly different from the beginning, there was but little to distinguish them. At a certain period in their growth, however, their differing interior qualities began to externalize themselves so rapidly and so markedly that the two fruits became of such a vastly different type that, as we have seen, no one could hesitate in choosing between them. And knowing once the soul, the forming, the determining qualities of each, we can thereafter tell beforehand with a certainty that is quite absolute what it, the externalized product of each portion of the tree, will be.

And it is quite the same in human life. If one would have a beautiful and attractive old age, he must begin it in youth and in middle life. If, however, he has neglected or failed in this, he can then wisely adapt himself to circumstances and give himself zealously to putting into operation all necessary counter-balancing forces and influences. Where there is life nothing is ever irretrievably lost, though the enjoyment of the higher good may be long delayed. But if one would have an especially beautiful and attractive old age he must begin it in early and in middle life, for there comes by and by a sort of “rounding-up” process when long-lived-in habits of thought begin to take unto themselves a strongly dominating power, and the thought habits of a lifetime begin to come to the surface.

Fear and worry, selfishness, a hard-fisted, grabbing, holding disposition, a carping, fault-finding, nagging tendency, a slavery of thought and action to the thinking or to the opinions of others, a lacking of consideration, thought, and sympathy for others, a lack of charity for the thoughts, the motives, and the acts of others, a lack of knowledge of the powerful and inevitable building qualities of thought, as well as a lack of faith in the eternal goodness and love and power of the Source of our being, all combine in time to make the old age of those in whom they find life, that barren, cheerless, unwelcome something, unattractive or even repellent to itself as well as to others, that we not infrequently find, while their opposites, on the contrary, combine, and seem to be helped on by heavenly agencies, to bring about that cheerful, hopeful, helpful, beautified, and hallowed old age that is so welcome and so attractive both to itself and to all with whom it comes in contact. Both types of thoughts, qualities, and dispositions, moreover, externalize themselves in the voice, in the peculiarly different ways in which they mark the face, in the stoop or lack of stoop in the form, as also in the healthy or unhealthy conditions of the mind and body, and their susceptibility to disorders and weaknesses of various kinds.

It is not a bad thing for each one early to get a little “philosophy” into his life. It will be of much aid as he advances in life; it will many times be a source of great comfort, as well as of strength, in trying times and in later life. We may even, though gently perhaps, make sport of the one who has his little philosophy, but unless we have something similar the time will come when the very lack of it will deride us. It may be at times, though not necessarily, that the one who has it is not always so successful in affairs when it comes to a purely money or business success, but it supplies many times a very real something in life that the one of money or business success only is starving for, though he doesn’t know what the real lack is, and although he hasn’t money enough in all the world to buy it did he know.

It is well to find our centre early, and if not early then late; but, late or early, the thing to do is to find it. While we are in life the one essential thing is to play our part bravely and well and to keep our active interest in all its varying phases, the same as it is well to be able to adapt ourselves always to changing conditions. It is by the winds of heaven blowing over it continually and keeping it in constant motion, or by its continual onward movement, that the water in pool or stream is kept sweet and clear, for otherwise it would become stagnant and covered with slime. If we are attractive or unattractive to ourselves and to others the cause lies in ourselves; this is true of all ages, and it is well for us, young or old, to recognize it. It is well, other things being equal, to adapt ourselves to those about us, but it is hardly fair for the old to think that all the adapting should be on the part of the young, with no kindred duty on their part. Many times old-age loses much of its attractiveness on account of a peculiar notion of this kind. The principle of reciprocity must hold in all ages in life, and whatever the age, if we fail to observe it, it results always sooner or later in our own undoing.

We are all in Life’s great play— comedy and tragedy, smiles and tears, sunshine and shadow, summer and winter, and in time we take all parts. We must take our part, whatever it may be, at any given time, always bravely and with a keen appreciation of every opportunity, and a keen alertness at every turn as the play progresses. A good “entrance” and a good “exit” contribute strongly to the playing of a deservedly worthy role. We are not always able perhaps to choose just as we would the details of our entrance, but the manner of our playing and the manner of our exit we can all determine, and this no man, no power can deny us; this in every human life can be made indeed most glorious, however humble it may begin, or however humble it may remain or exalted it may become, according to conventional standards of judgment.

To me we are here for divine self-realization through experience. We progress in the degree that we manipulate wisely all things that enter into our lives, and that make the sum total of each one’s life experience. Let us be brave and strong in the presence of each problem as it presents itself and make the best of all. Let us help the things we can help, and let us be not bothered or crippled by the things we cannot help. The great God of all is watching and manipulating these things most wisely and we need not fear or even have concern regarding them.

To live to our highest in all things that pertain to us, to lend a hand as best we can to all others for this same end, to aid in righting the wrongs that cross our path by means of pointing the wrongdoer to a better way, and thus aiding him in becoming a power for good, to remain in nature always sweet and simple and humble, and therefore strong, to open ourselves fully and to keep ourselves as fit channels for the Divine Power to work through us, to open ourselves, and to keep our faces always to the light, to love all things and to stand in awe or fear of nothing save our own wrong-doing, to recognize the good lying at the heart of all things, waiting for expression all in its own good way and time—this will make our part in life’s great and as yet not fully understood play truly glorious, and we need then stand in fear of nothing, life nor death, for death is life. Or rather, it is the quick transition to life in another form; the putting off of the old coat and the putting on of a new; the falling away of the material body and the taking of the soul to itself a new and finer body, better adapted to its needs and surroundings in another world of experience and growth and still greater divine self-realization; a going out with all that it has gained of this nature in this world, but with no possessions material; a passing not from light to darkness, but from light to light; a taking up of life in another from just where we leave it off here; an experience not to be shunned or dreaded or feared, but to be welcomed when it comes in its own good way and time.

All life is from within out. This is something that cannot be reiterated too often. The springs of life are all from within. This being true, it would be well for us to give more time to the inner life than we are accustomed to give to it, especially in this Western world.

There is nothing that will bring us such abundant returns as to take a little time in the quiet each day of our lives. We need this to get the kinks out of our minds, and hence out of our lives. We need this to form better the higher ideals of life. We need this in order to see clearly in mind the things upon which we would concentrate and focus the thought-forces. We need this in order to make continually anew and to keep our conscious connection with the Infinite. We need this in order that the rush and hurry of our everyday life does not keep us away from the conscious realization of the fact that the spirit of Infinite life and power that is back of all, working in and through all, the life of all, is the life of our life, and the source of our power; and that outside of this we have no life and we have no power. To realize this fact fully, and to live in it consciously at all times, is to find the kingdom of God, which is essentially an inner kingdom, and can never be anything else. The kingdom of heaven is to be found only within, and this is done once for all, and in a manner in which it cannot otherwise be done, when we come into the conscious, living realization of the fact that in our real selves we are essentially one with the Divine life, and open ourselves continually so that this Divine life can speak to and manifest through us. In this way we come into the condition where we are continually walking with God. In this way the consciousness of God becomes a living reality in our lives; and in the degree in which it becomes a reality does it bring us into the realization of continually increasing wisdom, insight, and power. This consciousness of God in the soul of man is the essence, indeed, the sum and substance, of all religion. This identifies religion with every act and every moment of everyday life. That which does not identify itself with every moment of every day and with every act of life is religion in name only and not in reality. This consciousness of God in the soul of man is the one thing uniformly taught by all the prophets, by all the inspired ones, by all the seers and mystics in the world’s history, whatever the time, wherever the country, whatever the religion, whatever minor differences we may find in their lives and teachings. In regard to this they all agree; indeed, this is the essence of their teaching, as it has also been the secret of their power and the secret of their lasting influence.

