Your Beliefs About Yourself are Controlling Your Destiny

When you go down any street in virtually any major urban environment in the world you will see people living on the street.  I have lived in Europe, Asia and all over the United States and wherever I have gone I have seen people living on the street in various parts of these cities.  The only place I can honestly say I have not seen this is in rural Ohio, where several members of my family live surrounded by miles of corn fields.  Perhaps homeless people live in the corn fields there, I do not know.

Who are these millions of homeless people and why are they homeless?  These people are literally everywhere. There are certainly many sociological explanations for their extreme poverty and other problems.  We can blame the government, we can blame the economy and we can blame others.  Notwithstanding, there are tons of people out there who somehow manage to do exceptionally well in spite of everything.  They do not have educations but are the richest people in the world.  They may have had their face burned off in a fire and end up marrying a model.  They may have a low IQ but have managed to do incredible things with their lives.

For every story about someone who is poorly off, there is a story about someone who is doing well.  You need to understand that there are vast differences in the world about how people experience and react to the world.  What makes this central idea so exciting is that what happens to us is entirely within our control, if we are willing to “go deep” and understand what it is inside of us that is controlling how we experience the world. What I am concerned about specifically is your beliefs.  Your beliefs control how you experience and interact with the world.  Due to our early life experiences, almost all of us develop beliefs about who we are and our relationship to the world.

The significance of these beliefs is that our beliefs end up creating our experience of life and the world around us.  The experiences we have of life, the circumstances we find ourselves in and the results we achieve are all related to the beliefs that we adopt about ourselves.  The reason this occurs is because we all do what we need to in order to create consistency between our lives and what happens to us and our beliefs.  This is a profoundly important statement and something that if you really grasp it can change your life, your career and your destiny forever.

One of the most powerful needs people have is for their experience of the world to be consistent with what they believe.  The drive for this is so incredibly strong that people will do almost everything to be right about their beliefs and will do this even when being right means they will suffer, be unhappy or experience failure.

We all have beliefs and these beliefs are about a variety of different things.  These beliefs could be such things as:

• Every time we apply ourselves we are likely to fail.
• Every time we get close to people they will disappoint us.
• We will only be loved when we need something or are sick
• Success is for other people and not for us.
• We are not important.
• We do not fit in.

There are a ton of potential beliefs out there that we may have about ourselves that we potentially could have adopted about ourselves based on our early experiences.  In almost every case, we do not choose the beliefs we have about the world but instead we have adopted these beliefs based upon our early life experiences and feedback from the world (especially with and from our parents).  These beliefs end up controlling how we evaluate ourselves in relation to the world.

One of the beliefs that I have had to work on is that I cannot trust people.  One of the reasons I think that I adopted this belief was because I learned very early on that I could not trust my parents in certain circumstances.  Both of my parents lied to me on several occasions when I was younger.  While in and of itself this was not a horrible thing, this engendered a tremendous amount of distrust in me at a later age.  When I got into business situations as an adult I started having my trust violated over and over again–by employees and others.  Invariably, someone I would allow myself to get close to would violate my trust.  Until I was in my early 30s, virtually every woman I dated (or married in one case) violated the trust I had in her.  If she did not violate my trust (or I did not think she would) I was messed up enough at the time that I would push her away and end the relationship.  I was only attracted to “bad girls” due to my belief that no one could be trusted.  I wanted to ensure that my beliefs about the way the world worked were confirmed by the women I chose to spend my time with.  The same thing occurred with many friends and employees of mine.  I chose to associate with people I knew deep down were not trustworthy because this supported my belief in the world that people were not trustworthy.

This is entirely messed up, I know.  However, we all have beliefs like this that are acting out in our life.  Our beliefs about ourselves and the world are one reason that many people end up attracting the like-minded people into their lives. I knew one women quite well who went to Harvard Law School and associated with the highest class people you can imagine. This women dated a succession of at least 3 or 4 men over the course of a few years who literally beat the shit out of her.  She would show up in arguably the most prestigious law firm in Los Angeles with black eyes and bruises all over her body. This is someone who was incredibly intelligent.  Why do you think she was attracting and choosing to date a succession of men like this?  I have not even ever personally known a man who beats up women and would not even know how to go about finding one.  Notwithstanding, this woman somehow was able to attract these sorts of men and vice versa.  The men she dated were bankers, doctors and other professionals who would fly off into rages and kick and punch her.

What is going on in a situation like this?  When you get deeply into it, what was going on, I think, was not a case of “bad luck”.  The woman was consciously and subconsciously attracting people who confirmed a belief that she had about herself, and the world, that led her to consistently being beat up.  The more I think about this particular woman, the stranger the whole thing seems to me.  The last I checked, several years ago, she was working in a battered women’s shelter. I am not saying that women who are battered deserve this sort of treatment.  What I am saying, however, is that a lot of it comes about because of certain peoples’ beliefs about themselves and the world.

