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.

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.

Be Committed to What You Do

What You Will Learn There is power in being committed. It is important to commit to your career, to a single employer or to anything that is important to you. Not being committed to your career will deprive you of success. You should not do any sort of job that your heart is not in, and that you cannot commit to.

I am about to provide you some of the strangest job search and career advice you will ever receive from someone who’s in the recruiting industry. One thing you should know about me is that I’m a straight shooter. If I see a pattern repeat itself enough times, I know it’s something that must be true. The pattern I’m about to explain to you is so powerful it could change your career forever. I know it has changed mine.

The secret is commitment.

When I was in my 20s, I had a girlfriend who watched soap operas. She was committed to those shows. She would watch them every single day, and if she could not watch them, she would record them. I’m ashamed to admit that I would sometimes watch the soaps with her when she would catch up on the missed episodes. The one thing I quickly realized about soap operas was they were all about commitment, in that none of the characters could commit. Each person on every one of the shows would get into a series of relationships, be tempted by others, get out of relationships, get married, cheat, and so forth. This was all the soap operas were ever about. The characters would inevitably suffer hospitalizations for nervous breakdowns or horrible accidents (caused by their distractions). Then there would be horrible, drunken, public confessionals, and all sorts of other malfeasance. Moreover, the people on these shows would always be led to believe that, no matter how good their situation was, the grass was greener elsewhere.

Several years later, when I got into the employment market and started recruiting, I began noticing this same soap opera pattern with clients and coworkers. People would leave a job for any lapse, no matter how small. If they were criticized by an employer, I would see them start looking for another job. If someone heard another employer was paying more, they would send a résumé. If their current company or firm were getting bad press, they would start looking for another job. The reasons were innumerable. Some might seem proactive, while others were purely reactionary. One thing seemed clear to me: There was a major lack of commitment in the marketplace. People could not or would not commit themselves to a single employer, or to anything for that matter.

Commitment is key in order to experience any form of success. You should not do any sort of job if your heart isn’t in it, and you can’t be committed. If you are a public relations intern, you need to be committed to that job. If you are the president of a corporation, you need to be committed to that as well. Not being committed to your career will only have negative consequences.

Several months ago, I was speaking with a proofreader in my company, who resigned because she had found a better job across the street, one that paid more. The amount of the pay increase was minimal. I was actually prepared to give the woman a raise, a higher amount than her new job. In our meeting, the young woman explained she liked working for our company, but she needed to make more money because her husband had been unemployed for some time.

I told her I was very sorry about this and asked how she became aware of the new job. She was a nice girl and I was interested in talking to her about this. The job she was doing at our company was very demanding and had required her to take work home at night, and to work very hard for the most part. In response, she told me she’d been freelancing for the other company for some time, and this was how she came to entertain a new full-time job offer.

Once she told me this, I was no longer interested in trying to keep this person at our company. I knew immediately she was not committed to our company to the degree I wanted her to be. She was not someone I wanted on my team.

Your boss (and we all have bosses) wants employees who are committed to what they do.

Whenever I hear someone tell me they are just doing something until they can find something better, I know that person will never really succeed. When I see someone leave a job for trivial reasons, I also know that person will probably not reach the success for which they’re striving. When I see people watch the clock and leave at 5 p.m. every day because they are not really interested in what they are doing, I know those people will probably have mediocre careers. Commitment shines through, and it is easy to see when it’s not there.

Each morning, I read the Wall Street Journal. I spend at least 45 minutes reading it cover to cover. Most of the stories in this publication are about Fortune 500 companies and other such organizations. At least once a week, I see something along these lines written there:

John Smith started out as a repairman for a local office of X company in 1977. Today, he is CEO of the same company, with 18,000 employees in 26 countries and revenues of $4.2 billion last year…

It’s not coincidental I keep seeing stories like this in the paper. Without a doubt, the people who are rising up in these situations are those who are the most committed. When they join a company they join and remain in a committed fashion. They show up to work. These are the kinds of people who grow within corporations. They usually keep their jobs, but if they ever lose a job they will find another job quickly. Their commitment attracts success.