It is the attitude of the child that is necessary before we can enter into the kingdom of heaven. As it was said, “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” For we then realize that of ourselves we can do nothing, but that it is only as we realize that it is the Divine life and power working within us, and it is only as we open ourselves that it may work through us, that we are or can do anything. It is thus that the simple life, which is essentially the life of the greatest enjoyment and the greatest attainment, is entered upon.

In the Orient the people as a class take far more time in the quiet, in the silence, than we take. Some of them carry this possibly to as great an extreme as we carry the opposite, with the result that they do not actualize and objectify in the outer life the things they dream in the inner life. We give so much time to the activities of the outer life that we do not take sufficient time in the quiet to form in the inner, spiritual, thought-life the ideals and the conditions that we would have actualized and manifested in the outer life. The result is that we take life in a kind of haphazard way, taking it as it comes, thinking not very much about it until, perhaps, pushed by some bitter experiences, instead of molding it, through the agency of the inner forces, exactly as we would have it. We need to strike the happy balance between the custom in this respect of the Eastern and Western worlds, and go to the extreme of neither the one nor the other. This alone will give the ideal life; and it is the ideal life only that is the thoroughly satisfactory life. In the Orient there are many who are day after day sitting in the quiet, meditating, contemplating, idealizing, with their eyes focused on their stomachs in spiritual revery, while through lack of outer activities, in their stomachs, they are actually starving. In this Western world, men and women, in the rush and activity of our accustomed life, are running hither and thither, with no centre, no foundation upon which to stand, nothing to which they can anchor their lives, because they do not take sufficient time to come into the realization of what the centre, of what the reality of their lives is.

If the Oriental would do his contemplating, and then get up and do his work, he would be in a better condition; he would be living a more normal and satisfactory life. If we in the Occident would take more time from the rush and activity of life for contemplation, for meditation, for idealization, for becoming acquainted with our real selves, and then go about our work manifesting the powers of our real selves, we would be far better off, because we would be living a more natural, a more normal life. To find one’s centre, to become centred in the Infinite, is the first great essential of every satisfactory life; and then to go out, thinking, speaking, working, loving, living, from this centre.

In the highest character-building, such as we have been considering, there are those who feel they are handicapped by what we term heredity. In a sense they are right; in another sense they are totally wrong. It is along the same lines as the thought which many before us had inculcated in them through the couplet in the New England Primer: “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” Now, in the first place, it is rather hard to understand the justice of this if it is true. In the second place, it is rather hard to understand why it is true. And in the third place there is no truth in it at all. We are now dealing with the real essential self, and, however old Adam is, God is eternal. This means you; it means me; it means every human soul. When we fully realize this fact we see that heredity is a reed that is easily broken. The life of every one is in his own hands and he can make it in character, in attainment, in power, in divine self-realization, and hence in influence, exactly what he wills to make it. All things that he most fondly dreams of are his, or may become so if he is truly in earnest; and as he rises more and more to his ideal, and grows in the strength and influence of his character, he becomes an example and an inspiration to all with whom he comes in contact; so that through him the weak and faltering are encouraged and strengthened; so that those of low ideals and of a low type of life instinctively and inevitably have their ideals raised, and the ideals of no one can be raised without its showing forth in his outer life. As he advances in his grasp upon and understanding of the power and potency of the thought-forces, he finds that many times through the process of mental suggestion he can be of tremendous aid to one who is weak and struggling, by sending him now and then, and by continually holding him in, the highest thought, in the thought of the highest strength, wisdom and love. The power of “suggestion,” mental suggestion, is one that has tremendous possibilities for good if we will but study into it carefully, understand it fully, and use it rightly.

The one who takes sufficient time in the quiet mentally to form his ideals, sufficient time to make and to keep continually his conscious connection with the Infinite, with the Divine life and forces, is the one who is best adapted to the strenuous life. He it is who can go out and deal, with sagacity and power, with whatever issues may arise in the affairs of everyday life. He it is who is building not for the years but for the centuries; not for time, but for the eternities. And he can go out knowing not whither he goes, knowing that the Divine life within him will never fail him, but will lead him on until he beholds the Father face to face.

He is building for the centuries because only that which is the highest, the truest, the noblest, and best will abide the test of the centuries. He is building for eternity because when the transition we call death takes place, life, character, self-mastery, divine self-realization — the only things that the soul when stripped of everything else takes with it — he has in abundance, in life, or when the time of the transition to another form of life comes, he is never afraid, never fearful, because he knows and realizes that behind him, within him, beyond him, is the Infinite wisdom and love; and in this he is eternally centred, and from it he can never be separated. With Whittier he sings:

I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care

Builders and Destroyers

Several years ago, I wrote an article for BCG Attorney Search called “Builders and Destroyers”. In this article I discussed the two types of people one may encounter inside a law firm: (1) People whose mission it is to build and improve things around them, and (2) People whose mission seems to be to tear down, criticize, and damage the whole.

In reviewing the financial crisis this past week, and in thinking about my own career and life, I come back more and more to this belief and its importance in the business world.

Organizations surrounding themselves with positive employees – and that even make this attitude a requirement – typically have higher success than those who do not. In the law firm merger space, for example, I have noticed that firms that do not merge, and instead raise and maintain their own positive culture, tend to do much better in the long run (and survive), as compared to law firms that do not do the same. The social culture of law firms, and all organizations, tends to be much healthier, and conducive to success when the organization surrounds itself with positive people.

When organizations grow too quickly and unnaturally, they often end up absorbing at least a few negative people. The forces inside the organization that would have traditionally kept these people out cease to function as they should. On Wall Street, with the advent of mortgages being sold in bulk, a similar lack of accountability has entered the system. The contact bankers used to have with borrowers, and the subsequent understanding of their particular family and work history, is gone. Also, it seems some employers do not care who people are as long as they appear to contribute to the bottom line. People who cannot contribute to the overall system effectively or for a sustained period of time are also allowed in for one reason or another.

It benefits everything, be it a system, organization, or individual, to avoid those who do not contribute positively along the path to success and growth. For example, we have all come across people who continually find fault in the world and in the people around them. We know how draining people like this can be. When organizations bring in these types of individuals, it affects the whole. Staff can become unmotivated and unsure of themselves and their organization. Personally, when I spend time with negative people I tend to get a little depressed. I also notice avoiding them makes me feel better.

While my career advice may be an overly simplistic solution, I do believe that many problems can be solved by having more personal accountability, and by surrounding ourselves with positive, forward-thinking people, those who want and are able to work toward a common goal. As simple as it may seem, I have experienced how big a difference this can make.

It Works

How do you obtain that which you desire? Is there a logical answer to this question or are some people simply born lucky? R.H. Jarrett’s book ‘It Works’ walks the reader through a plan of operation that can help you harness the power within. An inspiring read, the book can help you accomplish what you want.

–Harrison

It Works

By R.H. Jarrett

The Plan

A concise, definite, resultful
plan with rules,explanations
and suggestions for bettering
your condition in life

If you KNOW what you WANT you can HAVE IT

What is the Real Secret of Obtaining Desirable Possessions?

ARE some people born under a lucky star or other charm which enables them to have all that which seems so desirable, and if not, what is the cause of the difference in conditions under which men live?

Many years ago, feeling that there must be a logical answer to this question, I decided to find out, if possible, what it was. I found the answer to my own satisfaction, and for years, have given the information to others who have used it successfully.

