Your Brain and Your Career
March 20, 2009
What You Will Learn
|
In our job searches and careers, there are a variety of forces that can hold us back. However, in almost every single case the thing that can hold us back more than anything is ourselves and our own minds. In fact, your brain and what it is doing–how it thinks and the way it processes information–is the single greatest determinant of what will end up happening to you in your career and life.
I would like to go a “little deep” with you today and discuss something with you that is pretty far out in terms of your career but which, at the same time, is the largest single thing determining what is happening with you and your career: Your brain. This is a crucial determinant in your success or failure. What is most interesting about your brain is that may be you are being benefited, or held back, on either an organic or a psychological level by your brain.
Natasha Richardson, a well-known English-born actress, died after a skiing accident in Canada this week. She apparently fell down and lightly hit her head. After the injury, she declared she was fine and refused any medical care and went back to her hotel room. However, around an hour later, she started complaining of a really bad headache. She was then taken to a hospital in Montreal and then a short time later, flown back to New York City, where she ended up dying. According to Scientific American:
“…The tragic story, if confirmed, is a reminder that even minor blows to the head can lead to devastating bleeding that can cause strokes or otherwise damage brain tissue. One possibility, sometimes called “talk and die” syndrome, is that the actress had delayed bleeding between her skull and her brain stem, which sits at the top of the spinal cord and regulates consciousness, breathing, and the heart and connects the brain to many of the body’s sensory and motor nerves. Another possibility is that there was a tear in the inner lining of her arteries, causing blood clots. To find out more about Richardson’s potential injury, we spoke with neurosurgeon Keith Black, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles….”
How fragile life is and how quickly things can change for people at the blink of an eye! Richardson apparently died of what is called “talk and die syndrome”. In “talk and die syndrome,” someone hits their head and initially they are OK; however, they eventually end up dying when blood gets between the skull and the brain, which is called an epidural hemorrhage. What ends up happening is that there is a pressure on the brain as the blood builds up, and this pressure eventually can end up killing the person.
I think this episode is chilling because it is a metaphor for the experience of many of us in our lives. There is something horribly wrong with some of us but we do not know it and continue forward in our lives as if everything is fine. What is wrong with us is often invisible, we cannot see it and others may not know about it either. Yet, here we go through life with some weakness, some fatal flaw, or something else that will end up killing us. It is something that is small at first; however, it ultimately ends up being something that has a massive impact on our entire lives and may actually kill us. For others, we may be impacted by seemingly small events that took place years ago, and we do not even realize they are impacting us today.
I am sure, 100% sure, that there are both positive and negative things that may have happened to you in the past that are working their way through your career and life right now. These things are affecting you and how well you do in your career and how well you do in your life. These things are psychological in nature and affect your entire view of the world. The good news about these things is that you can fix them. You can learn about these weaknesses and how they are affecting you in the world right now and can do everything within your power to fix them. This will take care of the situation right then and there. The bad news is for people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries, for example, is that many times there is nothing they can do to fix these injuries. They are in a state that they simply cannot easily snap out of.
While Richardson did not survive this incredibly tragic injury, many people who experience brain injuries do end up surviving. These brain injuries can have traumatic results on their lives. I am not sure what it is, or the reasons for this. However, I have seen this happen with people throughout my life and read story after story of this. A bad blow on the head can do tremendous damage to people and their lives.
For as long as I can remember, I have been incredibly interested in the brain and how it functions. The reasons I have been so interested in the brain are numerous; however, one of the main reasons I have been so interested in the brain is due to the fact that what happens with our brain can have an incredible impact on not only our lives, but our success and other factors. My career has been dedicated to human achievement and helping people make the most of themselves, who they are and what they can accomplish. It is for this reason that the most upsetting thing for me of all is when people are impacted by their brains in a negative way.
Several weeks ago I was speaking with a neurosurgeon in his late 80s who showed up at my daughter’s birthday party. He told me a very interesting story about a man whom he had treated when he was a military doctor several decades ago. He had been stationed at a base where there was a soldier who had simply turned quite mean. The soldier had been a nice, quiet kid from the Midwest whose personality had undergone a complete metamorphosis.
