You Need to Have Desire to Achieve Your Goals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Builders and Destroyers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remain Calm

For a portion of one summer when I was younger, I had a valet job at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club outside of Detroit, Michigan. I worked during the lunch hour and spent most of my time sitting in a small air conditioned shed in a corner of the parking lot waiting for cars to pull up. When a car would pull up, I would fling open the door to the shed and run over to the car, hand the person a ticket, and park the car.

One day, I was sitting in my little shed and a giant Cadillac pulled up and a man stepped on to the curb. As I was exiting my shed, he looked at me and shouted:

“Hey Boy … PARK THIS!”

The man then proceeded to throw his keys in the grass.

This amazed me. I used to lift weights and played football in high school. From the way I’d taught myself to think, this sort of treatment was not to be tolerated.

“Are you kidding?!” I shouted at the man. “Are you trying to start something with me?! Because if you are, I’m ready!” I strolled slowly up to the car which was about 20 yards away. Apparently terrified, the man went sprinting inside of the club. A few moments later the manager of the club emerged and fired me. The manager was so upset about the whole thing he actually called my mother and told her about the incident.

I lost my job because I lost my cool.

When you think about your life and your career, what would be different if you had, instead, developed the ability to remain calm? Most people are agitated–moving in many different directions and unable to remain calm. When you remain calm many things end up changing in your life.

Remaining calm is one of the most important traits we can have. Being calm is not just about being relaxed and not yelling. Being calm is about being focused enough to absorb the world around you and make deliberate and carefully considered decisions before acting. When you are calm, you do not lose jobs like I did, and you are more likely to keep friends and to advance rapidly in whatever environment you are in. People will trust you more. People will look to you to fill leadership roles. When we are calm, we are far more powerful than when we choose, instead, to react from our gut with anger, fear, or other nonproductive emotions. Calmness is a virtue and one of the strongest you can have. The calmer you are, the more you can control and understand the world around you. The more you understand the world around you, the better you can be at everything you do. This is the nature and importance of being calm.

Several years ago, I took a multi-day course at Disneyland about leadership. While I could write for several days about what the course covered, I remember when the instructors summed up the entire meaning of the course after countless examples and numerous exercises they said it with few words: “Leadership is about being calm.”

The more I thought about this example, the more I realized the most important thing we can do in business, our careers and in leadership, is to be calm. The more we relax our minds and our bodies, the more positioned we are to make the correct decisions in our careers. I once read a book about former president Kennedy. Apparently, Kennedy liked to use stimulants and was often up for days during his periods of stimulant use. While it is not widely talked about, there was some fear among members of his cabinet that he might have potentially created a disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis due to his use of stimulants and inability to remain calm. Some conspiracy theorists have even speculated he was assassinated by the CIA because they felt his inability to control his emotions could have led to a nuclear Armageddon. Despite an illustrious presidency in many respects, Kennedy’s inability to consistently be calm was considered by many a massive weakness.

Several years ago, a high school friend of mine named Jeff was coming to Los Angeles from the Midwest to visit me and a friend of mine, John. We decided we would rent a giant limousine and take Jeff around Los Angeles to show him the sites. The limousine was so large it had a Jacuzzi in its trunk! I had honestly never seen anything like it. Because it was so massive, it blocked two driveways when it was parked in front of my house. About 10 minutes after the limousine arrived we called our friend to see where he was.

He told John and I he would not be able to make it because he was having dinner with his girlfriend and her parents, who’d shown up at the last minute. At that moment, I got extremely angry and felt hurt. Here I was with this giant limousine in front of my house with a bubbling jacuzzi in the trunk I’d already paid for. I felt alone and stupid. I exchanged some harsh words with Jeff and decided I would never speak with him again.

That was several years ago.

Do I regret it? Yes. I overreacted. In contrast, John got mad too, but he made up with Jeff just a few days later. To this day, I have not spoken with Jeff.

It’s easy for me to look back now and realize how wrong I was. Jeff was rude, but if I had looked at the totality of the situation I would have realized getting angry was a stupid decision. Instead, I should have remained calm and simply filed this episode away and recognize that I could not always trust him when we made plans. I could have also been empathetic and understanding of his need to entertain his girlfriend’s parents. Instead, I chose to get mad.

I’ve seen careers abruptly crash because of people failing to be calm. People react inappropriately to a perceived slight and fire off a crazy and savage email to someone. Someone does not think something through before acting. People whose careers soar to incredible heights are most often the ones who have the ability to remain calm. Being calm is more than just consistently being relaxed. Being calm is having the ability to react in a level-headed way to circumstances around you and face the world without getting flustered and keep your confidence strong.

Being calm is a sign of security and self confidence.

When you are calm, you are often more in control than the people around you. Many people fly off the handle at work, in public and when they feel they have been wronged. Generally, when someone flies off the handle, someone else is receiving their anger and negative emotion. The person who is on the receiving end typically has a couple of potential reactions. The first is to lash out and get angry. This is the most common reaction. The least common reaction is when the person on the receiving end remains calm. The person who remains calm puts themselves at a profound advantage. Usually what ends up happening is the person who has reacted angrily, or irrationally, comes to their senses and realizes they acted and responded in the wrong way. They come back to the person they have reacted to and seek apologies or attempt to make up. At that point, a subtle power shift has occurred and the person who was able to remain calm has assumed control. When you remain calm, you almost always end up in the role of the leader—regardless of the situation.

When we think of generals, presidents, CEOs and other leaders, we rarely think of them as people who fly off the handle. Instead, we think of them as people who are constantly able to remain calm no matter what. We want leaders who have the ability to stay focused and calm despite the turmoil around them. We do not want people who fly off the handle.

We think more of people who have the ability to remain calm. We respect those around us who stay calm. Being calm is so respected we have a word for it in the English language – “cool”. We call people with the ability to remain calm “cool”. We elevate people in society we believe are cool. Fonzi from the show “Happy Days” was considered “cool”. LL Cool J is considered “cool”. Action heroes are always “cool” when others around them appear to be acting nuts. We respect people in our society who are able to maintain their composure and stay cool.

In your job, nothing is more important than being cool. One of the best jobs I ever had growing up was working for Domino’s Pizza as a driver. Back in the 1980s, I was making $150+ some days delivering pizza. The tips were really good. Unfortunately, I only worked there for one summer due to an incident delivering pizza in a bad neighborhood. I did not get fired from this job. However, when I tried to get a job there the next summer they told me they did not have any openings (which I am almost certain was not true). I’m pretty sure they told me this because of the incident I am about to relate.

I dropped off a pizza in a bad neighborhood and the person’s change was only a few cents. When the person asked me for change I said: “Are you kidding?” There was only a few pennies at issue and in addition to not giving me a tip the person was asking for a few cents. I was deeply offended.