I entered into a marriage several years ago with someone I was 100% confident on a conscious and subconscious level would cheat on me.  I absolutely knew it.  It was the most messed up and crazy thing imaginable.  I got divorced because of it. It all happened, however, because of my beliefs about the world and the way it was.

You have beliefs like this that are controlling how you see the world as well.

The person living on the street who believes he is worthless and will always be poor has attracted this life as well.  Whatever you believe will end up causing people and situations that will make you right about your belief. This is just how it works.

People attract the sorts of situations and create the sorts of lives that make them right about their beliefs. You are doing the same thing right now with your life and your career.

What is even more interesting is how we end up distorting reality to ensure that we make a belief seem true even if it is not.  Several years ago when I was around 24, I was dating a woman whose dad was an incredible womanizer. It was really out of control and he was such a bad womanizer and had been throughout his marriage that his wife had finally left him on a trial separation basis.  He was 60 odd years old and had recently started dating a 24 year old girl.  Since my girlfriend’s parents were not divorced yet and she really hoped they would reconcile, she was very angry about this. One evening we were going out for the evening and she said to him, “She better not be here when I get back!!”

Her father smiled and did not say anything.  We got back around 11:00p.m. and walked into the family room.  To my astonishment her father’s girlfriend was not there and he had somehow brought home two other girls who could not have been more than 30.  He had his arms around them both with his feet up and was smoking a cigarette.  He appeared to be having a great time.

“See she’s not here!” he said.  “But now I’ve got two others!”  He was laughing and flashed me a smile.  It was too much and my girlfriend ran to her room crying.

“He’s such a womanizer!!” I remember her crying.  “I cannot stand it.”

A couple of weeks later I was out at bar with my girlfriend and her brother.  A girl I had known in elementary school came up and started speaking with me. I had not seen her in at least 10 years and was very excited to catch up with her.  We spent about 30 minutes talking and caught up. Then she gave me her number to call her so she could give me the contact information of a few other people from elementary school that I had lost contact with, but she was still in touch with.

My girlfriend absolutely flew off the handle.  She told me I was a womanizer.  From that point on everything I did was about womanizing. If I bought a new couch it was because I wanted to have women over when she was not there.  If I got a haircut it was because I wanted to look good for other women.  Her entire view of me was about how I was a huge womanizer–even though I never have been and was not.  What she was doing was distorting reality so that it matched her belief of the world that men were all womanizers (like her father), even if this was not the truth.  Our relationship fell apart shortly thereafter, and I am confident she probably started dating a man who really was an womanizer. This was her view of reality and the world.

She put so much pressure on me that I was a womanizer that I almost felt like I should be.  She was literally almost conditioning myself and my view of the world so that I saw myself as a womanizer even though I am not.  This was due primarily, I believe, due to her deep-seated desire to confirm her beliefs about people.  It was almost as if she was acting in a certain way so that I complied with what she believed about men and the world and the way she was worried I would act.  She believed all men were womanizers and this belief caused her to act in such a way that maybe I would have ended up one eventually.  This is no different than what we do to ourselves in other areas of our lives, however.  For example:

• We believe we will get fired from a certain job so we act in such a way that eventually we do get fired
• We believe that all men are womanizers so we act in such a way that the people we get close to become womanizers
• We believe we will not succeed so we act in such a way that we do not succeed
• We believe we are worthless so we become bums

We actually make our worst fears come true by perceiving people and the world in such a way that these things do come true. The point is that we manipulate our surroundings and unconsciously shape the events occurring around us so that we get to be right about what we believe about the world. We want to create consistency between our beliefs about the world and our lives.  Almost everyone out there wants nothing more than to be right and will do whatever is necessary to make sure their beliefs coordinate with what is happening to them.

When you get into the family life of most bums and other people living on the street you will often find some of the most depressing stories.  You will see people who had parents who were incredibly cold and unloving.  This has likely shaped the beliefs of the people living on the street that the world is a cold and unloving place and “poof” there the people are on the street.  One of my favorite television shows used to be Intervention which I watched for a few years before it finally got too depressing to handle.  What the show is about is a drug addict, alcoholic, bulimic, or other “addict” of some sort who gets completely out of control and needs an intervention.  What always interested me most about this show was the most severe cases and the family dynamic at work.  What I have always looked for with a great deal of curiosity is the sort of family the people have whose lives get completely out of control and have the worst issues. In almost all cases there is a stoic, unsympathetic mother or parent in the background.  The person who is addicted and whose life is spinning out of control does not feel any love in the world and has absorbed beliefs about how there is pain in the world and that his/her life cannot be fixed.  The show usually goes into some early detail about the person’s life and provides a background of the person’s early beliefs about the world and how they got these beliefs.  These beliefs usually are something that play themselves out in the peoples’ subsequent addiction.