He became quite violent and had to be restrained in his bed 24 hours a day. The soldier would buck around so much that the hospital had to weld the bed to the floor. For hours a day, the man would scream obscenities and mean things at anyone who came near him. He was an incredibly evil man and had become very, very angry. His family had tried visiting him on more than a few occasions but were given such a barrage of savage insults and mean statements that they stopped coming to see the guy completely. For the past few years, he had been in this military hospital, strapped down to a bed and was “the meanest son-of-a bitch” anyone had ever seen. He simply could hurl one insult after another at various people, and the only thing he seemed to care about was how he could insult people.
The neurosurgeon, however, had to sleep in a part of the base where he was woken up by this guy’s blood curling screams each morning. While his job was not to treat patients who had apparently gone mad, he decided after months of listening to this man’s screams and being awoken by them each morning, that he wanted to investigate what was wrong with the guy. The doctor, I also sensed, was a very good person and wanted to help everyone he could.
He tracked down the man’s doctor. Apparently, the man had been injured in a simple fall on the base and over weeks and weeks had become progressively meaner and meaner. No one seemed to know what was wrong with him, and the man was now incredibly isolated and alone. He was just incredibly angry and perpetually so. The neurosurgeon asked to look at the man.
At the time, there apparently were not modern CAT Scans, so the neurosurgeon arranged for the man to have his head x-rayed. When the x-rays were developed, the neurosurgeon discovered that there was a blood clot that was isolated over a portion of the soldier’s brain. This small blood clot was activating the portion of the brain associated with anger. Incredibly, the surgeon was able to do a small operation on the man and relieve this blood clot. Over the next several weeks, the man returned to complete normalcy. He had been so incredibly mean to certain members of his family, however, that many people refused to ever speak with him again.
What is so vivid about this example is that everything that happened to this man was completely organic in nature. His brain was able to be easily repaired, and once this occurred, he was right back to normal. We think nothing of approving of a medical intervention like this to operate on someone with a sick brain. Nothing whatsoever. We expect it and know that a simple operation can rapidly bring this person back to normal. Why is it, then, that so many of us are unwilling to look inside ourselves and see what it may be that is holding us back? What it may be that is preventing us from reaching our full potential? What it is that if we changed would make us the best we could be?
Someone I knew growing up fell down a flight of stairs one day in their house. For the next 30 minutes or so the person laid unconscious. When they woke up, they went into the hospital. They were put under observation for a few days and eventually the hospital decided that they were ok and let them go. While the change in this person was slight, the person lost their job a short time later. They became very hostile and undermining of their superiors. This occurred throughout the person’s career, and they never really recovered. To this day, this person in someone who is very hostile to other people like this to the point of spending their days on gossip boards defaming anyone who they perceive is against them. The person is incredibly isolated and alone. It is very sad, but all of this is almost certainly the result of a similar brain injury. Our brains are complex and can really mess with us and screw up our lives. What if this person was to get a CAT scan? Would that change anything? Maybe none of this is related–maybe it is.
A woman I was once very close to, was travelling down the freeway one day in a small sports car. I received a call from the accident scene where she had totaled her car. She had woken up from the accident after being unconscious for around 5 minutes, and her head had been violently thrown against the windshield. When she woke up, she appeared completely normal and was able to speak with people in a coherent way.
A few days later, however, she started acting really bizzare. She started crying a lot and did so about issues that were quite paranoid. She started believing that everyone in her neighborhood was talking about her. When she drove down the street, the woman thought people were looking at her. Finally, one day she declared she needed to get the hell out of where she lived because everyone was staring at her and moved out of her house. She lived in one place for a few months and then decided the people there were out to get her. The last I checked, she had moved several times. Everywhere she goes, she is suddenly under the belief that people are out to undermine her and get her. Is she crazy? Not exactly. You can speak with her and she can carry on a completely normal conversation. It is what is going on in the depths of her mind that is so frightening. She has changed and become a completely different person.
These episodes are scary to me. They are frightening due to the fact of how common they are. In fact, if you personally are suffering from numerous different symptoms, they could be related to issues with your brain that could have occurred due to a fall or some other accident. One of the more interesting books that I have read in the past few years was a book by neuroscientist and psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Amen, called Change Your Brain Change Your Life. In this book, Amen reviews and discusses the fact of how our brains are wired and can have a profound impact on our emotions and our thoughts. What Amen does in his studies and clinics is brain imaging studies on people having various issues.
