Above Life’s Turmoil

Above Life’s Turmoil by James Allen is an excellent book that will help you confront the truth of who you are. The message of the book is timeless and asks you to look inside of yourself and change instead of trying to change external conditions around you. This is a classic in self-improvement literature that I am sure you will enjoy.

–Harrison

Above Life’s Turmoil

by James Allen

Foreword

True Happiness

The Immortal Man

The Overcoming of Self

The Uses of Temptation

The Man of Integrity

Discrimination

Belief, the Basis of Action

Belief that Saves

Thought and Action

Your Mental Attitude

Sowing and Reaping

The Reign of Law

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We Create Problems So That We Can Grow and Be Happy

When I was 15 years old, my grandmother took me to a Honda motorcycle dealership one day and bought me a moped. I believe it was called an Aero 50. That was one of the greatest days of my life at the time because, for at least the previous few years, I had been lobbying my parents for a moped and they had never gotten me one. Then, one Friday, my grandmother came over and I tried the same lobbying approach on her, and by Saturday afternoon, I was riding a new moped. When I got [Read more]

Abraham Lincoln, Bringing People Together, and Your Career

Several years ago, after September 11, 2001, I was speaking with the founder of an internet consulting firm in San Francisco. The firm was getting ready to close its doors and go out of business because all of its work had gone away. During the several years when the business had operated, they had consulted for a few firms that had ended up becoming very successful. However, the majority of the firms they consulted for had closed their doors and gone away. Since the founder of the company had been in the business for so long, I was very interested [Read more]

Moses, Great Religious Figures, the Wilderness, and Your Career

On a Christmas vacation over ten years ago, I went home to Detroit from Los Angeles, where I was practicing law at the time. I was taking a 10-day vacation. Over the course of those ten days, I found myself having trouble getting to sleep every night. When I did get to sleep, I would wake up in the middle of the night and have a difficult time getting back to sleep. All I could think about was how much I disliked my job and the work I was doing. I could not get it off my mind and I [Read more]

How to Use Newspaper Classified Ads and Newspaper Help Wanted Ads to Look for Jobs

Historically, the best place to look for jobs was in the newspaper help wanted ads. In fact, newspapers were largely supported by revenue from help wanted ads  until recently. The stories you have likely heard about various newspapers closing down and/or experiencing severe financial problems have been caused not only by declining circulation but also by a massive exodus of employers posting jobs online instead of in the newspaper. Up until around 2000, the only place that it really made sense to look for jobs was in newspaper classified ads. If you were living in Dallas and wanted [Read more]

How to Find Public Interest Jobs and Nonprofit Jobs

If you have a passion for a certain issue, such as civil rights, the environment, helping the poor, or animals, public interest can be an excellent career choice. In public interest you will be working with others who share a passion for an issue like you do. In addition, you will be making a difference in your chosen field. People who work in the public interest find a tremendous sense of satisfaction that they are making a difference to their careers. When you work for most companies, you are helping the company and its stock holders make money. [Read more]

To Get a Job You Need to Get the Employer’s Attention and Be a Safe Choice

When an employer has an open position, they are generally faced with two issues: (1) it is difficult for them to focus attention on all of the applications they are receiving, and (2) they are nervous about making a good decision among the various applicants that are applying. Your objective when applying for any job is (1) to be seen, and (2) to be a safe choice for the company. You Need to be Seen When Applying to Jobs. Several years ago, a very talented professional couple invited my wife and me to their home for dinner. We had a [Read more]

Plastic Surgery, Suzanne Somers, Certainty, Variety and Your Career

One of the more interesting things about our lives is that we are continually seeking two diametrically opposed things.  On the one hand, we are seeking the security and certainty we find in keeping things the way they are.  On the other hand, we are seeking growth and progress, which change the way things are. The outcome of change is almost always uncertain, and how you manage the elements of certainty and uncertainty can greatly affect your life.  In some aspects certainty and uncertainty have come to control virtually every waking moment of our lives. No [Read more]

Consciousness, Mindlessness and Your Career

“It is against state policy to pave over a deer,” said an engineer for the department.  “If in fact the deer was in the work area, it should have been removed before the work was done.”

—Associated Press, August 22, 1996, reporting on road workers who failed to see, and thus paved over a dead deer.

We often fail to notice things in our immediate environment, especially things we are not expecting to see. Despite the animal’s lying right in the middle of the road, the Pennsylvania highway crew paved directly over it.  Why? Because they simply did not expect to see it there.

Because we are on “autopilot” much of the time, we go through substantial portions of our lives completely unconscious of the people, places and things around us.  As a result we end up tuning out many things that could make a giant difference in the ultimate quality of our lives.  Our careers, social lives and happiness are largely in part shaped by thousands of unconscious decisions and observations we make throughout the average day.

When I was in college I went on a road trip with a group of my fraternity brothers.  We were traveling across the Midwest on a very rural two-lane highway to go visit a branch of our fraternity in another state.  We all sat quietly in the car staring out the window, as we sped towards our destination. All of a sudden we hit an animal in the road and almost lost complete control of the vehicle.  When we turned the car around we realized we had hit and killed a large raccoon.  Incredibly, none of us had seen the raccoon—even though we had been staring at the road the entire time.  The raccoon just wandered right in front of the car, innocently enough, on that lonely two-lane highway, and ended up getting run over.  How could none of us have seen the raccoon? It was one of the strangest experiences of my life. Having not seen a raccoon that was directly in front of my eyes was something difficult for me to believe.  Although it sounds like an isolated event, we all actually experience situations like this in one form or another, on an ongoing basis.

Scientists who study human cognition would tell you that we probably did not see the racoon simply because we did not expect to.  In a  famous experiment in 1998 known as The Gorilla Experiment, researchers Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris asked various subjects to watch a video of a basketball game.  The video was of two teams, one dressed in black and the other dressed in white.  Each team’s players were passing the basketball amongst themselves.  The researchers asked the subjects to count the number of times the white team passed the ball. After a minute the researcher would stop the videotape and ask how many passes had been made. During the video, someone in a gorilla suit would walk through the group playing the game and stand in the middle of the screen and thump his chest a few times before walking off again.  Over half of the people failed to notice the gorilla.  You can see the video here: http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php Chabris and Simons explain that so many people miss the gorillas due to so-called “inattentional blindness.”  Our brains are capable of only focusing on a few details [Read more]

Meg Whitman’s Greatest Achievement, Networks and Your Career

A few years ago a woman who was working for me sent me a long letter asking for an extreme raise—four times what I was currently paying her. Without going into too much detail, the woman was incredibly accomplished and had a background that was absolutely astonishing. For example, she had been a clerk at the United States Supreme Court and I think she might have  stood first in her class at one of the top two or three law schools in the country. I liked the woman and wanted to give her a raise (she was [Read more]

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