After I fished the few cents out of my pocket, the guy said to me: “If you had the change ready, I might have let you keep it. Now get the f**k off my porch.”

I was absolutely incredulous. I got in my car and started driving away, but then my anger got the better of me. I stopped my car and backed up. I got out of the car and screamed “F**k you!” at the top of my lungs at the house. The guy came out of his house and screamed “F**k you too, bitch!” This bizarre episode lasted a minute or two as we stood there screaming at each other. Eventually I peeled out in my car and drove away.

When I got back to the pizza parlor, my manager said, “Calm down. Calm down.” The manager looked like Bill Murray and he said something I will never forget to this day: “I know that guy too. He is a total a**hole, but you have to calm down. It is not professional to stand on the street screaming at a customer when you have a Domino’s pizza sign on the top of your car. The guy’s neighbors called me about you!”

The calmer you are, the more opportunities will present themselves and the fewer opportunities you will end up losing in your life. There is no sense losing your calm. This is simply not something you should do. You need to remain calm at all times.

Remaining calm will not only keep you employed, it can also help you get a job. When you are calm, you make better decisions and understand more of the world around you and what is going on. You can see opportunities where others cannot. People who are effective networkers are often very calm because they are very adept at being able to listen to others and understand where others are coming from.

People who are not calm are most often more interested in making themselves heard than understanding others. Steven Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is fond of saying “Seek to understand before being understood.” This is excellent advice and something I have heard many of the most successful people repeat time and time again. In sales, for example, this is something I have seen transform careers. People who have the ability to remain calm are much more likely to have cultivated the ability to understand. Understanding people and situations requires that you remain calm.

When we react to things in the world, or instantly make decisions, we are most often doing so due to our conditioning and the things we have been led to believe. We react instinctively instead of thinking things through. The ability to react instinctively often serves us well. However, when we are able to remain calm we are often far more effective. One of the most effective things we can do is to delay our decisions and not make decisions quickly. Making rapid-fire decisions is something that can do us a great deal of harm. When you are calm you are able to make decisions in a slower and more deliberate way that will serve you very well. If you delay making a decision you can always make another decision later. [Read more]

The Most Important Thing You Can Have Is Faith

Several years ago I was practicing law, and over Christmas I went home to Michigan from Los Angeles for a one week vacation. At the time, I was also a law professor and I had brought a stack of papers to grade with me. For several days I read paper after paper. After about a day, it occurred to me I was unhappy with my life. I was unhappy with my job. I did not like where my life was headed and what my career was like. At the time I was making a very good living and doing everything I thought I should be doing. But I was not happy.

For the next few nights I had a lot of difficulty sleeping. Then I made a decision. What was making me unhappy was not just my job but the practice of law. I did not want to be an attorney anymore. I simply did not want to do this.

I had gotten married just a few months before. I had also bought a house around the same time with a pretty decent-sized mortgage. By all appearances, my life was on the right track for someone in his late 20s. I had done everything I thought was right up until that point in my life. But my job did not make me happy. I did not like the constant confrontation. I did not like where I worked at the time. I did not feel my talents were being utilized as much as they could be. I knew this was simply something I did not want to do any longer.

I went back to work on January 3rd and gave my two weeks notice. I knew this was not what I wanted and I simply needed to have faith that everything would work out. I had no savings to speak of and my wife was not earning very much money. I needed to trust that everything would work out – although at the time I had no idea what was going to happen. I knew deep down, however, that if I was happy I would do much better in my life than if I wasn’t.

Your ultimate resource in your job search and in your life is faith. Faith is the most important thing in the world. Faith is what enables you to move forward and find a new job, to get into a new relationship, to move to a new city, to start a new life, and to take chances. Similarly, a lack of faith causes people to feel trapped in bad relationships and never leave them, work in jobs they hate, and stay in circumstances which do not make them happy. The most important and forward-looking thing you can do is have faith.

Similarly, the worst thing you can do is spend time around people who shake the faith you have in yourself. When we are driving, we have faith the cars across the median will not cross over and hit us. We have faith when we are walking down the street we will not get shot. We have faith when we get home at night, our spouse will still be there. We have faith our children will always love us. When you get on an airplane, you generally have faith the plane will take off and land safely. You should. Statistically, you are 10 times more likely to get hit by lightning than die in an airplane crash. Nevertheless, after September 11 numerous people became afraid of flying. The goal of the terrorists was to shake our faith in our daily lives and, for many, it worked. Is there anyone around you who shakes your faith?

Faith gives people the will to live even when it looks like there is no reason to go on. I remember when I was a young boy my stepfather had to undergo a surgery that lasted almost 36 hours to remove all sorts of cancer from his body. The surgeons said before they took him there was a 99 percent chance he would die in surgery. Before he went into surgery, he told my mother he would be fine and not to worry. When he came out of surgery, the surgeons said the only thing that kept him alive was his faith and without it he never would have survived. I have heard others tell stories about faith like this before. Faith is something that is real and makes a giant difference in peoples lives. It can change your life, too.

Faith is the key that opens the doors of possibility. If you had faith that you could do anything, what would you do? Would you walk right up and talk to your dream mate? Would you embark on a new career? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? If you knew you could not fail, you could do anything in the world. I once saw the most ridiculous thing and it stuck with me. For years I used to go by a certain man’s house in Detroit to seal his asphalt. The man was a printer who did the same job day after day, and he did not seem particularly enthusiastic about it. After six or so years of working for him, I went by his doorway and saw him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses – not the sort of blue-collar outfit he usually wore.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I sold my printing business, sold my house, and bought a deli in the Bahamas. I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told me.

Now that’s faith – taking control of your life, following your heart, and doing what you want to do.

It is far better to make mistakes and fail than it is to not try something. You are almost always better off taking steps in the direction of the life you want than not taking any steps at all. You will always be better off from having learned lessons and exercised your faith.

The most important characteristic of any leader is faith, specifically faith that they can bring the people they are leading the result they are seeking. The greatest business minds have mastered the art of having faith. For example, when Bill Gates was at Harvard, he decided he no longer wanted to go to school. He was more interested in computers. Having faith and nothing more, he dropped out of school, found someone who had invented a computer but had no operating system for it, and purchased the rights to the DOS program. He knew making a computer work would create profound results, and he had faith in the future. He ended up becoming one of the richest men in the world and changing the world through his contributions.

When Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart, it was a disaster. One of the first days he was open, he had a watermelon sale and stacked hundreds of watermelons in front of the store. It was so hot, however, that all of the watermelons were exploding, and when people pulled up to the store it looked like there had been a mass murder. Nonetheless, Walton had faith in his idea and pursued it.