Most of us are acting and going through life largely unconscious to what we believe about ourselves.  Whether it is therapy, meditation, biofeedback, or something else, it is incredibly important that we understand why we act the way we do and what makes us whom we are.  Our lives are incredibly affected by our beliefs about ourselves.

Most people in the world are literally operating on auto pilot, based on beliefs about themselves they do not even know that they have.   Everyone has an internal map of reality and this map is creating life and experiences. These beliefs are affecting us on a daily basis whether we want them to or not.  We all have internal maps of reality and these maps operate primarily unconsciously and on automatic.  We hold many beliefs to be true that end up creating our experience of life.  Something that can change your entire life and career is when you realize the following:

You are the creator of whatever happens to you.  Whatever happens to you is coming from inside of you.  Everything that is happening to you is being generated inside of yourself–even if you cannot see this.  The key to a successful career and life is to stop resisting what is happening to you and start choosing what to believe about the world to create the life you want.

Once you understand this statement your life as you know it and your ability to control what happens to you in your life will change.  Understanding this statement and working with this statement is something the most successful people in the world are able to do and the least successful people in the world are not.  In effect, the most successful people in the world choose what to believe about themselves and the world.  I would estimate that less than 1 in 1,000 people understand this.  Even fewer people are able to make this work for there own benefit.

I was about 18 when I first started realizing that I needed to choose my own beliefs about myself.  This process was transformative on so many levels.  I went from being a good student to being an extraordinary student.  I got more popular.  I earned more money.  I became president of the organizations I joined.  There were other incredible things that happened to me as well but it was all really based on the fact that I realized I had to choose what to believe.  I was almost blackballed from a fraternity I was joining (that I would later become president of) because I had conditioned my mind so strongly.

As part of joining most fraternities the group will do everything within its power through certain rituals to make you feel worthless.  For example, they will call you names and get you to say bad things about yourself.  You will be threatened with violence and expulsion from your class. You will be told you are worthless in many, many ways.  The point of all of these exercises is to make you break down and feel like as an individual you are worthless but as a part of the group you have value.  Our fraternity was unusually severe in its approach to this and on at least one or two occasions I saw people have psychotic type breaks when they were undergoing this ritual hazing.  Many organizations such as the Marines and others do this sort of hazing in one form or another and it is part of human nature.  The idea is to shake your beliefs about yourself to the core so you rely on the group.  This serves a useful purpose from the standpoint of determining the long term viability of groups.  Many people undergoing this process would break down and cry and other stuff when confronted with the pressure of the hazing.

The problem I had when I was undergoing all this was that it did not work. I was stoic in many respects and not acting like I should.  From the time I was around 18 until the present day, I have been someone who actively meditates and I try and do this at least once a day.  The reason I do this is primarily to influence my subconscious mind and train myself to believe various things about myself, often regardless of whether or not they are true.  When I was around 18 I became very interested in the mind and how it influences who we are.  Specifically, what interested me most and what interests me to this day is how our beliefs about ourselves have such a serious impact on what ends up happening to us.   I would meditate and do self hypnosis about topics like “self confidence,” for example.

In my days of being hazed, as a “pledge” in my fraternity, being threatened with expulsion and told I was worthless and so forth I did not have the desired effect on the people whose job it was to harass me.

“What do you think about the fact that we all hate you and do not think you have what it takes to be part of our group?!!” one of them might be shouting at me after having dumped a giant 5 gallon pail of ice water over me as I was standing with my hands tied behind my back.

“Well, in all honesty I know I am a valuable person. I have value for the world.  I am a self-confident person …” I might reply to the astonishment of my tormentors.  This would piss them off and the abuse would pick up but I would never be thrown off course. I was not consciously resisting any of this, I just could not bring myself to honestly believe negative things about myself and be influenced by them.

These beliefs and statements would be coming directly from various self-affirmation tapes I had listened to.  Different people reacted in different ways, but throughout my life as one person after another has tried to knock me down a post or two for whatever reason, the beliefs I have conditioned myself to believe have kept me on course, happy and doing well.

Several years ago I was on an airplane traveling back from a business trip from our company’s office India.  Inside the cabin I was sitting in there were a bunch of British magazines.  Since the batteries to my Nintendo Gameboy were not charged I was spending a lot of time reading these magazines.  At some point I started reading an upper crust type magazine and there was a long article about a self help program called the Hoffman Process.  Apparently, in various high society circles of London a ton of people were going to this program and the program was supposed to bring about some sort of profound transformation in people and how they viewed the world.  What was even more encouraging to me was that all of these people from England were traveling to California to do the Hoffman Process.  Since it was not to far from me, I found it very interesting that a self help program in California had gotten an apparent following among British aristocracy.