From a scientific, psychological or theological viewpoint, some of the following statements may be interpreted as incorrect, but nevertheless, the plan has brought the results desired to those who have followed the simple instructions, and it is my sincere belief that I am now presenting it in a way which will bring happiness and possessions to many more.

“IF wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” is the attitude taken by the average man and woman in regard to possessions. They are not aware of a power so near that it is overlooked; so simple in operation that it is difficult to conceive; and so sure in results that it is not made use of consciously, or recognized as the cause of failure or success.

“GEE, I wish that were mine,” is the outburst of Jimmy, the office boy, as a new red roadster goes by; and Florence, the telephone operator, expresses the same thought regarding a ring in the jeweler’s window; while poor old Jones, the bookkeeper, during the Sunday stroll, replies to his wife, “Yes, dear, it would be nice to have a home like that, but it is out of the question. We will have to continue to rent.” Landem, the salesman, protests that he does all the work, gets the short end of the money and will some day quit his job and find a real one, and President Bondum, in his private sanctorum, voices a bitter tirade against the annual attack of hay-fever.

At home it is much the same. Last evening, father declared that daughter Mabel was headed straight for disaster, and today, mother’s allowance problem and other trying affairs fade into insignificance as she exclaims, “This is the last straw. Robert’s school teacher wants to see me this afternoon. His reports are terrible, I know, but I’m late for Bridge now. She’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” So goes the endless stream of expressions like these from millions of people in all classes who give no thought to what they really want, and who are getting all they are entitled to or expect.

If you are one of these millions of thoughtless talkers or wishers and would like a decided change from your present condition, you can have it, but first of all you must know what you want and this is no easy task. When you can train your objective mind (the mind you use every day) to decide definitely upon the things or conditions you desire, you will have taken your first big step in accomplishing or securing what you know you want.

To get what you want is no more mysterious or uncertain than the radio waves all around you. Tune in correctly and you get a perfect result, but to do this, it is, of course, necessary to know something of your equipment and have a plan of operation.

You have within you a mighty power, anxious and willing to serve you, a power capable of giving you that which you earnestly desire. This power is described by Thomson Jay Hudson, Ph.D., LL.D., author of “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” as your subjective mind. Other learned writers use different names and terms, but all agree that it is omnipotent. Therefore, I call this Power “Emmanuel” (God in us).

Regardless of the name of this Great Power, or the conscious admission of a God, the Power is capable and willing to carry to a complete and perfect conclusion every earnest desire of your objective mind, but you must be really in earnest about what you want.

Occasional wishing or half-hearted wanting does not form a perfect connection or communication with your omnipotent power. You must be in earnest, sincerely and truthfully desiring certain conditions or things — mental, physical or spiritual.

Your objective mind and will are so vacillating that you usually only WISH for things and the wonderful, capable power within you does not function.

Most wishes are simply vocal expressions. Jimmy, the office boy, gave no thought of possessing the red roadster. Landem, the salesman, was not thinking of any other job or even thinking at all. President Bondum knew he had hay fever and was expecting it. Father’s business was quite likely successful, and mother no doubt brought home first prize from the Bridge party that day, but they had no fixed idea of what they really wanted their children to accomplish and were actually helping to bring about the unhappy conditions which existed.

If you are in earnest about changing your present condition, here is a concise, definite, resultful plan, with rules, explanations and suggestions.

The Plan

WRITE down on paper in order of their importance the things and conditions you really want. Do not be afraid of wanting too much. Go the limit in writing down your wants. Change the list daily, adding to or taking from it, until you have it about right. Do not be discouraged on account of changes, as this is natural. There will always be changes and additions with accomplishments and increasing desires.

Three Positive Rules Of Accomplishment

1. Read the list of what you want three times each day: morning, noon and night.

2. Think of what you want as often as possible.

3. Do not talk to any one about your plan except to the Great Power within you which will unfold to your Objective Mind the method of accomplishment.

It is obvious that you cannot acquire faith at the start. Some of your desires, from all practical reasoning, may seem positively unattainable, but, nevertheless, write them down on your list in their proper place of importance to you.

There is no need to analyze how this Power within you is going to accomplish your desires. Such a procedure is as unnecessary as trying to figure out why a grain of corn placed in fertile soil shoots up a green stalk, blossoms and produces an ear of corn containing hundreds of grains, each capable of doing what the one grain did. If you will follow this definite plan and carry out the three simple rules, the method of accomplishment will unfold quite as mysteriously as the ear of corn appears on the stalk, and in most cases much sooner than you expect.

When new desires, deserving position at or about the top of your list, come to you, then you may rest assured you are progressing correctly.

Removing from your list items which at first you thought you wanted, is another sure indication of progress.

It is natural to be skeptical and have doubts, distrust and questionings, but when these thoughts arise, get out your list. Read it over; or if you have it memorized, talk to your inner self about your desires until the doubts that interfere with your progress are gone. Remember, nothing can prevent your having that which you earnestly desire. Others have these things. Why not you?

The Omnipotent Power within YOU does not enter into any controversial argument. It is waiting and willing to serve when you are ready, but your objective mind is so susceptible to suggestion that it is almost impossible to make any satisfactory progress when surrounded by skeptics. Therefore, choose your friends carefully and associate with people who now have some of the things you really want, but do not discuss your method of accomplishment with them.

Put down on your list of wants such material things as money, home, automobile, or whatever it may be, but do not stop there. Be more definite. If you want an automobile, decide what kind, style, price, color, and all the other details, including when you want it. If you want a home, plan the structure, grounds and furnishings.Decide on location and cost. If you want money, write down the amount. If you want to break a record in your business, put it down. It may be a sales record. If so, write out the total, the date required, then the number of items you must sell to make it, also list your prospects and put after each name the sum expected. This may seem very foolish at first, but you can never realize your desires if you do not know positively and in detail what you want and when you want it. If you cannot decide this, you are not in earnest, You must be definite, and when you are, results will be surprising and almost unbelievable.

A natural and ancient enemy will no doubt appear when you get your first taste of accomplishment. This enemy is Discredit, in form of such thoughts as: “It can’t be possible; it just happened to be. What a remarkable coincidence!”

When such thoughts occur, give thanks and assert credit to your Omnipotent Power for the accomplishment. By doing this, you gain assurance and more accomplishment, and in time, prove to yourself that there is a law, which actually works — at all times — when you are in tune with it.

Sincere and earnest thanks cannot be given without gratitude and it is impossible to be thankful and grateful without being happy. Therefore, when you are thanking your greatest and best friend, your Omnipotent Power for the gifts received, do so with all your soul, and let it be reflected in your face. The Power and what it does is beyond understanding. Do not try to understand it, but accept the accomplishment with thankfulness, happiness, and strengthened faith.

Caution

It is possible to want and obtain that which will make you miserable; that which will wreck the happiness of others; that which will cause sickness and death; that which will rob you of eternal life. You can have what you want, but you must take all that goes with it: so in planning your wants, plan that which you are sure will give to you and your fellow man the greatest good here on earth; thus paving the way to that future hope beyond the pale of human understanding.

This method of securing what you want applies to everything you are capable of desiring and the scope being so great it is suggested that your first list consist only of those things with which you are quite familiar, such as an amount of money or accomplishment, or the possession of material things. Such desires as these are more easily and quickly obtained than the discontinuance of fixed habits, the welfare of others, and the healing of mental or bodily ills.