It is not just businesses which require faith, however. It is you. You need to have faith in who you can become. You need to have faith that you will get the job you want and live the life you want. You need to have faith in your future. There is something remarkable about the power of faith: the power of faith changes everything. Faith is not logical. You cannot live your life with logic alone. Faith is what drives people to do things when they have no idea what the end result will be. When you have faith you act because you know the universe will take care of you. You do not act because you are certain of the result.

There are lots of people who live their lives certain of the results they will achieve. Not much ever happens with these sorts of people. They never even come close to reaching their full potential. You can live your life with certainty but, if you do, you will never know how fulfilled you can possibly be and how much you can achieve.

The present is not the future. Faith is what gives us a future that is different from the present we have today. Step into the future and decide what you want from it. Once you have decided what you want from the future, it is important you have faith and set about going after your dreams. You need to put yourself on the line. You need to see a better tomorrow.

After quitting my job, I still did not know what I was going to do. My law firm told me to stick around for three months and look for another job because they did not think it sounded rational for me to just leave. So this is what I did. I went out and interviewed with other law firms, but I did not take any jobs because I was not interested in practicing law. I spoke with recruiters while I was looking for a job, and the more I spoke with them, the more their jobs looked interesting to me. What ended up happening, of course, was that I chose to start recruiting.

I remember about three months after I began recruiting a few of my wife’s friends were at the house. At the time, my wife had started to think I was insane. I had left a job paying over $150,000 a year and was now running a recruiting business out of our family room. The problem was the business was not doing all that well. In fact, I had scarcely gotten any candidates interviews and had been at it for three months. In addition, I had hardly any money left. I had taken out a home equity loan during my final weeks of practicing law and this money was almost gone. I had long ago maxed out my credit cards. My wife’s family used to call her and she would walk out to the front lawn to talk on the phone. We had only been married a few months at that point, and I think she thought she must have made a real mistake. In all fairness, she had signed up to be married to a lawyer, and that was not what was going on at the moment.

In a manner that implied some concern, a couple of my wife’s friends walked up to my desk and asked me how I was doing. I started telling them about how I had recently gotten a new candidate and how wonderful the candidate was. I told them I was in the middle of putting together a long letter about the candidate and the more I learned about the candidate, the more impressed I was. The funniest thing happened after I told them about the candidate. I was sitting there with probably 10 Diet Coke cans spread across my desk and piles of paper on the floor. I had not shaved in a couple of days, and I was very involved in the work I was doing. I remember I looked away for a second and, when I looked back, one of my wife’s friends was looking at the other friend with his finger pointed at his head moving it around in circles like I was crazy. I must have looked crazy. Everyone thought I was crazy for pursuing my dream like this. But I had faith.

The entire basis of Christianity, Islam, and most major religions of the world is faith. The greatest accomplishments in the world are achieved when people have faith. When you have faith in yourself and faith in an idea, anything at all is possible.

One of the most exciting places in the world is Disneyland. There is an institute there where employees can take classes and learn about the founding of the company. The story of the founding of Disneyland is one of the greatest stories of the power of faith there is. According to one account:

With Disneyland, Walt Disney envisioned a place where parents and children could go to enjoy themselves and see fantasy become real. Disappointed with the quality of amusement parks he visited with his children, Disney wanted his park to be clean, well-organized, and family-friendly. He first planned to build the park on a lot in Burbank, but he soon realized that he needed more space, so he bought an orange grove in Anaheim, California.

No one thought his idea would work. He was advised by other amusement park officers the park was doomed to failure. He could not convince financiers to invest in the park because his dreams offered “too little collateral.” Even his brother, who handled the studio’s finances, refused to spend company funds on the project.

In spite of the opposition, Disney refused to give up. He cashed in his life insurance policy and sold his family home to raise the $11 million required for the park’s construction. When more money was needed, he signed a contract with the American Broadcasting Company to air a weekly show in exchange for ABC’s investment in the park. He bet every penny on the success of the park and remained determined to make it a reality. Driven by his zeal, construction of the park began July 21, 1954, and it opened almost exactly a year later, on July 17, 1955.

It appeared the doomsayers had been right. Opening day was a disaster. Worse, there was national TV coverage. Tickets were counterfeited, resulting in 28,000 guests instead of the 11,000 invited. Rides broke under the stress of operation. Plumbers were on strike, so bathrooms and drinking fountains were not working. The asphalt roads, having been poured the night before, were still soft and trapped ladies’ high-heeled shoes.

Disney was not swayed by the park’s disastrous opening. He fixed the problems and continued to plan and build better attractions. He continuously found new ideas that kept people coming back for more. After 10 years, more than 50 million people had visited Disneyland, and today it remains a national attraction. More than that, as historian Larry Schweikart has observed, “Disneyland set the standard by which future parks were judged.” Against all odds, Walt Disney had built an amusement park that had become an amazing success. (Source: http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7164)

When you have faith in yourself the impossible can happen. Disney, for example, has left behind a huge and lasting legacy with Disneyland and his company. He put his faith and mind behind the power of an idea and stuck with it. Faith is what changes the world, and faith can change your life as well. The more you believe in something and the more faith you have in it, the more your mind will attract similar thoughts. These similar thoughts will build upon each other, get stronger and stronger, and get you closer to what you are seeking. This is the power of faith.

Your life and your future begin with thoughts. Faith is the most important thing you can have. When you have faith you can do absolutely anything. Regardless of what is going on in your career, or your life, you need to have faith.

After four months of recruiting, I still had not made a single placement. My credit cards were maxed out, my home equity loan was maxed out, and my wife was beyond freaked out. One Monday morning, I answered the phone and it was a law firm. They told me they were making an offer to one of my candidates. The next day the same thing happened and on Thursday and Friday it happened again.

In less than one week I had made four placements and the business was up and running. It was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life and really taught me the power of faith. When you believe in yourself and what you can do, anything is possible. You need to start believing in what you can do right now.

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.

Do Not Stop Seeing Opportunity: Step Outside Your Mind’s Comfort Zone and Begin to Dream

Several years ago, I was sitting with someone in Carl’s Steakhouse in Detroit coaching him about his job search. The person was telling me about how he wanted to get a job and start a new career. He was in his early 50s and hadn’t had a real job for over two years. During that time, he’d been doing landscaping work around Detroit and not making very much money. The job was way beneath his skill level. He had a master’s degree from a top college and a variety of semi-important jobs before getting laid off a few years before.

The person sounded quite serious about a new career, and my dinner went from ordinary to exciting in just a few minutes. I love talking about careers and jobs and, when people are ready to ask my advice, I am eager to share it. I knew in the next few minutes I could literally give this person the key to going from ordinary to extraordinary and having the career and life he wanted. I was excited because so many people do not know how to look for a job and get one. If this person would let me, I could help them go from mowing lawns to working in an air conditioned skyscraper somewhere in Detroit. I was about to provide the person the key to make this happen.