The program sounded terribly interesting because the testimonials people had from the program were in many cases quite profound.  (In fact, to this day many of the people I personally know who have gone to this program have reported incredible changes.  One guy I knew lost 80 pounds.  Another person quit a horrible addiction a week after going. Other people I know report being happier than they have ever been.  There is a “cult” of sorts of people who have gone to this program and reported some of the most incredible changes they have ever had in their lives.  For others, there has been really no effect.  The point is, there is something to what they do there which has a profound impact on many people

I arrived at the Hoffman Process, at their compound in White Sulfur Spring, California (in Napa Valley), around three years ago on a Friday afternoon.  For 8 days I did various exercises with the participants and went deep into myself, discovering how much of my life has been dictated by beliefs about myself I picked up when I was younger from my environment.  This information was extremely useful for me to know.  During the week I saw several people completely break down and have incredible experiences.  I saw one person who realized at the age of 35 or so that she was actually gay.  I can imagine the results this must have had on her and her family.  I saw years come off of some people’s faces as they seemingly got rid of emotional baggage they had been holding for some time.

The program is not something that was founded by a psychologist.  It is a program that was founded by a tailor in New York, Bob Hoffman, who used to run it out of the back of his tailoring shop.  It involves stuff like shouting at yourself, beating pillows with bats, guided imaging and other stuff that ends up having an effect on making us understand whom we are and where we got many of our beliefs from.  The foundations of the program are not based on an understanding of complex psychology.  Instead, they are based on the ability for people to understand how their need for their parents’ love and approval from an early age had had a tremendous and profound impact on their life and their beliefs about the world.  I enjoyed the program. I also sent my wife to attend the program and she enjoyed it as well. I also sent my father. I have also sent people who work for me.  I have recommended the program to many people.

Essentially, what the program does is it enables people to understand that a lot of their actions and emotions in the world are occurring due to beliefs and behaviors they have adopted from their parents.  The idea is that once you have freed yourself from being someone reacting to things your parents have done and said to you in the past, the more your own decisions are likely to be guided by what you choose to believe.

When I was younger I used to stop and chat with the homeless people on the street at length. In many cases they have severe substance abuse problems and in other cases they have severe psychological issues such as schizophrenia.  Nevertheless, a good portion of these people have nothing wrong with them biochemically.  Many also do not have any serious substance abuse problems.  Instead, their issue appear to be how they think about themselves.  Their beliefs about themselves are controlling their destinies.

This has always been the issue with them.  They feel worthless, they believe they are incapable of good, they believe they are incapable of being loved, they have beliefs about money that disempower them.  When you pass these unfortunate people standing on the side of the road, know that most of the problems they have are caused by deeply held beliefs that they have used to consistently disempower themselves.

This is the same reason you are not reaching your full potential.  Your beliefs about yourself are controlling what is happening to you.

Regardless of who you are, this problem affects all of us–it is just in different degrees.  On a personal level, I have spent that past 20+ years of my life uncovering and exploring my beliefs about myself and seeing if these beliefs empower me or hold me back.  I would like to challenge you to do the same thing today.  You need to manage your mind and understand how your beliefs about yourself, the world and the people around you are contolling your destiny.

Consistency is More Important than Brilliance

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch. Speedy ran down the road for a while and then paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, ”How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?”

Speedy stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking that there was plenty of time to relax.

Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line.

The animals who were watching cheered so loudly for the tortoise that they woke up Speedy.

Speedy stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late because the tortoise had crossed the finish line.

After that, Speedy always reminded himself, ”Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!”

-From Aesop’s Fables

A few years ago I was moving from one house to another. I drove to the local U-Haul and picked up a van.

I am not sure how it is in other cities, but around Los Angeles there are usually about 25 guys who stand in front of U-Hauls on the street waiting to help people move. It’s the same with Home Depot and other stores. I have not seen this in other parts of the world, like Michigan, where I am from. Most of the people who stand in front of the stores are from Mexico. I have never seen an American. To me this says a lot about the work ethic of people from other countries. It seems they are the only ones doing this work. I wonder what makes Americans think they are above doing this sort of work? It makes me a little angry.

If I had grown up in California I’ll bet I would have been the only American standing in front of Home Depots and U-Hauls happily offering to help people paint, do yard work, or move furniture. You need to work to get ahead! You need to find opportunities where others see obstacles. This is what I want for you.

I gathered three guys to help me. It was the day before Christmas. One of the guys helping me was from an Eastern European country and the other two were both from Mexico. After years of picking people up from Home Depots and other places to do work, this was the first time I’d ever picked up one who was not of Hispanic origin. In fact, it was the first time I ever remember seeing one. The Eastern European guy was acting like a maniac. He was being obsessive about how the furniture was covered and moved. He was moving as fast as possible without damaging things, herding the men he was working with from room to room, and barking orders, although I had not asked him to do so. A few times he pulled me aside and told me the other guys were not as hard working as he was and he was ”looking out for me.”