For example, many of the common problems that people suffer from, such as distraction, worry, anger and more, are often related to a brain malfunction. People who have anxiety and are plagued by this often have issues with their basal ganglia. People with trouble focusing typically will have issues with their prefrontal cortex. People with a bad temper may have issues with their temporal lobes. People that have issues connecting with others may have a deep limbic problem. One interesting passage of the book relates:
When the limbic system functions properly, people tend to be more positive and more able to connect with others. They tend to filter information in an accurate light and they are more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt. They are able to be playful, sexy, and sexual, and they tend to maintain and have easy access to positive emotional memories. They tend to draw people toward them with their positive attitude.
When the limbic system is overactive, people tend toward depression, negativity, and distance from others. They are more likely to focus on the most negative aspects of others, filter information through dark glasses, see the glass as half empty, and less likely to give others the benefit of doubt. They tend not to be playful. They do not feel sexy, and they tend to shy away from sexual activity due to a lack of interest. Most of their memories are negative, and it is hard for them to access positive emotional memories or feelings. They tend to push people away with their negativity.
Positive Limbic Relational Statements
“We have a lot of good memories.”
“Let’s have friends over.”
“I accept your apology. I know you were just having a bad day.”
“Let’s have fun.”
“I feel sexy. Let’s make love.”
Negative Limbic Relational Statements
“Don’t look at me that way.”
“All I can remember are the bad times.”
“I’m too tired.”
“Leave me alone. I’m not interested in sex.”
“You go to bed. I can’t sleep.”
“I don’t feel like being around other people.”
“I don’t want to hear you’re sorry. You meant to hurt me.”
“I’m not interested in doing anything.”
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life:
The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety,
Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness
pages 260-261
When your brain works right, then you work right. If your brain has trouble, then you are likely to have trouble. Exercise, sleep, stress, smoking, too much caffeine, negative thinking, how you think moment by moment can have a negative impact on your brain. Your diet, social connections and being with other people can help your brain. Is your behavior helping or hurting your brain? Day in and day out people are either hurting their brains or helping their brains. Focusing on what you love, being grateful and meditation can help your brain.
When you are looking for a job and when you are in a position where you may be seeking a job, it is important to understand that your brain is influencing the things that happen to you. If there are persistent issues that are holding you back in your job search or causing you problems, then it is important to understand just how serious these problems are. It is possible, for example, that there is more wrong than that which just meets the eye. There may be certain variables in your brain that are influencing what happens to you and these may be organic–or they may be psychological.
My advice to you today is to watch out for your brain. There are psychological things that are likely influencing you, and there may even be organic things that are influencing what is happening with you. Getting to the bottom of your brain and what is going on inside of you may be among the most effective career moves you will ever make.
The Kick-Ass Marketing Secret of the Most Successful Job Applicants and Employees
March 13, 2009
What You Will Learn
|
I have been going to conferences about one thing or another at least a couple times a year for the past several years. I have spent thousands of dollars attending marketing-related conferences. If I go to one more conference where someone talks about USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) I will probably get up and leave. I am going to teach you in the next few minutes what the best marketing minds in the world would charge you thousands of dollars to tell you about how to market yourself.
You are going to know how to position yourself for incredible success—in life and in your job—in the following way:
First, I am going to tell you how to get jobs that more highly qualified competitors do not get.
Second, how to get jobs you are not even qualified for.
Third, how to appear to be the most logical choice to be interviewed when you apply for a job.
Fourth, how to make every interviewer talk about you enthusiastically after interviewing.
What You Will Learn
|
Sound impossible? It’s not. However, it requires that you know something about marketing and that you really understand one marketing concept: the USP, or whatever you want to call it. It is not hard to understand, but you do need to think through the idea a bit to really grasp it.
I have been getting up and leaving lots of conferences lately. I left one last weekend, and I left one a couple of months before that.