The key to the lives we want is all in our minds. Everything that happens to you is the result of how you think about your life and career. Your entire existence is shaped by how you use your mind. You can use your mind to your advantage or you can use it to your detriment.

What I failed to realize in this conversation, however, is so many people have long ago given up on their dreams. This person was no different. The more we talked, the more I realized he’d given up on life and his potential long, long ago.

When we’re young we all have wonderful dreams. During a camping trip when I was 13 years old, the Headmaster of the school I attended sat down a group of about 10 boys, including myself, around a campfire. He asked each of us what our dreams were and who we wanted to be when we were 35. Some people wanted to be doctors and cure cancer. Others wanted to be astronauts. Others wanted to be the CEO of a major company, and still others dreamed of winning Wimbledon as tennis players. I remember this so well because I, too, had great dreams. I believe I may have said I wanted to be President of the United States.

I still know some of those people who were sitting around that campfire and, while I do not remember what each of their specific dreams were today, I am confident none of them are living the wonderful dreams they had for themselves when they were so young. (I still have not given up on my dream and will never give up on it. I want to inspire you as much as I want to inspire our country as to what is possible!) What happened between now and then that made them forget about their dreams? Why did they suddenly stop dreaming and pursuing those goals? What was it that got in the way for them?

I believe somewhere along the way many people stop trying and expecting so much of themselves because they have been disappointed and experienced “pain.” They do not want to be disappointed again. People have a “comfort zone” they stay inside that demands they do not step outside it. Despite not living up to their full potential, people stay inside this “comfort zone”. They surround themselves with people and a life that is not going to disappoint them.

People will always do a lot more to avoid pain than they will to experience pleasure. Once people know certain actions will prevent some disappointment, or a certain action may cause some stress, many will avoid all of this stress by not acting at all. These people have stopped pursuing their dreams.

Nothing is more harmful or destructive than not pursuing your dreams of getting the best job and making the most of yourself. By making the most of yourself, you can have the life you want. Whatever your definition of success is – whether it’s making a lot of money, helping a lot of people, being very respected, or having a lot of power – it’s all within your grasp. The only thing holding you back is you, and what you believe your capabilties are. You need to develop the habit of focusing on the positive and the life you can have for yourself. What we focus on is what we get.

As I sat there in the steakhouse, I became increasingly excited and animated about this person’s prospects. I started telling him about the things I thought he needed to do. A lot of what I was telling him was about believing in himself and making sure he followed through with his results. I told him despite all of the disappointments he’d had in his life, that:

1. Today is a new day.
2. You can choose to start your career and be successful now.
3. There are opportunities in the market if you know where to look.
4. You are smart, intelligent and skilled.
5. You do not need to think about the past. You should focus on the future.
6. You can bring incredible value to any organization.
7. You need to tell an employer where they can create value.

After several minutes of talking to this person, I realized something quite amazing: He’d given up completely. He was talking about how he wanted to get a job but, regardless of what I was about to say, he’d given up on going after the career he wanted. While he was talking about how he wanted to get a new job and change his life, deep down he did not believe he could accomplish it. He was afraid of accomplishing this because he did not want to experience pain.

The conversation continued for some time, and I told the person various different methods he could use to look for a job. As I talked, he frowned. He started picking at his food in a nervous way. I do not think he really wanted to hear, or understand, all of the opportunities available to him. Instead, he wanted to talk about his desire to get a job, but not take steps to go after one. He started giving all sorts of excuses about why none of what I was talking about applied to him:

1. He was too old.
2. He did not have a good enough resume.
3. He had not gone to the right schools.
4. People would never hire him because they would find out he was fired from a job years ago.

The excuses and reasons he would never get hired were so numerous, I cannot even remember them all. (One reason I cannot remember them all is because I simply do not want to allow my mind to focus on so many negative thoughts.) We all have excuses for why we are not living the lives we want, and he was not different. In fact, I could have sat there for hours listening to excuse after excuse.

The conversation I had with him is no different than the many conversations I’ve had with a variety of people over the years. Recently, I had this same conversation with a Wall Street titan I was coaching, who was used to making $5,000,000+ a year. This person’s assessment was there would never be another job in his lifetime because the market was so bad. The person also offered the insight that America was bankrupt, all its institutions were corrupt, there was no money in the financial system, and virtually every bank in the United States was headed for failure. Accordingly, this person decided he would never work again. After getting off the phone with this person, I needed to go for a run because his assessment of our country was so depressing I needed to think about something else.

If you look at the world through dark glasses, this is what you see. The same energy you think with is what will come back to you. Thoughts are things, and the energy out there is something we simply cannot understand. The power of our minds is an incredible thing. Have you ever been with someone and had an idea of what they were thinking about – were you completely right? Have you ever had a premonition? Do you believe there are forces which people simply do not understand?

I do.

The one force I truly believe in is if we focus almost exclusively on negative things, that is exactly what the world is going to be. We will see a world that is negative, and this energy will come back to us. I am sure the Wall Street titan I was coaching is still sitting around thinking about how bad things are. What good is this going to do him? Why not go out there and look for a job?

I charge thousands of dollars for coaching people on how to get a job, but my coaching methods are not that complex. Being a good coach, in my opinion, is simply reminding people of who they are, and then ensuring they take full advantage of that person. Everyone has such incredible skills within them waiting to be tapped. While I give people an aptitude test to assess their work skills, the majority of my coaching is spent making sure the person focuses on his strengths and then takes action. This is the gist of a very expensive coaching program. It’s what I do, what anyone can do, and what you can do even without hiring me to coach you. You just need to realize who you are and ensure you do not give up on your dreams. Then you need to take specific actions to get a job.

When I look at the job market around me, I see incredible amounts of opportunity. I see so much opportunity that watching people who are unemployed makes me crazy. The idea that people spend a lot of time searching for a job makes no sense to me. 99.9% of people go about searching for a job the wrong way. Regardless of your profession, there is a very good possibility there are tons of jobs available for you (and the number of jobs open to you is virtually limitless if you are geographically flexible). You just need to know where to look.

Getting a job is very, very simple. I get upset when I think about people not finding jobs because they are out there waiting for you. People look for jobs for years. It is so stupid!