On one occasion, the man started screaming at the men in the truck while they were moving something because they were about to scratch something. I think this was more of a show, however. The men continued what they were doing and started laughing at him.

”He’s crazy!” one of the men said to me. That man’s name was Hillario. He was working with his friend David, who kept his head down and walked by.

At the end of the day, I ended up paying the Eastern European guy a lot more money than either David or Hillario. Mind you, the Eastern European guy argued with me that he deserved more because he had done such a great job. I think I paid him probably close to $40 an hour for the work he had done. This was way too much and I might have made a serious mistake. I have always had a place in my heart for people who make their living doing honest work on the street and I wanted to help him. I respected his work ethic and how hard he had worked. Despite paying him so much money, I did not feel good at the end of the day because he actually made me feel I should have paid him more.

That evening I had a wonderful time. My wife and I had just started dating at the time and she brought over a beautiful plant for the new house. We went out for a nice dinner in the Ritz Carleton and listened to music. It was only our third or fourth date and it was one of the more memorable and fun nights I had ever had. We drank a lot of champagne and I remember we danced to an orchestra. We got home quite late and fell asleep on the couch that had been set up in one of the rooms of the house.

The next morning, Christmas morning, my doorbell rang at around 7:15 a.m. I looked outside and, incredibly, there was the Eastern European man. He was wearing a suit. I could not possibly imagine what was wrong.

I opened the door and let him in.

”Hello,” he said. ”I hope you are enjoying your new home. It must be nice to have your own home like you do. Since I did such a good job yesterday, I would like to ask you to pay me some more money today since it is Christmas. I would very much appreciate your generosity.”

I was very disappointed. The man was not offering to do more work. He was not offering anything except a dose of guilt and a request for more money. His attitude got my day off to a poor start. I was not impressed with his request for more money and it made me feel badly. I had felt very good about helping him the day before.

There is an interesting moral to this story, however. Two of the guys I picked up that day over six years ago are still working for me and my companies today. Along the way one of them got a green card. This made it possible for me to pay him legally to work for one of my companies. The other guy has helped me out with small tasks such as raking leaves and so forth from time to time. I also got them jobs with a contractor I know. Neither of these guys have particularly super work ethics, but they are steady workers and they do what they say they are going to do. This is the most important thing. They do predictable work and do not play any games. They have also stayed employed in one form or another for six years.

I went by the U-Haul several times over the years and saw the Eastern European man standing on the street waiting for work. He was always standing apart from the other workers, or even across the street, because the other workers did not want to stand next to him. I am sure this made it much harder for him to get work. In addition, I also noticed that late in the afternoon he was often there after the other workers had been picked up. He was a pariah of sorts.

While this example involves day laborers, it is no different at all for the highest paid workers in other industries and the same sort of logic applies. Just being really good at something is not enough. You also need to be consistent. Being consistent is one of the most important aspects of your work ethic. The people who are consistent are the ones who have the best careers in the long run. Being consistent is something that is important not just for you but also for those around you.

Despite speaking good English, despite dressing well, despite being the best worker, I am confident the Eastern European man probably worked less and ultimately earned less money than most of the other men who got work from the street in front of the U-Haul.

In my younger days there was a family that lived by my house that never had any money. They often came over and my mother would loan the mother money for food and to buy basic necessities (when she had the money). The father of this family was a plumber, and in the 1970s in Detroit most plumbers did very well. The father never seemed to be able to hold on to a job very long. He also had a difficult time with unions. He simply refused to join one. He thought he was smarter than all the other plumbers. Despite this guy’s brilliance, his family never had the money to eat. If he could have just held a job and done things in a consistent manner, everything would have been fine.

So many people are under the misconception the most important thing in their job is being brilliant and outstanding, but they’re really missing the point. Being consistently good at something, and doing the job day after day is much more important.

There is a certain type of person I have seen in the world of work over and over again. This person comes to the interview unbelievably enthusiastic about work and being part of the company. He shows up for work and his work product is much better than that of others around him. He may even get a quick raise or two. People around him start to notice and the level of insight he puts into his job is incredible.

-If the person is in sales he is the highest performing salesperson

-If the person does a manual job he works harder and faster than others

-If the person is in writing he writes more material that is more insightful than others

In whatever this person is involved, he puts an incredible level of insight into it and does the very best he can with it.

However, the problem I’ve seen countless times is that when someone performs at such a high level in the beginning, it almost always leads to troubling and often bizarre behavior later.

I once worked with a man who started out being extremely enthusiastic. Then he stopped working every day and made strange excuses for missing work. Then the man started disappearing for hours at a time during the day.