Being committed also has financial rewards. I have several people working for me on salary, whose incomes have consistently risen (more than tripled) in the past 3-4 years alone, because I know they are committed. I know their hearts and souls are in the job. I have recruiters working for our company who make 2-3 times more money than the average recruiter due to their level of commitment to the job.

It’s very common for people who’ve held too many jobs within a short span of time to never find a job in their industry again. This happens to lawyers all the time. It is well known in the recruiting community that if you have had more than two jobs in five years (or even 5-6 over a 20+ year career), it demonstrates a lack of commitment. Even if you can account for the problems you might have had with those employers, it would seem clear that the problem is not your employer–the problem is almost certainly you.

Prospective employers will want to avoid you because they know you will leave them, too. You will find fault with them just as you have found fault with all of your other employers. You will tell the people you work with why you do not like the company. You will tell other potential employers you are interviewing with why you do not like the company. Who needs that? Most employers avoid these sorts of people like the plague.

It pays to be committed not only to your employer, but to your career. Your commitment will come out in everything you do, and you will shine. There are countless stories of the secretary who becomes the president of the company, the guy in the mailroom who ends up buying the corporation and becoming a billionaire, the worker who sweeps up at the auto dealership, who becomes a salesman, then the top salesman, and eventually buys the auto dealership and another, and another, and so on.

All of that comes through the power of commitment.

I am in the employment industry. I love what I do. I want you to succeed. I want to coach you. I am committed to what I am doing.

Are you?

Consistency and Commitment Beat Brilliance and Talent

What You Will Learn Be consistent and you will achieve a lot over a period of time. Although consistency requires a high level of tenacity, never give up. Develop the ability to focus on small bits of progress instead of trying to acquire brilliance and talent which are fickle. Consistent effort will create the best results.

When I was growing up in Detroit, I went to school with kids whose parents were the Chief Executive Officers of major auto companies and were in other high level roles.  Sometimes I would turn on the television and see the same men I’d eaten dinner with at a friend’s house on the nightly news giving a press conference in Washington, or speaking about an issue of national importance.  Another one of my friend’s fathers was the CEO of a major national bank and, by the time I was 13 or 14, I was smart enough to realize I could learn a lot from these men.  I figured they must all be enormously gifted intellectually and have other skills which I could easily learn about.

In my spare time I read books such as Iacocca, about Lee Iacocca, and when the Publisher’s Clearing House mail came to my mother’s house I ordered the Forbes, Business Week and a ton of other business magazines so I could impress these nationally important men and talk to them about their careers and what they did.  I remember after reading a book about Lee Iacocca, and having spent months reading business magazines, I had the opportunity to speak with one of my friend’s fathers. He used to work for President Ford writing speeches, and he now worked directly for Henry Ford writing his speeches.  Because I had read so much, I realized, after about an hour, I knew much more than even he did about various aspects of his business.

When I was 13 or 14, I dominated dinnertime conversations at my friends’ homes spinning off facts and figures and entertaining major figures in various auto companies.  The more I talked about business with these men, the less I realized they knew.  I could not believe men who might have gotten MBAs from Harvard Business School knew so little.  I figured that, based on their lack of knowledge about arcane business facts, none of them must be all that intelligent.

Most of these men were from all over the country and had joined, right out of school, automobile companies, banks and the other institutions they would one day lead.  In at least one incident I recall, one man worked on an automotive manufacturing line in a factory during college.  In another case, one of my friend’s fathers even went to a school called General Motors Institute (no longer in existence) which was a college run by General Motors.