1. There are jobs on large commercial job boards (which is where everyone is searching, so it is not always the best place to look).
2. There are jobs in newspapers all over the United States, large and small (there are so many newspapers out there it is hard to count. People need to see the jobs in all of them!.)
3. There are jobs on association websites. (There are so many association websites it is difficult to count. There are huge volumes of associations in libraries, and most of these associations have websites.)
4. There are jobs on small job boards (there are so many small job boards it is hard to count. The numbers of small job boards are phenomenal. They pop up daily.).
5. There are jobs on employer websites (the majority of employers now put their jobs on their websites instead of advertising them. Very few people look there! It is crazy to me.).
6. There are jobs on bulletin boards (there are jobs out there on bulletin boards all over the country.).
7. There are jobs which are open but not advertised. You can find, and often get, a job by doing a mass mailing to employers in a given area (which is often 1000s of letters, but it works). This is an incredible way to get a job. Many employers “informally” have job openings they are not advertising, but occasionally interview people for, if they get a decent referral. Other employers always look at resumes as they come across their desk, and will bring people in if it looks like a good fit. Still other employers will file your resume away, if you send it to them, and call you if something comes up. Doing a targeted mailing of your resume is an incredible way to get business – and it works! I am so enthusiastic about this method of searching for a job because it virtually guarantees you will have exposed yourself to every employer for whom you can possibly work. With multiple interviews and opportunities, you will have a wide variety of offers at different salary levels, have the opportunity to work in firms with different cultures, and more.

I have literally dedicated my life to helping people find jobs through these search methods because I know they work, and they have worked every time someone has “gone all out” and followed my advice. Through EmploymentCrossing.com you can see virtually all the jobs on numbers 1 through 6 (above). On Hound.com, you can look at jobs just on employer websites. And if you do a mailing (the most incredible way to get a job I know of), you can approach every single employer in whom you might be interested. You can do a mass mailing through another one of our companies, EmploymentAuthority.com. This is the way to get jobs. You need to ensure you track down every available job, and this is how you can do it. Anyone can do this, but so few people do.

In order to get these jobs, you also need to package yourself correctly and know how to go after them. This is one real benefit of coaching people often do not get on their own. For example, I was coaching an executive recently who had an exceptional resume, but was having a difficult time finding a job. He was used to sitting behind a desk and not going out a lot. Prior to this job, he had a position in business development. I told him he needed to focus on business development in packaging himself because we are in a tough economy, and he needed to look like a “revenue producer” and not a “cost center” to potential employers. I made sure he understood he needed to package himself as someone who would give incredible value to his next organization, and not someone who would simply take.

Most people never take all of these actions to try and get a job, however. I think it’s because they simply do not believe in themselves. They will somehow argue that approaching employers through a mass mailing is a horrible idea, that applying for so many jobs is a horrible idea, and doing so will hurt their reputation. To me, such thinking is incredible because the person is already unemployed! What is the worst thing that can happen? Someone can say, “I cannot believe this person applied to work here?” This makes absolutely no sense to me.

The human brain works to avoid pain. There are so many extraordinary people whose careers and lives are totally paralyzed because they are working so incredibly hard to avoid pain. They associate taking action with pain, so instead of chasing the life they are entitled to and deserve, they do nothing at all. Positive thinking and the life you want requires focusing on what you do have and what you can become.

This is a word of advice for you. You need to always be packaging yourself as someone who will give far more than you receive to your organization. This is a secret that will change your career and the way you market yourself forever. Far too many people focus on what an employer can give them, rather than focusing on what they can give.

The point is there are tons of jobs, and the way most people look is simply not conducive to finding one. The process of finding a job is not difficult if you know what to do, but most people do not give their all to a job search. Most people simply give up and do not try their hardest. Somewhere along the line, I think people come to believe they should expect very little so they will not be disappointed.

Not concentrating on the positive and what you can do with the limitless possibilities which exist is the ticket to the destruction of your dreams. You never want to destroy your dreams. The power to live your life and career is within your grasp, and you can have it right now if you want. It is very simple. There are rules to success. Find them, go after them, and claim your life right now.

If You Want to Earn More, You Need to Be Worth More

Your financial requirements and what you would like to earn have nothing to do with what you are worth in the market. In running my various organizations, I have hired superstars from the very best universities with the very best work histories who ended up contributing next to nothing to the organization. I have also hired people who started out making close to minimum wage, and whose contributions were so great their salaries doubled, and in some cases even quadrupled. Several years ago, the contribution of one of our departments, which was then around 10 people, was so great I literally doubled each and every member’s salary in one short 15 minute meeting.

Are you someone who contributes so much to your organization your salary merits doubling? Or do you merely have a sense of entitlement and feel you are worth more than you are paid?

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard statements like the following:

“I made this much four years ago; therefore I should be making more right now.”

“My wife told me that I need to get a raise.”

“I think it is really important that I get this car because it will show some outward sign of success.”

“I know of someone who makes even more money than this in [some other city] and, therefore, I need to make that much as well.”

“This is an expensive city, and I need to be paid that much to live well.”

“I would like to have some extra spending money for travel and other things, after paying the mortgage on my house.”

“I need to make enough money to afford to send my kids to a private school.”

These are actual statements I have heard from people over the years. The sense of entitlement that drives people to make these sorts of demands needs to have a basis in reality.

Again, your financial requirements have nothing to do with how much you are worth in the market. Unless you are truly indispensable, your employer simply does not care what those requirements are. You are paid a certain amount based on your ability to generate value for your employer, and, with very few exceptions, that value generally must be far greater than what you are paid. Your contribution to any organization must generally be at least three times greater than the reward you are seeking.

Far too many people fail to realize what they are paid is based on the company’s profitability. Organizations have overhead, such as rent, advertising, and the cost of manufacturing the products or services they provide. Organizations need to have reserves in order to pay you when money is not coming in. Organizations need money for research and development. Organizations need money to pay for your health benefits and social security taxes, to print brochures, pay for office machine maintenance and more.

Since I am a legal recruiter, I would like to share with you some information about how partners are traditionally compensated in law firms. There are numerous compensation systems. However, the one I am about to share with you is the most prevalent.

When many young attorneys graduate from elite law schools, they tell themselves when they join equally elite law firms they will one day make astronomical amounts of money. About 10 years ago, I remember the number young attorneys my age were throwing around was $1 million. How does an attorney make $1 million a year?

Remember: any amount of money you are paid will have to add much more than that to the firm’s bottom line. Typically, the rule is that for every $1 a partner makes they have contributed at least $3 to the firm. That means that the partner is lucky to receive only 33 percent of what he or she brings in as business to the firm.

How does a partner contribute a total of $3 million to the pot for a firm? The partner brings in loads of business, works extremely hard, and then collects the money that has been billed. The partner also has associates doing work, he ensures their work is getting done and that all invoices are getting paid.

If partners in the world’s largest law firms are lucky to receive only a 33 percent return on the contribution they are making, you should understand you will need to make a giant contribution to any organization you are part of in order to justify the amount you would like to be paid. In order to justify a high salary, it is important you begin concentrating on what you can do to make your contribution even greater than it is now.

You need to make yourself indispensable to your employer by virtue of your hard work and contribution. There are certain people within any organization who are indispensable, and others who are not. These employees usually don’t last very long in organizations.