The better and more extreme someone’s performance is, the less likely they are to maintain it over time. Things like always showing up for work, always doing the job, cooperating with peers, and more are important characteristics. These are the people who contribute to companies and allow them to continue over time. These are the people companies want on their team. These are the sorts of people you need to emulate, who hold on to their jobs and continue their long and prosperous careers.

A one-shot performance is in no one’s best interest. Companies and organizations need people who are consistent and are consistently ”good enough.”

I’ve spent most of my career in the legal recruiting field. I have seen something occur in legal recruiting so many times it is incredible. Because it’s been quite destructive for our companies and something I have learned to recognize, I would like to share this pattern with you.

When we are looking for legal recruiters, it is often important the person have an outstanding educational pedigree. For that reason, we love people who went to places like Harvard Law School or Yale Law School and who have worked at the very best American law firms. People with experience working for the best American law firms are also typically the most motivated people. Most of the resumes we see from people who have these outstanding backgrounds involve short, one- to two-year stints working in a law firm. Several years ago I would never have questioned this, but now I do.

When someone with this sort of background starts at our recruiting firm, one of the first things we notice is how the person will work very hard at first. However, they often ignore the rules others in the organization are following. Instead, the person decides they can start making up their own rules. In one case I remember one of our Harvard Law School recruiters deciding that instead of following the rules she was going to spend all of her energy concentrating on moving a large group of attorneys over to another firm in one big swoop. She worked for months on this and our company loaned her tens of thousands of dollars. When this did not work out she did not earn any income. Instead of following the rules, she was trying to be brilliant.

Another recruiter (also from Harvard Law School) believed she did not have to work the same hours as other recruiters as long as she pulled a few nights a week. Though this might have worked to get her very good grades, it missed the boat because it didn’t allow her to interact with people looking for jobs during the day.

Over and over again, I have seen people who feel like they do not need to play by the rules in the companies where they work, and, instead, can do whatever they choose. They feel like they can play by their own rules and that a single performance trumps consistency. Consistency is the most important thing. Sustained effort over time is what really matters.

One of the best metaphors for consistency is the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon has stood for millions of years and it started out as just a stream. The power of this stream cut through the rock and over millions of years has created a giant swath through the earth. This is the power of consistency. Consistency over time will change the world.

The other day I was interviewing a very nice girl for a position unrelated to practicing law. Her resume was filled with nothing but one public interest job after another. It looked to me like her entire life had been devoted to helping other people. She was also an attorney and had the sort of pedigree I felt meant she could be a very highly paid attorney. In interviewing her, though, I quickly realized the last thing she was interested in doing was making money. Deep down she really wanted to help people.

When I asked her why she wanted to help people she recounted how her father had never held a job for very long and because of this the family had grown up quite poor. She said growing up poor made her realize how many people suffer in the world. She told me she wanted to help the people who were suffering. The more I thought about this, the more I realized she would not have suffered like this had her father simply been able to be consistent. Being consistent is the most important thing in a job.

The benefit of consistency is that it constantly involves the application of measured pressure to a task. Over time, like with the Grand Canyon, measured pressure can break down barriers and make everything go forward. You need to consistently apply measured pressure in your work.

I am not trying to be critical of brilliance and hard work. The point I am trying to make, however, is that life responds better to work that is done in a consistent manner over time. Concentrate your efforts on what you can accomplish over time. This is the path to success. Nothing happens overnight.

Change Your Thermostat

What You Will Learn Change is one of the most important factors in the lives of people – it leads to progress and growth. You should not sabotage it or find reasons that it will not work. Come out of your comfort zones and challenge yourself to get the thermostat to the level you want it and to keep it there. Push through your self-imposed limits and change or reset your thermostat for the betterment of your life and career.

Several years ago I was sitting in my office in Los Angeles one day, and two barefooted women walked in. Their feet were dirty, and I can assure you, it is not normal for women to walk around downtown Los Angeles without shoes. Both of the women had scabs on their face and were in their late 20s or early 30s. They were dressed like prostitutes and they both looked quite frightening, their eyes glassy and hair unkempt. They did not smell good. All it took was one look to see that the women had been living on the streets, using drugs and almost certainly selling their bodies. They looked like the lowest form of streetwalker imaginable. There is no gentle way to say it.

I actually recognized one of the women. She had formerly been a candidate of mine. She had taught at Harvard Law School after graduating from there, and I had placed her at one of the best law firms in Los Angeles. She had worked at the law firm for less than a year and then, under mysterious circumstances, she had left the law firm suddenly. In addition, she had been in the process of divorcing her husband and had had her new Mercedes repossessed a few months previously. I had been following this woman’s case with some interest, because her husband had called me several times, looking for her. Imagine: He was so desperate and out of touch with his wife that he even called her former legal recruiter. Now here the woman was living on the street and doing god-knows-what to earn money. She and the woman she was traveling with looked absolutely horrifying. Seeing them sitting in my office was almost epic, and made for a highly unusual day, to say the least.