The reason I am leaving these conferences is because very few of the people at conferences have any idea what they are talking about. What these people typically do at the conferences is learn some marketing ideas about this or that, create a horrible course, and then try and get people to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for them. In addition, most of these people are not just clueless; they’re completely clueless. I usually end up leaving when I hear them pronounce some famous marketing person’s name incorrectly or call some marketing concept by a name it should not be called.
The reason people keep showing up to these marketing conferences and paying all these gurus money to listen to them bastardize marketing concepts they do not even understand is this: When a marketing concept really works it can be incredibly effective.
- I know one guy in his twenties who came out with a brand of liquor and created some buzz around it and a couple of years later sold it to some giant liquor company for hundreds of millions of dollars.
- I know of another guy who did the same thing with a stuffed animal. I represented him when I practiced law. He made several hundred million dollars.
How effective is this marketing stuff? People who really understand it at a deep level can make hundreds of millions of dollars. If people can make hundreds of millions of dollars with a simple marketing concept pitching a bottle of booze or a stuffed animal, imagine what you can do with this stuff in your career.
The most effective of all marketing weapons out there is the USP. The term USP has been around a long, long time. I would define USP in the following way:
Your USP is that unique aspect of yourself that sets you apart from every other “me too” employee and job seeker in the market.
Your entire career can be built almost exclusively around your USP. The key word for your USP, however, is “unique.” Your USP is what differentiates you from your competition and makes you a must-have hire and employee in the job market.
You should be able to explain, in a single phrase, why someone should hire you and want to work with you and not someone else, or why they need to hire you at all.
For job seekers, the USP is among the most important things you need to have, even before having a resume, in my opinion. Your USP is what you are offering, and it is what you want to stick out and be memorable about your candidacy. Your USP is that important. The possibilities for creating your USP are unlimited; however, it is best to adopt a USP that dynamically addresses something that a potential employer is probably not getting that you can give them. (Be careful, though, because you need to be able to fulfill whatever it is you are promising in your USP.)
Before telling you how to go about creating your USP, let me first describe something that characterizes most job seekers. First, when I ask people I am interviewing why I should hire them and not someone else, most of them have no decent response. Why? Because most people have never thought through their own USP. Most people have no USP and instead, have only a rudderless, nondescript candidacy that depends only upon the momentum of the market. For example, if the market is doing well and there are lots of jobs available, they may get hired. If the market slows down and these people need another job, then they will wait for the market to pick up again. Most people offer no real benefit to employers and nothing distinct or unique. No great service or value is promised either implicitly or explicitly—just “hire me,” for no explicit reason.
It’s no surprise, then, that most careers are merely average and not exceptional. People accomplish only a small share of what they could accomplish in their job searches and careers due to not fully developing their USP. Why would you want to hire someone who is just average with no unique benefit? Or would you prefer someone who is the absolute best at what they do?
Let me tell you two quick stories.
Some time ago I hired an assistant whose former job had been to be an assistant to uneducated, has-been movie and rock stars and others who were on tight budgets and needed to keep their secrets out of the limelight. I reviewed her resume and saw all of the famous people she had worked for over her career and felt very privileged to have this person working for me as well. However, she had never actually been hired by these people. She had been hired by their business managers. The job of business managers of stars and others when their clients get late into their careers is to make sure they (1) do not run out of money and (2) are not featured in the press in unflattering ways. This is what they looked for in her when they hired her.
Her job had been to be an assistant; however, more than this, her job had been to babysit these people and make sure they did not spend too much money or get into trouble in various ways. In addition to this she was an assistant; however, her real skill was running peoples’ lives and keeping costs down.
Her USP on her resume when I interviewed was something along the lines of “effective in controlling confidential clients’ spending and keeping them out of media in a variety of challenging circumstances.” I found this bizzare at the time, but she was extremely personable and interviewed exceptionally well. In fact, I hired her during the interview.
Once she started work she started shaping up everyone around her. She demanded that they not gossip and recommended in the harshest possible manner that I fire certain employees who were gossiping. She looked around the office and determined everyone from the person who came in to water the plants to the cleaning woman should be fired and replaced with cheaper alternatives. When I travelled she rented me ridiculous little Asian cars I could scarcely fit into and put me into the cheapest hotels she could find, that were miles from where I needed to be, just to save money. I did not like this.
When I protested she would talk to me like a child.