Every day, these men got up early and drove into Detroit.  They came home late each evening.  Once a year, they took vacations for a couple of weeks, usually skiing in Colorado or at a ski resort in Michigan.  At the same time, most had wives who never worked and stayed at home raising the children and providing their husbands with the sort of environment that would enable them to succeed.  By the time I met many of these titans of business and industry, they had been getting up at the same time to go to work and living the life they lived for over 30 years–more than twice as long as I had even been on the earth.

And there I was sitting at their dining room tables uncovering how much information they did not know and believing they were stupid.

The more I realized these men did not know about arcane business facts, the more I read.  One thing I quickly realized was none of these men were angry, and all of them seemed to enjoy learning what they did not know from a child.  In addition, there was a very gentle way about them because, despite the fact I must have looked like an idiot spewing forth various facts and figures, they never sought to correct me.  They were always quite diplomatic in all respects.

Just because I was aware of more facts and figures, it certainly did not mean I was more talented than these men.  On the contrary, they were actually busy leading their lives and careers while I stood on the sidelines simply reading about it. 

Now some 20+ years later I can reflect on what was going on:

1. I certainly have never been on the evening news giving my opinions before the United States Congress.
2. I do not sit in the office of the President of the United States and give him advice about what to talk about in speeches and write speeches for him.
3. My actions and opinions are not mentioned weekly in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

I now look at these men with profound respect because the lesson their careers hold is something I have certainly learned from, and you can too: Work ethic and consistency trump brilliance and talent.

There are many people with a lot of talent, or who know a lot.  These talented people may know more than the next person.  They may be better socially.  They may have a better idea of what needs to be done.  They may have better educations.  They may be better sales people.  They may be more connected.

But when it comes right down to it, none of this really matters if the talented person cannot simply “show up” and do the same thing over and over.  The people who win and become the most successful are the ones who generally put in a massive effort over the long run.  Nothing is more effective than being consistent.  The Grand Canyon could never have been built by one giant flood.  Instead, it was built over millions of years by a consistent flow of water that applied a small amount of pressure and erosion over time.  So, too, it is with your career.  If you are consistent, you will achieve a lot more over time than if you are not.

Talent and brilliance have sex appeal.  Talent is something that blows us away.

Several years ago, I was sitting in the living room of my mother’s house in Detroit, and in the other room was a man who was providing one of the most brilliant analyses of the meaning of the world I have ever heard.  The more this man’s mind worked through an idea, the more brilliant I realized he was.  At the time, I was 27 and had been through college and law school.  In addition to practicing law, I was also teaching in a law school.  I had heard a lot of very brilliant men speak in my career, but the person I was listening to was incredible.

As I listened to this man speak, I was firmly convinced he was the most brilliant man I had ever heard.  After he left, I found out he had an extraordinary IQ and had received a PhD from Princeton.  However, he had never applied his skills.  Instead, he was living in a small $350 a month apartment and had lived there for years.  He did not use his brilliance in his job and, instead, his talent went to waste because it was not being consistently applied.  He had worked in multiple jobs in his career.  What if this man had decided to spend his career writing?  What if this man decided to spend his career teaching? He did none of those things and, despite incredible talent, nothing ever happened.  We need to apply our talents.

Talent is fickle.  Sometimes talent shows up, and other times it does not.  In contrast, being consistent requires a high level of tenacity.  You need to keep plowing through.  You cannot give up.  Anyone can be a better performer in one thing or another for a short time.  What really takes skill is to consistently perform over time.  This is what my friends’ fathers were all doing.  Imagine 30+ years of doing the same thing and climbing within the same organization.  This consistent effort is what creates the best results and enables people to win over time.  Only certain people are born with brilliance and incredible talent, but anyone can exercise their option to work hard. 

When we are consistent, we make small bits of progress on a daily basis.  Making small daily bits of progress are what transform careers and lives.  Anything you focus on consistently will make you better.  Many people lack the ability to consistently focus over time, and instead believe one small flash of brilliance or talent will make a difference.  This is almost never the case.  Consistency and work ethic always trump brilliance and talent.