Accomplish the lesser things first. Then take the next step, and when that is accomplished, you will seek the higher and really important objectives in life, but long before you reach this stage of your progress, many worthwhile desires will find their place on your list. One will be to help others as you have been helped. Great is the reward to those who help and give without thought of self, as it is impossible to be unselfish without gain.

In Conclusion

A short while ago, Dr. Emil Coué came to this country and showed thousands of people how to help themselves. Thousands of others spoofed at the idea, refused his assistance and are today where they were before his visit.

So with the statements and plan presented to you now. You can reject or accept. You can remain as you are or have anything you want. The choice is yours, but God grant that you may find in this short volume the inspiration to choose aright, follow the plan and thereby obtain, as so many others have, all things, whatever they may be, that you desire.

Read the entire book over again, and again, AND THEN AGAIN.

Memorize the Three Positive Rules of Accomplishment.

Test them now on what you want most this minute.

This book could have extended easily over 350 pages, but it has been deliberately shortened to make it as easy as possible for you to read, understand and use. Will you try it? Thousands of bettered lives will testify to the fact that It Works.

Your Life Is Controlled by Your Decisions and Your Commitment to Them

Over 20 years ago, I was at a relative’s house in the country, and he made a crazy statement (which he appeared to believe) that all Japanese were Jewish, and that was why they were in the process of controlling all the car manufacturing in the world just like they were controlling the entertainment and banking industries.

My relative was a truck driver in his 50s, and he made this statement as if what he was saying had a certain level of profoundness to it. Under normal circumstances, when not involved in “intellectual” debate, he was a very nice man and good father. The statement was offensive on many levels – it was racist, stereotyping people, and it was just plain wrong. So wrong it was hard to believe.

“Are you kidding? That is not true at all! They are Buddhist!” I screamed. I was about 16 at the time and absolutely amazed at what I was hearing.

He was a big burly man, probably close to 300 pounds of fat and muscle, and he punched me in the side of the head hard enough that he knocked me out. I am not sure how long I was out. Incredibly, when I regained consciousness, he was still involved in this debate with a couple of other people who were talking like nothing had happened. Those men were sitting outside on picnic tables and plastic folding chairs while all of the women were inside cooking. Seeing stars, I took a seat back on the picnic table next to my uncle while I regained my composure.

After a few moments, I looked up at him. “What the hell!?” I muttered, still semi-conscious.

“You need to keep your mouth shut and not talk about stuff you know nothing about!” he said.

I told my mother about this experience when we were driving home. I was incredulous I’d been punched for asserting the entire nation of Japan was not Jewish, and I expressed profound disappointment at being related to these people. My mother is pretty smart. She said something to me I will never forget. A close relative of hers she’d grown up with – I’ll call her “Patty” – had married this man. My mother told me Patty had been very beautiful and also very intelligent when they were growing up. She said Patty could have married any man she wanted to and instead chose to marry the truck driver. In fact, Patty’s sister had married a man who was the owner of a large bank and they lived an upper crust lifestyle with boats, fancy cars, mansions, and frequent extravagant foreign vacations. At family events at Patty’s house, they would look with disdain at the cars on the front lawn and practically shudder at the bad grammar exchanged by Patty and her friends.

My mother told me Patty had much more going for her than my mother ever did or her sister ever did.

“She chose the life she has,” my mother said. “She could have had any life she wanted, and she chose this life. We were actually talking about this after I found out about you getting knocked out because I was a little upset, too. Patty said she could have had a different life, but this is the one she chose.”

Since I was young at the time, this was a pivotal event for me. I realized right then and there we are in complete control of our lives and what happens to us. It is all about what we choose.

We choose the lives we are going to lead and we choose what happens to us. You have the power to choose in your life, and where you are today is the result of the decisions you made long ago. Think back on your life 10, 20, or more years. Where were you back then? What were you doing? Where are you now compared to where you were back then?

We have the power to choose the lives we lead and what happens to us. We choose:

1. Our jobs
2. Our mates
3. Where we live
4. Our friends
5. What we do with our free time
6. The number of children we have
7. How hard we work
8. How healthy we are
9. How we dress
10. What we eat

The number of things we choose is phenomenal. We choose our lives and what happens to us and shape our own destinies. Most people are more interested in blaming outside events and circumstances for what happens to them in their lives. The truth is what happens to us is almost completely the result of the decisions we make. We are in charge of our own lives and our decisions shape our entire existence.

One of the most important times we are forced to choose is when we are in the position of losing a job or deciding between jobs. This is a time when a lot of people find themselves stressed out and are forced to figure out what they need to do with themselves. People react to stress in different ways. Some people start to drink a lot or use drugs. Others start exercising a lot. Others avoid people who may ask them about what they are doing. Your decision about how to deal with stress and your job search is something that can and will permanently shape your destiny and what happens to you in your life. How are you going to deal with losing a job?

When some people lose a job, they decide to sue their employer. While many law suits against employers are legitimate, most I have seen are not. I make this judgment from having been an attorney who represented both employees and employers. People sue their employers because they decide someone other than them is responsible for their job and their livelihood. People make this decision to go after their employer and often spend years not working and involved in a bitter lawsuit. In the interim, they do not even look for a job. In some cases, they do not want to find a job because if they find one they will receive fewer damages from their lawsuit.

Other people who lose a job take a different approach. Instead of being angry with their employer, they may be angry with themselves. They may withdraw and stop trying. They allow this experience to have such a negative effect on them they stop trying their hardest. This is a very common reaction as well.

Others who lose jobs may launch a new business, go back to school, or try to get even better jobs than the ones they lost. These are all decisions as well. You need to choose to make empowering decisions in your life and your career.

In 1980, Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver as she walked down the street. Instead of feeling sorry for her daughter and herself, Lightner chose to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to crusade against the problem of drunk drivers.

“I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead,” Candy Lightner later wrote. Her organization rapidly rose to national prominence and Lightner appeared on major national television shows, addressed numerous groups around the country, testified before the government, and worked to promote new legislation. She chose to take action in a way which empowered the world and made a difference rather than allowing outside events to negatively influence her.

A similar story exists for John Walsh. Walsh is the host of America’s Most Wanted. Walsh was a successful businessman living in Hollywood, Florida, and the partner in an important hotel management company. On July 27, 1981, Walsh’s wife left their son Adam in the toy department of Sears while she went to look for a lamp. Sixteen days later, Adam’s severed head was found in a drainage canal more than 120 miles from the mall, according to an account on the America’s Most Wanted website.

Walsh’s search for justice and his determination to never let Adam’s death be in vain led him to fight back like few other Americans ever have. Although he’s never held political office, Walsh has been the driving force behind major pieces of child protection legislation. His hard work led to Walsh being honored five times by four presidents: Ronald Reagan (twice), George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. One of Walsh’s proudest moments was when he and his wife Revè stood beside President George W. Bush, as the “Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act” was signed into law on the 25th anniversary of Adam’s murder.

Walsh became the host of America’s Most Wanted after much of his crusade. The story of Walsh is one of someone who made a decision about how to react to a negative event, and this decision made a huge impact on his life and the world. Think about the things that have happened in your life and the decisions you have made in response to them. What have you done with the things that have happened to you? How can you take a negative and use it to empower the world?

People have so many reasons for not succeeding. Most of them have to do with people and forces outside of ourselves over which we have no control. It is how people react to the world through the decisions they make that ultimately empowers us and changes our place in the world. This is what you need to do. You need to make decisions that will empower you and your place in the world.