When the two women took a seat in my office I did not balk. I simply acted as if everything was perfectly normal. They started telling me that they wanted me to open a checking account for them in the name of a company. They had found a check on the street made out to the company and wanted to cash it but the banks refused to.

“You can figure out how to get a checking account opened in the company’s name,” they suggested. Without seeming too alarmed, I let them know that this was a felony and that I would go to prison if I were to do this. Since one of the girls had gone to Harvard Law School, she started telling me that she had investigated the matter and there was nothing illegal about it. The entire meeting was so bizarre that it left me in a bit of a haze, but I will give you a little more background as to why.

A little over a year prior to this encounter I had met the girl from Harvard Law School for lunch at one of the nicest restaurants in downtown. I had made sure to choose a great restaurant because the young attorney was an incredible candidate. She was a former model, and had shown up looking absolutely exquisite, in a very nice suit. She was personable and extremely professional–exactly what you would expect from a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, who also taught there. As we ate our lunch, I began to get the sense that this young woman had “had a lot of fun” when she was younger. There was just something a little “hard” about her face. I do not how to describe it but I got the sense that beneath her extremely polished exterior was a young lady who had been around the block more than once. I asked her about her upbringing.

She told me that from the age of 15 until she was around 20 or so she had lived a crazy life. She had used a lot of cocaine and had been part of a scene wherein she and other models had traveled around doing a ton of drugs, and she implied that they had slept with a lot of men. She told me she had not even started going to college until she was around 20 and had gotten off cocaine. As a college student, she soon after had led an organization to help young girls get off drugs. She told me that she had gotten good grades (but not great) in the small, unknown college she had attended, and that she had done horribly on the Law School Admissions Test. She told me she believed that she had been admitted to Harvard Law School in large part due to everything she had done to help girls rehabilitate themselves from being addicts. I was shocked by what I was hearing because this woman was one of the best candidates I had ever seen.

A few weeks prior to the girl walking into my office with her friend in bare feet I had received a telephone call from a graphic designer that she had referred to me to do some work for one of our companies. I had hired him and he was a really nice guy. He gave me an update on his attorney friend, which set me completely aback:

“She started using crystal meth at the law firm. She is totally out of control,” he told me. “I think she got arrogant and did not think she needed to keep her drug use under control once she got the Mercedes and started making all that money. She seems to think she is invincible. She has come so far from when she had been, a once cocaine addict, and she now seems to believe that she can do whatever she wants.”

I could not believe that the same girl I had seen earlier was now hooked on crystal meth and had put what should have been an incredible legal career on hold in order to join skid row in Los Angeles, as a drug addict. This story has haunted me for years, and I have tried for the longest time to make sense of it.

Now, six or seven years later, I feel as if I understand the situation more: This woman could not handle success. She wanted to reset her thermostat in order to be exactly the sort of person she had been before she had improved her life.

One of my favorite things in the world is finding very talented people who are unemployed and not making the money they should, or who do not have the opportunities they should, and offering them the chance to improve their lives. You would be surprised, however, how often people simply are not ready for a change–even for the better. When the opportunity presents itself to many people to change their life in a positive or negative manner they are simply not ready to accept all the responsibilities that come with the change. Usually, when confronted with an incredible opportunity for a better life most people sabotage it, or find reasons it will not work.

I want to tell you about someone I offered a job to recently; however, before I tell you this story I am going to tell you a quick story that I think you will learn something from.

When I was in college I had a girlfriend who was always having severe money problems. She would get money and quickly spend it, and would then need more money a short time later. One day I told her if she never had any money she should apply for some student loans. She got student loans, including checks for several thousands of dollars to live off for the semester. A short time later she was out of money again, having blown it all on hairdos, massages, expensive clothes and other things. She spent so much money that she could barely afford to eat. To this day the woman has been living in this pattern for years: She will get money, spend it all and then have to beg for more money. She can never be content with whatever amount of money she has, because she will always surely spend it. Her situation is chronic because her thermostat is set to not having any money.

Here is what I mean when I say the word ‘thermostat’: People are comfortable being a certain thing. They lose weight and then quickly regain it. They get a bunch of money and spend it all right away. People get off drugs and turn their life around, becoming incredibly successful attorneys–and then get back on drugs and ruin their lives a few years later. This is how people are. They will put themselves back at the level to which they are most accustomed, because they have set their internal thermostat there.

Your challenge in your life is to get your thermostat to the level you want it–and to keep it there. Do not allow your thermostat to change on you. This is how our internal thermostats work: when we change the temperature our thermostats want to go back to where they were set before.