“It only costs an additional $3.00 a day for a regular size car,” I might protest.
“Now, what did I tell you about behaving?” she might respond.
She was incredible at what she did, but it was not for me. Had I been a spendthrift, out-of-work actor on a fixed income, this would have been exactly what I needed. The people around me would not have gossiped about me to the press, and I would not have run out of money
This woman had a USP and she stood for two things (1) saving money and (2) keeping the person she worked for out of the press. She did this instinctively, and this is why she is someone who was probably never unemployed in Los Angeles for more than a few days. Ever.
The reason for this is due to the fact that she had an incredible USP and it was exactly what business manager and others wanted in someone doing a job like she did. She was absolutely perfect in every way for the particular job that business managers needed for older, non-working entertainment clients.
This is the example of a USP in action. Imagine if you were managing a former movie star and had the two goals of keeping the person’s dirty laundry out of the limelight and also making sure that the person did not spend money. The person I hired would be the absolute first person you would hire. This person stood for something and followed through on what they stood for. I am sure she will never have a difficult time finding a job in Los Angeles, no matter what the economy is like, as long as she has this particular USP.
Can you see what an appealing difference a USP can make in establishing someone’s image to a potential employer? It is ludicrous not to have a clear, carefully crafted USP that is in the very fabric of your candidacy with any firm.
The next story I am going to tell you about USPs is so ludicrous it is hard to believe. But it’s true.
When I was growing up there was a guy down the street from me who was incredibly wild. He once got suspended from elementary school for throwing a desk at a teacher. As he progressed through high school and then college he continued to get more and more wild. One time he was over at a friend of mine’s house, and he had used so many drugs that he sat on a chair for what I understand was something like 36 hours staring at a wall. He was a wild guy, and he still is pretty wild.
However, despite all this wildness he is actually extremely uptight. His mind works like a vice grip, and he is so detail oriented it is hard to believe. When you are around this guy when he is not spaced out on drugs it makes you uncomfortable. He perceives every little detail about everything, and these details make him visibly agitated if anything is ever out of place. He starts sweating sometimes if anything seems off too much. His face turns red. This guy is way, way too wound up and always has been. He almost flunked out of college because he was using drugs and partying all the time. However, he still ended up getting tons of jobs.
Employers meet this guy and they know that absolutely nothing whatsoever will ever slip by him. It is difficult for me to even describe how uptight this guy is in words. His mind is like a trap. This guy has never been unemployed. His resume says something like “unbelievably detail oriented” and it is absolutely true. The guy is considered one of the top quality-related guys in the United States. He works for a big company and makes a hell of a lot of money studying something like quality control. He gets calls from recruiters all the time. He was rich by the time he was 30. He works in a labcoat in ridiculously expensive production lines that make things like computer chips. He is an absolute star at what he does.
This guy’s entire identity is based around being incredibly detail oriented on the job. He is incredibly detail oriented, and people truly understand this around him. This is what this guy does. He does this well, and everyone who comes into contact with him knows this.
The point is that you need to focus your USP on one gap, niche, need, or segment of the market that the market needs. The market needs guys who are detail oriented and assistants who control the spending and public perception of people in the entertainment industry.
You need to come up with a USP and have something that sets you apart in the market. Before you can incorporate your USP into your resume and interviews and work style, however, you need to figure out what it is (or what you want it to be) and then refine it and make sure you focus it as cleanly and directly as you possibly can. You should be able to articulate a crystal-clear USP in less than a paragraph.
Your USP is the nucleas around which you will get a job and define your career, so you better have one and you better be able to state one. If you cannot state a USP, the people you work with and/or whom are interviewing you will not be able to define it either. Clearly conveying and marketing your USP will make your success in the job market close to inevitable if it is a strong enough USP. But you need a USP before you do anything.
When you create a meaningful USP you are taking the vast details of all of your experience, education, and character and putting in one or a few sentences. More importantly, these sentences typically have the force of salesmenship in practically every single word. You do not need to care how this USP reads, either. It does not have to sound good. What it needs to do is stand out and create positive tension in the employer’s mind.
The biggest test if you have adopted a really good USP or not is if it could be adopted by another job seeker without being modified. Here are some examples of meaningless USPs:
- Well-educated educated teacher.