The greatest weakness most people have is they never make a commitment to back up their decision. Making a decision is the most powerful thing you can do, but it must be backed up with the power of commitment. You can never do anything or reach great heights if you do not commit to what you are doing. Most people never truly utilize the power of commitment.

There is a huge difference between simply being interested in something and committing to it. For example, Lightner and Walsh certainly had every reason to be interested in putting drunk drivers in jail and finding child killers. They committed to something and made a decision they would fight for what they believed in. Their decisions are what made all of the difference.

In 1519, Hernan Cortes anchored his 11 ships off the Yucatán Peninsula. At the time, the Aztecs, who had tens of thousands of soldiers, ruled Mexico. In contrast, Cortes had only 608 men, 16 horses, and a few cannons. Cortes was committed to win the battle despite having so few men. He made the decision he was going to go back to Spain a winner. Cortes ordered his men off the ships and to shore.

In the middle of the night, people screaming “Fire!” awakened the soldiers. They rose from their sleep and saw all 11 ships burning out in the water. The men rushed to the row boats to go fight the fire. But Cortés stopped them. He told the soldiers he had ordered all of the ships burned. They had no way to retreat – that was the message Cortés sent to his soldiers. They had to win. There was no choice.

Under Cortes, just 608 men, 16 horses, and a few cannons conquered the Aztecs. The power of decision, backed up by commitment, made this incredible feat possible. Cortes made sure his troops were as committed as they could possibly be and that they had no means of retreat.

Most of us decide to do something but deep down we keep the possibility of retreat as an option. What I get out of the story of Cortés, and what makes it so remarkable to me, is it shows how many of us never really truly commit to anything and any decision we are making. The people who achieve the most in this life are the people like Cortés, Lightner, and Walsh who make decisions and then proceed to follow through with them. There is so much power in making decisions and making these decisions with commitment. We may have an interest in doing something or want to make a commitment to something. However, very few of us ever follow through. We must follow through and commit. This is the difference between mediocrity and greatness – commitment to a decision.

Many people are tormented by their inability to make a decision and commit. Soap operas are a perfect example of this. Lives are wrecked over and over again by the inability to commit. No one ever knows who they want to be with in soap operas, and relationships are never characterized by commitment. Everyone is always crying, and entire stories are tragic and insane. The only reasons these stories are so nuts is because the characters in them simply can never commit. You need to commit to succeed. You can go back and forth in:

1. Your choice of a mate
2. Your choice of a job
3. Your choice of a profession
4. Your commitment to your job
5. Your commitment to your mate
6. Your commitment to an education
7. Your commitment to being better at what you do

When you do not commit to a decision about what you want to do, however, you will never have clarity. Instead, you will be in a state of perpetual confusion. This is how most people live their lives. Making a decision and committing to it gives you clarity. Clarity gives you power. Most people say words like “I’ll see how it works out” or “I’ll give it a try.” This is not what you should be doing. You should say “I am doing this!” and move forward by taking action. This is the only way to be empowered by your decisions.

There is a huge danger if you do not make decisions about your life and stand behind them: your life will be made and shaped by someone else. This is what happens to most people. They allow their complete existence to be shaped by someone else. Is this really what you want? You should be the one shaping your life and deciding exactly what happens to you. Do not let others and the world decide what happens to you.

The people who become movie stars, presidents, CEOs, and incredible people in different professions do not just suddenly end up in these positions due to a combination of luck and fate. They generally reach these heights of success because they decide this is what they want and make a commitment to it. You need to realize you have the power to be whomever you want when you decide to do this. Decide what you want for your life and take action. The hardest part of life is making a decision and following through with it.

The most amazing thing about your career is it controls so much of what happens in your life. It controls where you live, the people with whom you socialize, where your kids go to school, how excited you are to go to work in the morning, the kind of car you drive, how many days a week you work, how much you work when you are working, and more. Your career is such an incredibly important thing. Where you are today in your career is due to the power of decisions you have made in your life over the past 10 years. You have the power to change the next 10 years and make them even better than the last by the decisions you make today. You need to make decisions that will empower you and create the life you are entitled to and deserve. Start making decisions based on what you want, and do not want, and commit to those decisions today.

Show Up on Time

Several years ago a friend called me and encouraged me to interview at his law firm. He told me people at the firm were involved in various movie deals and hobnobbing with movie stars. He told me all of the lawyers were driving around in Porsche convertibles and the firm represented Los Angeles as I had come to see it in movies and television shows. He told me the firm was so exciting that none of the attorneys actually practiced law, and instead spent their time ”doing deals” and socializing with movie stars.

For several months I kept hearing stories about this magical law firm. I discussed it with my wife on several occasions and, after a lot of soul searching, I decided to send my friend a resume. He called me back a few hours later and told me the firm was excited to see me.

I scheduled my interview with this law firm on a Monday. On Sunday night I drove from my house in Hollywood to the law firm in West Los Angeles to make sure I gave myself enough time to get to the interview. It took me about 30 minutes.

On Monday I decided to give myself 45 minutes. What I had not accounted for was the 405 Freeway interchange. Back then, this was known as the most crowded interchange in America. I sat on this interchange for at least 35 minutes doing absolutely nothing. I became increasingly nervous as the time for my interview came and went. I am sure I was sweating a lot. I may have bitten a nail or two. I started going over all sorts of horror stories in my mind about what would happen when I finally got to the interview.

I ended up arriving to the interview almost 30 minutes late. I was so late by the time I arrived the firm seemed to be debating whether they even wanted to interview me. It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I have ever had.

Of course, I mentioned the traffic to the person who came out to explain to me that they were ”changing around everyone’s schedules” and would be right with me ”once they figured out how to do this”. I would like to tell you something: no one accepts the traffic excuse. Traffic is the oldest excuse in the book. Traffic is something you simply cannot use. When you are going to an interview remember everyone else ended up making it to the office despite the traffic. These people did not have problems with traffic and were all there waiting to speak with you. Where were you?

When the interview got underway, it went very badly. First of all, the firm was not this mecca of lawyers living a celebrity lifestyle. Instead, people were doing very hard work that was 99 percent unrelated to entertainment law. The people who interviewed me seemed like they belonged locked in a basement lab rather than in a law firm. They were quite introverted. To this day I cannot imagine how they were supposed to have been people who represented movie stars.

Each of the people I spoke with started off the interview by wanting to discuss why I was late. This simply did not get things off to a good start. It put me on the defensive the whole time. I could tell all the people I spoke with seemed at least a little upset by my tardiness.

There is a dynamic that forms in the workplace when you are late for an interview – or anything for that matter. First of all, people are expecting you to be there at a certain time. If they are working, they need to make sure they stop what they are doing at a certain time and block out time to interview you. They wait for you at the appointed time to interview you, ready to speak, and anticipate you walking in the door. They may go to the bathroom before speaking with you so they do not need to interrupt the interview. They may go get coffee before the interview so they have something to drink. They may organize their office right before the interview.

While waiting for you to show up at a certain time, all sorts of things are going through the person’s mind regarding the interview. They feel anticipation and excitement about speaking with you. They have also likely reviewed your resume before the interview and are ready to ask you questions about your experience. If they see some experiences they feel you might have in common, they are probably eager to discuss them with you.

When you do not show up on time for your interview, people are suddenly let down. They feel a little upset. As each minute goes by, people get angrier and angrier you are not there. This erodes the confidence people have in you. The message being sent is:

-I do not respect you

-I do not respect your time

-This interview is not important to me

-This company is not important to me

In the story I told you, there was another dynamic in play that is important to mention. The law firm I was interviewing with was considered less prestigious than the law firm where I currently worked. Therefore, the people at the less prestigious law firm were already on the defensive. By showing up late, I sent them the message I thought I was more important than them. I was not doing this intentionally; however, this is the message that was clearly received.