I want to tell you a quick story about one of the worst hiring mistakes I ever made. It involved hiring a manager to lead a small company I was starting at the time. In order to try out for the job and show me what he could do, I asked the man to put together some financial figures that took into account the potential performance of the company and what he believed he should be paid if each milestone was met. Since it would take several hours to go over these figures, I agreed to meet the man at my home on a Sunday afternoon to go over them until we could reach an agreement.

After three to four hours of reviewing these figures with him, I realized there was absolutely no way the company could make any money and that, no matter how well or how poorly the company did, the man would end up making plenty of money from the business. It really didn’t make a lot of sense, and I saw immediately this man was not interested in making a contribution to the company. He was only interested in taking money from the company as quickly as possible.

There were many warning signs I should have noticed early on. The man was extremely flashy in the way he dressed. He bragged about always getting stuff for free. His car had been modified, and was very over-the-top. Basically, the man made me feel uncomfortable.

By 10 p.m. that Sunday, I realized I could not reach any sort of agreement with this man. Instead of offering him the job to lead the company, I offered him a commissioned sales-type job in another company. The man had stellar qualifications and had formerly been the leader of a large division of a national company.

The man responded by telling me how he had a home in Beverly Hills with an expensive mortgage payment, a nanny he needed to pay, a private school he sent his daughter to, and that his wife really liked to shop for expensive shoes. Therefore, he told me, he needed to bring home a certain amount of money every two weeks to pay all these extravagant expenses. I told him I understood and I agreed to loan him a massive amount of money against his future commissions over the next several months, as he started his job.

This man ended up being the worst performing salesman in the company’s history. He failed like no other and disappeared with all of the money he was lent. To this day, I still do not know where he is.

The primary mistake I made here was not paying attention to the various signs this man would make an extremely bad hire. Mainly, he was entirely focused on what he believed he deserved, and not at all focused on what he could contribute. The most revealing thing was his business plan, which basically did not permit the company to make money and survive.

In order to thrive in your job, you need to be the sort of person who over delivers and provides incredible value to your employer and organization. You need to focus on over delivering in order to be worth more than the other people who are doing similar jobs.

I am from Detroit and an interesting subject to me is the decline of the American automobile industry. I remember in 1984, when I was 14, my mother purchased a Honda Accord. Before she purchased the car, we went and looked at numerous other, American cars. Even then, I realized that the quality of the Honda far surpassed any American car in the same price range. You could tell by the way the car started, the way the doors closed, the way the lights clicked when you turned them on, the way the radio fit into the dashboard, the hue of the paint, the tightness of the ride, and more. As a young teenager, I thought someone would have to be an absolute idiot to purchase an American car in the same price range.

At the time I did not even know about things like resale value, how long the car would last, and overall brand reliability. Purchasing the Accord would actually be even more valuable to someone in the long run, once reliability and resale were factored into the equation. In this respect, it made even less sense to purchase an American car. Ten years later, I sold that Accord to a classmate of mine for around $4,000. If it had been an American car (assuming it were still running), the sale price would have probably been around $400.

My main point is the Honda provided far more value than its competitors at the time. It was worth far more than its American counterparts, even though it was priced less. It is no wonder, then, the market share of Japanese manufactured cars has grown rapidly in the United States, while the market for American cars has declined. It is an issue of providing more value for the money.

Since your labor is a commodity to your employer, you should aim to become a higher-priced commodity that is worth far more than your competition. In order to merit raises and other employment related benefits, you need to shine and really stand out as someone who provides tremendous value. Do not expect to be paid a certain amount simply because it is what you want. Get paid more because you are worth more and because you deserve more.

Learn from Every Experience You Have Ever Had

One of the greatest things you can do for yourself is to learn from every single experience you have ever had. Each and every day you are having experiences, and you choose what to do with them. The wisest people are the ones who see every experience as an opportunity to learn. Smart people can transform even the smallest experiences into lessons that drive them to become better at everything they undertake in the future. You, too, can learn from your experiences and, in so doing, benefit tremendously.

In every experience, there are things that did and did not work for you. Your objective is to learn from what happened. The more you learn from your experiences, the more effective you will be at whatever you do in your career and life.

Think back on your career: there are things that have happened from which you can still learn. What lessons can you use to drive yourself forward? How can you get better at what you want to do now?

Every experience, no matter how trivial, offers a chance for you to learn. I’d like to tell you a story about just such an experience of mine and how I shaped my life by learning from it.

Years ago, when I was in college and about 19 years old, I was sitting in the television room of my dorm at the University of Chicago. As I sat there with a friend of mine, Danny Weisberg, a commercial came on for a real estate seminar led by a man named Tom Vu. In the 30-minute commercial, Tom Vu was shown driving around in fancy cars and on boats with beautiful women while talking about his real estate seminar.

As I watched this commercial with Danny, I was incredulous when, near the end of the commercial, Tom Vu said something to the effect of:

“I came to the United States from Vietnam with no money, and the only job I could get was as a man who refilled peoples’ water glasses in a country club. One day, a very rich man came into the country club and sat down at a table. I asked him to tell me the secret to his success and he told me it came from only three words. He whispered them into my ear. Those three words changed my life!”

“All this I got from three words. Come to my free informational seminar and I will teach you the three words,” said Vu.

At 19, there was nothing that Danny and I wanted more than to be surrounded by beautiful women, drive fast cars, and live in mansions. Therefore, we decided we would get up early on a Saturday morning and take the ‘L’ train from Hyde Park all the way to the downtown Chicago Hilton to see Tom Vu’s free seminar. Getting up early the morning after a Friday night party was something that I usually never did in college – not even for an exam! In the spirit of fun, however, we decided we would get up early and go see Tom Vu that weekend.

When we arrived at the Hilton, we were sitting next to a single mother who had brought two children no more than three years old with her. I noticed the children were dirty. The single mother told us how she hoped this would be a profound experience. We also sat near two men who appeared to have come to watch Tom Vu in order to heckle him. The two men had beers in their hands, despite the fact that it was still morning. There were literally thousands of people crowded into the Hilton ballroom for the Vu seminar. There were so many people, in fact, the only place we could get seats was at the very back of the ballroom, at least 30 or 40 yards away from the stage. But that is exactly where we should have been.

About 15 minutes after the seminar was scheduled to start, Tom Vu entered the back of the banquet hall in a bathrobe and was followed by a woman who started massaging his neck. She was saying stuff to him like “You can do this!” and “You control your future!” and other motivational encouragements. After a few minutes of this, some music started and she pulled off Tom’s bathrobe, revealing a business suit he was wearing. Tom Vu then rushed to the front of the stage to a standing ovation.