For example, if you were to start exercising every morning at 6:00 a.m., your mind and body would initially tell you that this is the wrong time to be exercising. Your mind and body would push you the first day, the first week and the first several weeks to look for reasons and excuses why you should not need to rise up every day at 6:00 a.m. to exercise. It might take you months, or years, before your body and your mind would get used to the idea of getting up every day this early to exercise. Your internal thermostat would, however, eventually adjust so that exercising every single day would become the norm to which you are accustomed. A fascinating article, “Still Running After All These Years,” ran in the Wall Street Journal in November of 2008, about people who have been running every day for 30+ years:

Last month, my dad celebrated the 30th anniversary of his running streak.

In other words, he has run every day for 10,987 consecutive days. The last time he took a pass –he was feeling a bit sore after a marathon–was Oct. 30, 1978.

Obsessive doesn’t begin to describe it.

Harvey Simon has run every day for the last 30 years. As of Halloween, he had run for 10,958 consecutive days. His daughter, [Stephanie Simon], details her dad’s incredible streak and the life lessons she’s gleaned from it. (Nov. 27)

When he travels overseas, my dad, who is 66, plans layovers so he can get in a couple miles around the concourse, lest he miss a day to the time-zone shift. During blizzards, he wraps his feet in plastic bags, pulls galoshes over his sneakers and screws in cleats for traction. Then he waits for a snowplow to pass his front door, so he can follow in the freshly cleared path.

My father, Dr. Harvey B. Simon, practices internal medicine in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School. Rationally, he knows that running 10 miles a day, every day, for three decades is not great for his ever-more-creaky body. He’d never advise his patients to do it. In fact, he’s written several health and fitness books stressing the virtue of moderation in exercise. And yet….

He’s run with broken toes and the flu and a nasty infected heel and near-crippling back spasms. He goes out before dawn in every kind of weather; he’s become such a fixture in the neighborhood that a couple times when a freak thunderstorm has rolled in, strangers have driven out to find him. They didn’t know his name. They just knew he’d be out there, plodding away, and figured he might appreciate a ride home.

The ability to go running every day is an example of someone resetting his thermostat to accomplish a goal, and then sticking with it. So too are achieving goals of losing weight, accepting nothing but the best for yourself, managing your money and staying off drugs. If you are going to accomplish anything you need to reset your thermostat. Only then will you start to realize all the possibilities in your life.

In the course of doing business, I recently met a woman who started telling me how rough her life was:

• She complained about not having health insurance for her and her family.
• She told me about how her husband has been unemployed for the longest time.
• She complained to me about how she had personally been underemployed, and had not made very much money over the past year.
• She talked about how she and her husband could not afford a house, how they had to live in a bad neighborhood.
• She told me about how with the downturn in the economy, making money had become extremely difficult, and that she and her husband were lucky to make a couple of thousand dollars a month between them.

Over the course of a few business meetings, I got to know this woman fairly well, and found her to be very intelligent, quick on her feet, and knowledgeable–someone who would do very well in a full-time job working for our companies. The problem, I learned in my discussions with her and after some probing, was that, although she was in her mid-30s, she had spent her entire career in sales-type jobs, working as an independent contractor. She had never really worked at a job that required her to stay still behind a desk. Instead, she was used to always running around.

“Have you ever held a full time job?” I asked her.

She told me about how she had once worked somewhere for a grand total of nine months, several years ago. I sat her down for an hour and started asking her all sorts of questions about her situation, and I determined after some time that I might have a job for her. The job would pay a salary (much more than the piecemeal wages she had been making at the time); it would give her and her family health insurance and the stability she currently lacked.

“My children have not been to the doctor in over a year because we cannot afford it,” she told me.

The only catch was that she would have to do a lot of the work she was currently doing on the phone, rather than in person. To me it seemed like a no-brainer.

As I discussed the prospect of an offer with her, however, I could see that she was finding reasons why it would not work. These were not reasons about why she could not do the job, mind you, but stupid reasons relating to commuting and other excuses. The more I spoke to this woman, the more I realized that her thermostat was set to be someone who was constantly wandering around, who could never sit still. The life she had been living without health insurance, steady money and so forth was something that she was so used to that she would, it seemed, reset her internal thermostat to get back to this place–even if she landed a steady job.

In order to really achieve your goals, one of the most important things you can do is push through your self-imposed limits as to what is possible. The ability to push through these self-imposed limits is something that can benefit you in incredible ways. Most of us have set our lives to operate at a certain level and within certain limits. We have a comfort zone, which is regulated just as strongly as our body temperature, and it is difficult for us to change the internal thermostat.

The chances are great that you have set a certain thermostat based on what you believe you can or deserve to achieve. You gauge when you are improving, or doing better in your life, and sometimes you may tend to push your thermostat back to where it was before. You need to discipline yourself in order to reach a new level of success, and to this end, the first step is to change your thermostat, leaving it at a level that pushes you to the very heights of what you are capable of.