There is an interesting dynamic at work with employers and law firms. Employers, like people in general, have a need to feel important. In the law firm world, for example, employers will rarely make someone a job offer unless they are almost 100 percent confident the person will accept. There is also a dynamic at work when an attorney searches for a job. When an attorney is looking for a job it is often much easier for him or her to get one with a better law firm than the one he or she is currently working for rather than with a less reputable law firm. Why? Law firms are often suspicious of attorneys who are moving to law firms that are not as prestigious. They think if they are interviewing with a law firm that is not as high in the pecking order, there must be something wrong with them. Additionally, if they are not as highly ranked, law firms may be a little defensive when a person from a better law firm is interviewing because they know the attorney is from a more prestigious ”tribe.” This often makes it harder for the attorney to get a job with a less prestigious firm because the firm is more sensitive to even perceived slights.

Showing up late shows potential employers you do not take them seriously or respect them. This is a huge mistake and something that sends a message you simply do not want to convey.

In show business, you notice all the time when actors start falling out of favor with studios and seeing their careers decline. Remember how popular Lindsay Lohan was just a couple of years ago? She negatively affected her career recently by showing up late repeatedly. Showing up late is simply bad business. As one person said about Lohan:

You can’t show up late. It’s very, very disrespectful… I think what an actor has to realize [is that] when you show up an hour late, 150 people have been scrambling to cover for you. There is not an apology big enough in the world to have to make 150 people scramble. It’s nothing but disrespect. And Lindsay Lohan is not the only one. A lot of actors show up late as if they’re God’s gift to the film. It’s inexcusable…

An interview is the first chance you have to make an impression on a new employer. It sends a message that determines whether you can be trusted and whether you will follow directions and complete work on time when you show up for the job you are interviewing for. An employer will often judge your future performance by whether you arrive on time.

Having hired hundreds of people over the years, I can say unequivocally the worst hires I made were people who failed to show up on time for an interview. The people who do not show up on time are almost always the worst hires because they get the job and do the same thing. In addition to not showing up on time, these people also play by their own rules in other ways. They do work the way they want, and when they want. They disrespect others and their needs constantly. They are the absolute worst employees in most cases and also the ones most likely to make trouble after they leave.

In addition to showing up late for interviews, many people make the mistake of showing up late for other functions. You should never show up late for anything. The reason it is so important to show up on time is it sends the message you respect others and their time. It also sends the message you take others’ needs as seriously as your own. Being on time sends the message you will play by the rules, do what is expected of you, and do your best to get along with others and look out for their needs. You always need to be on time.

Practice Makes Perfect

A year or so ago I was at a wedding, and a very successful doctor started talking to me. I was very impressed with this doctor and already knew of him through several people before our meeting. He was involved in some fascinating and cutting-edge research I found quite interesting.

I love meeting people who are passionate about their careers because they give off so much energy. People who achieve amazing and significant success in any profession always have a lot of passion for what they do. If you allow them to, these people will talk your head off about what they are doing. They will show you their collection of books about the subject, debate various philosophies about what they are doing, and more. People who commit to something are the most exciting people in the world. They provide me with an incredible education. I wish everyone was committed to what they do.

In speaking to this doctor, however, I realized despite his incredible knowledge of what he was doing, he was not satisfied. “What I really want to do is start a business,” he told me. “That is what being successful is to me. I have a friend who is doing very well in the manufacturing industry now that steel prices are up.”

The manufacturing industry? Steel? Why would someone spend years going to medical school and becoming a successful researcher only to go into steel manufacturing? I am not saying this is the wrong thing to do. But when you are an expert in something, it is not always in your best interest to switch jobs completely.

I spent many hours of my career going to various law firms and meeting with successful attorneys. I would say in at least 25% of these meetings, the attorneys I met did the same thing as this doctor–they started talking about how they wanted to pursue careers in completely different professions. One memorable meeting was with a famous attorney in Los Angeles who told me about opening a chain of ice cream parlors on the other side of the country only to see them fail miserably. Of course they failed miserably! The man running them was a famous attorney involved in all sorts of high profile cases. How on earth could he be expected to also run a chain of ice cream parlors?

At this particular point in history, I know many people who’ve lost all their money and life savings by investing in real estate. They bought homes in Arizona, condominiums in Florida, and other properties for little or no money down. They jumped face first into the real estate game because they believed they would get rich. Most of these people taught high school, sold cars, or were accountants, for example. Of course they lost money in real estate! This was not their expertise and they knew nothing about it. I saw the same thing back in 2000 with the Internet stock crash. Back then, all sorts of people aggressively invested in these stocks and lost their shirts. These people did things like sell insurance, or own auto repair shops. Of course they lost their shirts! None of them had expertise in the stock market.

The point I am trying to make is you can never be in two places at the same time. You need to choose who you want to be and what you want to do. You can never become an expert in multiple things. You need to concentrate on doing one thing.

An excellent book I recently read is called “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell examines the people who are able to achieve incredible and massive success in various callings. He looks at people like Bill Gates, the best lawyers in the United States, chess grandmasters, Mozart, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, professional hockey players, and others. Gladwell cites study after study describing the fact that people do not get really good at anything, at a world class level, until they have been doing it at least 10,000 hours. According to Gladwell:

“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes neurologist David Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, of basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

I get very concerned when I think about people vacillating back and forth between various skill paths. Instead of choosing to do one thing, so many people spend their careers floating from job to job – each one different than the one before and requiring a completely different set of skills. There is nothing wrong with changing careers, of course, but the most important thing anyone can do is ensure they choose something and then focus on it completely. If you continue to change your mind, you will never develop true mastery.

One of the most amazing things I have seen in my life is people who become incredibly happy, successful, and rich by seeking out and doing simple jobs to which they have committed. The universe rewards commitment. Warren Buffet has become incredibly rich committing to one form of investing. Some people make their fortunes doing simple things you would not expect.

When I was an asphalt contractor, I knew a man who’d built a giant company putting hot tar in the cracks in roads all over Michigan. I know of another man who became very wealthy building pallets for the automotive industry. In college admissions, people with stand-out interests always do the best. I remember a high school teacher who talked about his students who’d gone to schools like Yale and Harvard, and how those students all had incredibly focused interests. Some were interested in bug collecting, another liked translating Japanese poetry, etc. The world rewards people with specialized interests who nurture that interest and continue to get better at those interests year after year.

One of the most unusual things I’ve witnessed is that most people are flirting with life and their careers. Instead of committing to a career and something, these people continue to dissipate their energies in many different directions. As a consequence, they never achieve anything near what they are capable of achieving. What are your capabilities? How much do you think you can achieve? The sky is the limit if you focus and continue to improve at something.

Why do I call focus “a law of the universe”? In the family unit, marriages, children and so forth typically only occur when two people decide to commit to one another and get married. People choose to focus on one another. This is a rule in virtually every culture in the world. It is almost as if the rule is saying life cannot begin until two people choose to focus. In your life, your career will never really begin until you choose to focus.

As a legal recruiter, I very quickly get a sense after looking at an attorney’s resume of how long it is likely to take for the person to get a job, and where. The most important factor determining an attorney’s future employability is his or her focus, beyond where they went to law school, their previous employer, or specialty. If the person has had several jobs in a short period of time, then employers will stay away (they know the person is unlikely to commit). If the person has flirted with other jobs in addition to practicing law, a smart employer will stay away. Employers are looking for commitment, and they want to make sure people accepting jobs with them are going to be committed to their company. Employers want their employees to use their commitment to help the company grow. The level of commitment legal employers look for is the same as in other professions. People want to hire people who are likely to do a job long-term.