The men drinking next to us roared with laughter. The woman with the children put down one child so she could stand and clap.

Over the next hour or so, Tom Vu told the audience that if they paid him a couple thousand dollars, he would teach them how to buy distressed real estate and resell it at a profit. At the end of this sales pitch, Tom Vu got slightly teary-eyed and said:

“Now, does everyone want to hear those three words?”

The crowd roared and stamped their feet.

“Don’t give up!” Tom shouted. “The three words are don’t give up!”

I must admit I was really swept up in the passion of that moment. Despite the ethical considerations of whatever Tom Vu’s business practices were, I realized right then and there that there was a huge lesson in those three simple words. One should never give up.

Giving up was the greatest mistake one could make. If you gave up, you almost certainly welcomed failure.

Hearing those words that day had an immediate impact on me. I realized I had gotten up early in the morning to come see Tom Vu and had wasted my time listening to him, because I certainly could not afford to go to his paid seminar. So, I told myself that I would at least learn from this piece of career advice, and would never give up in anything I did.

And I have refused to ever give up. I believe this particular lesson has not only served me well, it’s profoundly altered the course of my life. Let me tell you how.

When I was in college, I wanted to go to law school. In order to be accepted by the best law schools, I knew I would need to get a near perfect score on the law school admissions test (LSAT). I studied for this test but, no matter how hard I studied, I could never get even close to a perfect score. Therefore, I kept delaying the test over and over again. I delayed it until December of my third year of college. By the time I finally scheduled the real test, I had taken enough practice tests to assess how well I would do.

I got sick just before taking the test. I cancelled my scores and retook the test in March of that year. I still did not do as well as I had hoped. By the time I got my results, almost all the law schools had accepted students for that year, and they told me I had simply taken the test too late. Notwithstanding this, some schools told me they would let me know later in the summer if they had an opening for me.

In considering this, I did everything within my power to ensure I did not give up on the schools that told me there still might be hope. I was remembering the lesson I learned from Tom Vu. I wrote, I called, and I had teachers and others write on my behalf. I graduated from college knowing there was very little hope I would go to law school and, instead, I decided I would probably stick with my then current life as a pavement contractor.

Working in the asphalt business was extremely hard work. Many people who do this kind of work get cancer or die very young because of the hazardous chemicals involved. For example, I was working with hot tar, which gives off gaseous fumes that stick inside your lungs. I would often get so burned from chemicals that I would have to peel a layer of my skin off of my arms or feet.

As the summer progressed, I continued to drop short notes to the law schools with whom I was still corresponding. However, I still needed to make a living, so I continued building up my asphalt business. My friends were all contractors and I was associating and spending my life entirely with people who used their hands to make a living. I was enjoying my life.

One night I was out with another contractor and my girlfriend, having pizza and beer. When I returned home there were a few messages on my answering machine. I checked the first message and it was from someone who told me he’d noticed I was becoming very busy with my asphalt business, and that he and “other people he knew” wanted to meet with me. It was a person I’d heard about over the years. Essentially, he was with the mafia and he was demanding I pay money in order to operate in a certain area of Detroit. It might have been a prank call, but I doubted it. I think back on that message to this day because it was a sign of where my life was going. The moment was truly a crossroads because the next message was from a law school administrator, telling me classes would be starting in two days and, if I wanted to attend, I was welcome.

I chose to go to law school.

I’m not sure if I ever would have gotten into law school had I not learned the lesson of not giving up from Tom Vu. I kept studying for the LSAT even when I was not doing as well as I wanted. I took it again after I cancelled my score. I kept writing law schools even after not getting accepted. In short, I did not give up, even after my life started going in another direction.

Had I been six months further into my asphalt business, it might very well have been impossible to go back to life as a student. I would have had more trucks, more equipment, more employees – my life might have turned out much different. Who knows?

I believe taking so much away from the single lesson of Tom Vu made a huge difference in the quality of my life. My first job after law school was one of the first times I had ever set foot in an office. I could not believe people got paid to work indoors and read and write! My entire working world up until that point had been hard and grueling manual labor.

There are numerous moments in your own life from which you can choose to learn a lesson, or not. Your own experiences present a wealth of learning opportunities on which you can build. I chose to learn from Tom Vu that day because I had invested so much time in the preliminary seminar. What can you learn from your past?

Learning from your past provides you with a solid and rich foundation for your future. You can learn from your past every day, and each day can provide a better experience for your future. Your past and its lessons set the stage for what you can do differently tomorrow. There is so much available that can enrich your future. Learn from your past and enjoy a happy future.

Concentrate on Your Contribution

There is a secret to being an outstanding performer in any job and getting more raises, more recognition, and more responsibility. The secret is to be 100 percent focused on your work and to be passionate about your job. This is where your energy needs to go. The secret also involves another element that is equally important: don’t think about your anticipated reward. If you are committed to excelling at your job, you should not think for a second about what you are receiving in exchange for the work you are doing.

Virtually everyone I know who has succeeded in any calling has shared these characteristics. People who possess these attributes end up getting hired even when the economy is crashing. In fact, if you have these characteristics, you will do well in whatever calling you decide to pursue. These characteristics breed admiration, rewards, raises, and also have the potential to make people famous.

One of the best employees I ever hired really epitomized these characteristics when he received an unexpected $20,000 raise one day. Instead of seeming really happy about this, he simply said “thanks” and continued talking about the work problem he was involved in right before getting the raise. I could tell that deep down this guy did not even care much about the raise because he was so focused on the work. Throughout the years, I have received emails from him well after hours on numerous occasions, when he has worked late into the night at the office.

He’s never told me about working late into the night. He has never bragged about the work he’s done. He has never asked for a raise. Nevertheless, year after year, the raises keep coming. The contribution he makes continues, and he is never focused on the reward he is going to receive.

Interestingly, numerous people have come and gone during the same time. Every month or two they demand a new raise, show me a list of additional tasks they are working on that merit additional compensation, and when required to work late they often refuse, or, if they do stay late, make a big deal about it. Everything with these people is quid pro quo.

One of our employees once received a paycheck that was $7 less than normal because of a deduction he had set up for insurance. Instead of investigating this and considering the reason behind it, the employee immediately assumed the company had intentionally shortchanged him the seven bucks.

This employee, who was making $80,000 a year at the time, left me a message on my cell phone demanding the $7, and calling me dishonest. Additionally, he sent me an email stating that what had happened was “OUTRAGEOUS!!” (the capital letters and exclamation points are his). This employee also spent the morning he received his check going around telling other employees what had happened, spreading fear throughout the organization. At the time, the company had over 600 employees.

This person did not stay employed with our company for long. He left because he found an opportunity where he believed he could make a few thousand dollars a year more. He lost that job rapidly and after that, I think he did not find work for a couple of years.