- Hard-working employee.
- Team player.
These USPs do nothing to separate one person from another in the job market. Lots of people are well educated and professional. Lots of people are also hard working. Lots of people are also team players. None of these things are really that unusual. If an employer puts and advertisement out for virtually any job they will receive applications from people claiming to have these various “unique” qualifications. The truth is, however, none of these qualifications is unique at all. None of these things is really going to make you stick out in the employers’ minds when they are reviewing your resume, interviewing you, and considering hiring you.
You are well educated? What does this mean? You are hard working? What does this mean? You are a team player? What does this mean? You need to go deeper and deeper. You need to push harder and find something that make you stand out. How about:
- “Students in my classes get so enthusiastic about learning they often come to me for extra reading assignments to learn more,” “Oxford educated teacher,” “Former high school valedvictorian teacher who speaks Latin and four other languages and makes students incredibly enthusiastic about learning” (for well educated teacher).
- “My supervisors always tell me not to work so hard,” “Known at every employer I have ever worked at as the last one out at the end of the day,” “I am the guy supervisors tell to take a vacation” (for hard working).
- “Am I too friendly and well liked by other people at work?” “When employer’s hire me morale rises because I am always the guy who organizes softball leagues, basketball teams, and so forth for the employees,” ”Pizza parties at my house are a regular occurrence” (for team player).
I am showing you these examples and want you to think about them. Each of them is memorable because each of them makes the person stand out. The imagery is vivid, and we can sense and understand what is being talked about and referred to in the statements.
My greatest and most favorite skill is being a legal recruiter. As a legal recruiter I have written hundreds of profiles for various attorneys out there that I use to help them get in the door at various law firms. At first glance, every attorney is pretty much identical to the others out there in the market. For example, they all go to good law schools, they all work hard, and they are ball very ambitious. I have to work pretty hard to differentiate each attorney I work with out there from the rest.
I am not going to tell you I am the best legal recruiter in the United States; however, I may well be. I’ve made more than $1,000,000 in fees personally from doing this sort of work virtually every single year I’ve done it. I can honestly say that nothing I do to help my candidates get jobs is more important than helping them have a strong and incredibly persuasive USP. That is why I sit on my ass at all those shitty marketing conferences: I know that the more I learn and understand this sort of stuff, the more I can help various people get jobs. I have been able to change people’s lives by crafting powerful USPs for them and sending them into interviews. One year I actually placed every single candidate I worked with and I can say it is almost entirely due to having a good USP for them.
Every attorney and every person has a USP that can be used with employers.
Sometimes it is the obstacles the person has overcome.
Sometimes it is their unique writing ability.
Sometimes it is their passion.
Sometimes it is their character.
The point is that everyone out there has a particular USP. You are different from other people and there is something different about your candidacy and experience than everyone else’s out there. You need to say so, and you need to be as upfront as possible about this. Have something in your USP that no one else out there offers.
And tell your story. ”I learned the importance of hard work because I grew up on a farm and got up at 4:30 am to milk the cows from the time I was 7 years old until I went off to college at the age of 18 and never missed a single day. If you are looking for an attorney who works hard ,you are never going to find someone more dedicated, hardworking, and consistent than me.”
Persuasive, right? Who would you hire to be an attorney? Some four-eyed, upper middle-class arrogant law school graduate, or a guy who came in with a story like that? I think you would interview the kid of a farmer just for the novelty, and hire him as well.
This is the power of an awesome USP.
Why are you the right choice among all the other choices employers have out there? If you truly want to get a job, you will get in touch with your USP and start standing out to employers. You will be a standout person whose resume and so forth sticks out to the employer and who is memorable. People will be buying you as a concept and not just hiring an employer.
When you interview with employers, everything you say should clearly reinforce your USP. Think about your own past buying examples. When you are in the market for a product or service don’t you tend to favor the businesses that strongly presents a USP? Of course you do!
You need to understand one thing, though: You are not going to be able to appeal to everyone out there. In fact, certain USPs are only going to appeal to certain employers and not others. However, this is part of what a USP is: It is a market differentiator. Differentiate yourself in the market, create a USP, and you will never have a difficult time finding a job.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.