Your life and career will change when you learn to commit to something over the long term.

Choose Your Frames of Reference Wisely

I spent the summer following my first year of law school working at the Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) in Washington, DC. The entire summer and the events leading up to it resulted in one of the strangest experiences I have ever had. After I got the job with the DOJ, I was required to undergo a security clearance with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After contacting and questioning many people I knew in the past, the FBI also required me to take a physical and a drug test.

In late spring, I went in for the physical when I was studying for my final exams. It was like something out of a Frankenstein movie. There was a skeleton hanging by a wire inside the doctor’s office and the whole place was very disorganized. He started telling me strange stories about grisly things like a decapitation case he had been involved with at the morgue, for example. The doctor looked like a mad scientist—his hair was disheveled and his comments were bizarre.

I was the last patient of the day on a Friday afternoon. The doctor had to let me out of the building because everyone was gone for the day. On Saturday I went to the library around 5:00 pm and did not return until around 1:30 am. When I got home there was a message on my answering machine. The machine said it had been received about 45 minutes previously, at 12:45 am:

“Hello, this is the doctor who did your physical on Friday. It is important that I speak with you right away… please call me immediately! Your exam was fine. This is about something far more urgent!” He left no number, and I searched frantically for the number of the clinic. I could not imagine why the doctor would be calling me at such a strange hour. I called the clinic and an answering machine picked up. I did not leave a message. On Sunday I called again and the machine picked up again. I still did not leave a message.

On Monday I came home from the library around noon or so and called the clinic again. This time someone did pick up. I asked to speak with the doctor.

“Who is this!?” the person on the other end of the line demanded.

“He left me a message early Sunday morning,” I replied.

“That’s impossible,” the person said. “He was found dead this morning in the office. He had been dead since Friday night.”

This was the start of my bizarre summer at the DOJ.

A few days into my job at the DOJ, my boss (an important government official who had been appointed by the president) came into my office and told me he had heard I was living in a skid row hotel and that I could stay at his house if I watered his lawn and fed his bird. At the time, I was paying $100 or so a week to stay at the hotel – the cheapest place I could find at the time.

My boss wanted me to live in his home while he and his family traveled throughout Europe for the summer. I took up residence in his basement, where I was surrounded by boxes and a collection of hard liquor bottles. Despite the surroundings, the living conditions in the basement were much better than the skid row hotel.

There were lots of things I did not enjoy about working with the DOJ. In addition to the supernatural death experience with the doctor a few weeks before, and the time I spent in the skid row hotel, I was now living with a bird in a basement surrounded by liquor bottles and boxes of old albums. My job was strange as well. I was working in a huge building with hardly any windows. The pay was low and the people I was working with did not appear happy. (There are numerous different divisions within the DOJ, so my experience was perhaps not the norm; however, I found the entire experience thoroughly unpleasant.)

One of the strangest things about my experience working with the DOJ was the group of people with whom I shared an office. Every day a very large woman would come in with a man who looked no more than 20 and they would sit in the office with me all day. They would do nothing but spend the majority of their time eating and looking at me. There were no computers on their desks and I never saw them on the phone. As far as I knew, they did nothing.

When I would type, they would seem annoyed. “Gotta hit those keys,” one would say. “Yep, hit ‘em up!” the other would chime in.

I was involved in research projects that made no sense to me. One of them involved a bunch of hypothetical questions about nuclear powered airplanes exploding over subdivisions in North Carolina. The job, the people, Washington, DC… none of it was very appealing.

Many of the people I was working with seemed like zombies.

I remember the phone ringing in the house late one evening, and I rushed upstairs from the basement to grab it. It was a relative of mine I had not spoken to in some time who was working overseas. There was a delay in the communication because he was in Poland at the time (I think for the CIA) and he was calling on what sounded like a satellite phone.

I told my relative I was not interested in working for the government, the pay was low and that the work was not that exciting – and was, in fact, bizarre. This was, of course, due to the division I was working in at the time, not just the government affiliation. I will never forget what my relative said to me.

“Isn’t this the most you can expect out of your life? If you do this, you will have really succeeded.”

For me, this was not what I wanted in my life. At that moment this person was trying to provide me a reference claiming this was what I should expect out of my life and was the best I could do. This was not the reference I wanted. My idea of what it meant to be a lawyer was much more than this. Had I chosen to believe this relative and accept that assessment, I may have spent my life doing something I did not enjoy.

I have provided you so much detail about my experience because I quickly created a reference for myself that the worst possible thing that could happen to me was to work for the government. I had such a strange and bad experience I came to believe I needed to expect something far different for myself. Working for the government had gone from being my dream to my nightmare.

This makes no sense, of course. Working for the government offers incredible opportunity, but our references are what control how we think about things. People (like my relative) provide us with references as to how we may choose to view our lives, and we can either accept them or deny them. Here, I reacted with rage.

“Are you kidding? This is the last freaking thing I’ll ever want for myself!” I think I may have hung up on the relative and not spoken to him for weeks afterward.

I know my relative must have been perplexed by my reaction. His implication that this was the best I could expect made me furious. I did not want to be judged as being part of the government world.

When I got back to law school in the fall, I made sure I did everything I possibly could to get a great job with a law firm. I tried to get as far away from a government career as I possibly could.

How has your career been shaped?

Have you allowed yourself and your career to be shaped by early experiences you have had?

Have your early interpretations of the world and what has happened to you made you a better or a stronger person?

In your career, have you been so turned off by certain early experiences that your version of the world and your place in it is different from what it needs to be?

Are you allowing early interpretations of the world to shape and control your destiny?

We need to take what we experience and frame it in a way that makes us stronger and makes life work for us the way it should work.

At the age of 21, Billy Joel had been playing in bars for seven years. The life he saw in front of him was something very depressing to him. He was not always treated well in bars and, according to one account, drunks had actually spit on him when he was playing the piano. He had a series of misfortunes, was drinking too much, and simply wanted to die. He was not even making a very good living playing piano. In a 2002 essay in Time magazine, Joel wrote:

“The band thing wasn’t working. I had no money. I had had a series of jobs like oystering, landscaping, pumping gas. I was homeless. I slept in laundromats or in cars. I was crashing at friends’ houses. I’d sneak into my mom’s house and sleep there. I didn’t want to move back home; I didn’t want to admit defeat.

I actually tried to commit suicide at 21. I drank furniture polish. I had no purpose in life, and I thought it was all over. I checked myself into an observation ward [in a hospital] for a while because I knew I was suicidal. I wanted to get some help, and I had an epiphany. I saw people who had profound emotional problems. These people were manic-depressives and paranoid schizophrenics. I looked around and said to myself, I don’t have any problems. I realized all I was doing was being absurdly self-absorbed and giving in to self-pity, and I wanted to just get out. So I told them what they wanted to hear. I took the medicine. I walked around with the bathrobe open in the a__, like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. People were moaning and groaning all night, and I thought, please, just let me get out of here, and I’ll never be that stupid again.