That is what happens to people who focus solely on their reward. Despite their potential, they are so focused on protecting what they do have and making sure they have as much as others they do not concentrate on their work. These types of workers are too focused on themselves, and they spend too much time thinking about how they are underpaid and deserve more from their employer.

While the above example may sound extreme, I have actually seen this sort of situation occur many times throughout the years. Some people are so focused on protecting what they have or deserve to have, they never get into their work.

You need to get into your work. People who are focused on their work always rise. The natural tendency of bosses, supervisors, and companies is to generously reward people who are making an extraordinary contribution. We want to help those who are helping us.

People who are focused on the reward are more problematic. If people are going out of their way to ensure they are rewarded all the time, the tendency is to resent them and feel they have gotten more than they are worth. A dynamic is set up wherein employers feel they need to protect themselves from the employee. Also, a tendency is to want to balance the scales by taking back from these sorts of employees.

When you look at really good entrepreneurs who succeed in business, you quickly understand they are focused on providing value before they receive a reward. Entrepreneurs know they can only receive a reward if they make a contribution and somehow enrich a person’s life. Entrepreneurs who fail often do so for the same reason that employees fail in their jobs: they concentrate on taking rather than giving. You need to be focused on giving. Many successful business owners do not even reap any substantial profits until after several years of being in business and providing exceptional value.

If you look around at people you have worked with in the past, you too will see there are generally two groups of people. The first consists of people who are focused on their job and are doing the best they possibly can. The second consists of people who are constantly evaluating the rewards they are getting relative to their efforts. They are overly concerned with what others are getting paid and, in general, they always attempt to get a leg-up, by getting the most they can out of their employers.

Which sort of person do you think ultimately does better? Focusing on the rewards is a huge mistake because in doing so you are diverting your energy from what creates the rewards in the first place – your work. In every industry employers want people who are focused on the job, not the rewards. When you hire people for any task (whether it is a doctor, a barber, a painter, etc.), they are much more likely to hire people who are focused on the job instead of the rewards they are going to receive.

We may brag about how our physician is on special committees, and we like the fact the people who are working for us have received awards – these are indicators that someone is committed to the job. The rewards follow from people doing good and solid work, and being focused on the job.

Love What You Do

If you wish to get and excel at a job, one of the most important things you can do for yourself and for your employer is to love what you are doing. When I say, “love what you are doing,” I truly mean it. You must be so passionate about what you are doing you can hardly believe you’re getting paid for it.

I do not care if you are 20 years old or 65 years old, you need to find and do work you enjoy. People who enjoy their work are the ones who advance and do well in any calling.

Love of your work is a source of inspiration. It is something that makes you more creative in your job and gives you energy to work harder. Being playful in your job makes you happier. Making your job a game makes every moment something to grow from and makes your life much more enjoyable.

Let me tell you about someone I know quite well who loves his job. He has a library of thousands of books. He has so many books he had special shelves built in his office. He has books all over his basement. He has books crowded beside his bedside. He has DVDs all over his living room. He spends weeks away from his family each year going to seminars, in order to learn more.

All of these books, CDs, and DVDs cover topics such as management, getting jobs, finding satisfaction in one’s career, and others relevant to people wanting to improve themselves.

He reads these books before he goes to bed at night and when he gets up in the morning. He reads them when he exercises and uses a stair-master instead of a treadmill to exercise, just so he can read during his cardio workout. He even listens to CDs about whatever he is studying when he is driving.

He’s angered by the thought of people who go to work just to make money. He knows people who go to work just to make money typically work less, contribute less to their employer and the people they are helping, and they are not interested in long-term relationships with their work or their employers. He knows of countless people who think of work as just work, who are miserable. He speaks with these people every single day. He knows if you truly enjoy your work and get into your work, you will have a life that is incredibly meaningful. This person truly believes what he is doing is the most important thing in the world.

If you met this person in a normal situation, you might find him a little boring. But if you ask him about what he does for a living, he will become animated and his face will change. He will sit up and become very excited and talk about what he does for hours if you let him. His enthusiasm for his work is so sincere and profound he smiles whenever he thinks about his job. This person is angry he has to sleep each night because he would rather be doing his work.

The person I am speaking about is I. I have found my passion, and my passion is helping you and others get jobs. I love what I do and I want nothing more than profound success for everyone, because I know what everyone is capable of achieving.

I was once in a job I detested, and I was unhappy. I got out the second I found something that seemed like fun and appealed to me spiritually. I am getting an enormous amount of happiness and satisfaction out of my job and my life because I’m doing what I want.

When I was in high school, I remember sitting in a Denny’s one day at lunch with a group of friends, talking about other people. We must have spoken about 10 other people in depth over the course of 45 minutes. At the end of the conversation, I realized that each person we had spoken about had a special talent. One might have been really good at math, for instance; another person might have been very capable socially; another might have been an outstanding athlete, another an amazing writer, another a very talented saxophone player. I realized each person had a very special gift, or combination of gifts that made him or her unique and special. As I have gone through life, I have come to realize everyone has special and unique abilities.

We need to do what we enjoy because this can give us immeasurable and long lasting happiness. This is the most simple career advice I can give.

One of the most remarkable people I know is a mathematical genius – and no, I am not talking about myself this time. This person was so good at math, physics, and other disciplines as a kid that he was already taking college calculus classes when he was in middle school. He never liked math-related disciplines, though. He was more interested in journalism. Incredibly, he was never a particularly gifted writer, but writing was something he loved to do.

Just because we are good at something does not mean it’s what we like to do. Today, this man is a journalist and he loves his job. He’s good at it, too, and he runs a newsroom in a major city. While he took calculus at the age of 13 at the local community college, he was actually struggling to get by in English and the other classes he enjoyed.

Perhaps he could have designed rockets, been a professor at MIT – who knows. But instead he followed his passion and pursued something he loved.

Today, when I see pictures of him, he looks content and enriched. His family is healthy, and I can tell deep down they are all happy. When this fellow was working complex math problems many years ago, I do not think he was happy at all.

There is something inside of you that lights your fire. What is it? Become passionate about your work and find something that elevates you.

What do you read about in your spare time? What part of yourself would you improve to become better at doing what you love?

In November of 2008 I attended the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I saw the CEO of Yahoo!, Al Gore’s boss at Kleiner Perkins, the CEO of Zappos shoes, and other famous people (I missed Lance Armstrong, unfortunately). When I see people like this, I know they love what they are doing, because they speak with so much passion. You too can, and should, love what you are doing. I know many people who do their jobs because they love them.

People who reach great heights in any discipline get there through a love of their job. Love of a job comes from a genuine, heartfelt passion deep inside a person. What motivates you to get out of bed? What would you do if you could do anything with your day? That is exactly where you belong and it is the path you should be following.

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