This experience was one of the best things I have ever gone through. I have never given in to any kind of self-pity for longer than two minutes since then. I realized I can solve my own problems. It showed me that what I thought was my own hell was nothing compared with the hell of others. I have taken that 21-year-old with me throughout my life. He has helped me through the deaths of friends, family matters, personal-relationship issues, minefields of the music business, writer’s block.”(Time, Jan. 21, 2002)

The most important things we have in our lives are references. What determines the quality of our lives is how we evaluate our situations. When I think about Joel, I also think of my early experience with the government. I formed beliefs about what the government was like and used this to propel myself away from it. Joel used his experience “going crazy” to propel his mind away from feeling sorry for himself and towards being grateful for what he was and the life he could have. The reference and association he made in his mind made him change the way he approached life and his place in it.

Years later, of course, Joel would go on to be one of the most famous musicians in the world, become fabulously wealthy, and marry one of the most beautiful women in the world, Christie Brinkley. How can a man go from drinking furniture polish at the age of 21 to the heights of stardom and greatness that few ever experience? According to Joel, having seen people who were really suffering made him realize there was no reason why he should ever feel sorry for himself again. By having seen the other side, he very quickly realized how much his life meant and how much he had to look forward to.

I have never used drugs, or even tried them. There is a reason for this. When I was growing up, I saw numerous lives practically destroyed by recreational drugs at a very young age. A drug-crazed maniac shot and killed my stepsister when I was in second grade. My school also had a program where the police came around a couple of times a year and showed people in our class pictures of drug related deaths. Speakers came to our school and talked about the dangers of drugs, how people died or had their lives otherwise destroyed by them. From the time I was seven or eight years old until now, I have always been terrified of drugs – my reference to drugs.

The references you have for the way the world is will impact everything that happens to you. These references will shape your life. The people who achieve the most in the world are the people who are empowered by, and not dragged down by, references. One of the best things you can do is allow your references to empower you in a positive and not a negative way. So many people create negative references from their experiences, and their lives are paralyzed and hurt forever by these references.

One of the saddest things that can happen to a person is to be sexually abused when they are young. While growing up, I knew two girls who had been sexually abused by their own fathers. Each girl reacted differently to the experience. One gained a lot of weight so she would not be attractive to men and became angry, hateful, and bitter. The other girl became incredibly attractive and also promiscuous. After years of therapy, the promiscuous one told me she had used sex as a control mechanism over men to prove she owned her body and her father did not. She viewed sex as a way to have control instead of something that was about bonding. Both of these women allowed a bad experience and reference to control the course of their lives and affect how they saw themselves in the world and interacted with it. I often think about these two women because the contrast is so remarkable.

People use their experiences and what happens to them in different ways. Some people use their references for good and others for bad. People who achieve the most in the world and in their lives do so because of the references they hold in their mind.

Your references do not need to be things that have happened in the past. They can also be references you set up for your future and what will happen in your future. When Sony first started marketing radios in the United States in the middle of the 1950s, Bulova offered to purchase 100,000 units, but insisted they be marketed under the Bulova brand name. This was to be the largest order Sony had ever received and would give the floundering company money to grow and prosper.

At the time, Sony co-founder Akio Morita barely had any money. With some of the last money he had to his name, Morita called Sony headquarters in Japan from the United States and told them about the order. They encouraged Morita to take the order. Morita was firm he did not want to accept the order and told headquarters that he was not going to take it. Headquarters thought he was crazy.

When Morita told Bulova about his decision, they stated, “Our company name is a famous brand name that has taken over fifty years to establish. Nobody has ever heard of your brand name. Why not take advantage of ours?”

Morita remained steadfast in his views and refused to accept the order.

His rejoinder to Bulova: “Fifty years ago, your brand name must have been just as unknown as our name is today. I am here with a new product, and I am taking the first step for the next fifty years of my company. Fifty years from now I promise you that our name will be just as famous as your company name is today.”

The references you create for yourself about what you will be and what you can be control your destiny. The filters we view life and the world through have a stunning effect on what ends up happening to us and shaping our futures. Your beliefs and values come from the references you give yourself. We use references to give us certainty about the way things are.

When Thomas Edison was designing the light bulb and failing again and again, he did not say “Aw, what’s the use?” Instead, he told himself he was one step closer to creating the light bulb each time he failed. He used failure as a reference to show he was getting closer to his goal. How do you interpret the world around you?

You succeed in life by creating references that empower you rather than dragging you down. In my job with the government, I could have taken my early experience to mean there was something “supernatural” about me working there and that people would “come to my aid,” such as my boss who offered me a free place to live. I could have decided I was working on the most incredible projects of all time, projects that would shape national policy and what happened in the world. I could have told myself my experience was something that could lead to me being the President of the United States and to helping millions of people both in our country and around the world. I could have easily given my experience that meaning.

You can do the same thing with your work and life experiences. Let your experiences empower you. Give them positive, not negative, meaning. When you look at your past in a way that empowers you, every single day is a new opportunity for growth. When you look at your past in this way, you may realize the worst days of your life were actually your very best.

Link a different meaning to your experiences so you can be stronger. Billy Joel took a horrible event and linked something incredibly positive to it. The transformation of this experience made him strong and gave him a life that would empower any one of us. He also used this experience to empower the world through his music. You can rationalize any experience you have the same way Joel did.

When I was growing up, I was exceptionally good at soccer. At one point I was so good I was not allowed to play on regular teams. Instead, I was on a special team for all of Detroit that traveled around playing different teams in other parts of the state.

After a couple years of this, however, I rapidly lost all interest in soccer and sports in general. It was too much pressure. Too much was expected of me, and the game was no longer fun. It was so competitive and brutal I would feel badly about myself after virtually every game, unless I got a “hat trick” (three goals). Because I had great talent, I was expected to practice all the time.

After a while, I intentionally stopped doing as well as I could at soccer and instead sabotaged myself. I did not play as hard as I could and started to fail at the game.

My life was never the same.

Although I played varsity soccer my first year of high school, I stopped playing after that and was no longer interested. I did not want the pressure. I made different kinds of friends and dropped out of the game forever. I became friends with the sorts of kids who did not play sports and got into trouble. I was escaping life as an athlete. It made no sense.

I formed the wrong references and made the game represent something other than what it was. The fact is we give things the meanings we choose. Have you ever stopped doing something at which you were talented? If so, the chances are very good you stopped doing it because you allowed yourself to form a different meaning of what it was. We view things through the lenses we choose. Everyone looks at the world based on the experiences they have had in the past and what they mean.

Different religions view the world in different ways. If you were to eat a steak in India, a Hindu would be horrified. If you tried to shake the hand of an Orthodox Jew of a different sex, they would pull their hand away in shock. If you tried to take a practicing Mormon to a bar and have a drink with them, they would be repulsed. We view the world based on the sorts of experiences we have had and what we tell ourselves the world and different things mean. We view the world through filters, and it is important we realize the filters we are using are not always the correct ones. We use references to create the filters we use to see the world.

I want to encourage you to stand guard at the door of your mind. Do not let your past represent something negative that can hurt you now. None of us have had perfect life experiences. There is something inside of you, however, that is holding you back from reaching for the stars in your career. You are capable of so much. How different would the memories of high school been for me if I had allowed myself to be a star soccer player? How different would Billy Joel’s life have been if he’d allowed himself to stay depressed? How different would your life be today if you allowed your past to empower you? How different would your present be if you knew you were capable of greatness and accepted nothing but the best for yourself, like Morita of Sony?

There is no limit to your life except the limits you impose on it. Your career and the world are wide open to you. Try to look at everything you have done in the past as a powerful lesson that is making you stronger and better today. Never allow yourself to be limited by your own mind. Allow your mind to interpret the world for your benefit, and not your detriment.

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