Your Brain and Your Career

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 [Read more]

Flow, Your Ego and Your Career

Artistotle believed that more than anything we seek to be happy.  There are some individuals who do their work and continually find happiness in this work, and for whom work takes on a meaning that transcends what most of us experience in work.  These people feel completely involved in the work they are doing and are completely focused.  They do not experience emotional turmoil when they are doing their work. In Mihhaly Czikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” (1990), he described a state of “flow” where people involved in an activity “forget themselves, the time, their problems.” Flow [Read more]

Government Bailouts, Groups and Your Career

Recently, something quite interesting has been happening in the American economy.  The government has decided to get involved in running various businesses.  These businesses include insurance companies, banks and automotive companies.  This is something that I am almost 100% confident is going to likely be a disaster.  In fact, it is already turning into somewhat of a disaster as far as I am concerned. History has shown time and time again, that when a government tries to operate a business, this ultimately fails.  It never worked in Russia, for example, and China and India have only started [Read more]

As Seen on TV, P.T. Barnum, Penis Pills and Your Career

I confess that I took no pains to set my enterprising fellow-citizens a better example. I fell in with the world’s way; and if my “puffing” was more persistent, my advertising more audacious, my posters more glaring, my pictures more exaggerated, my flags more patriotic and my transparencies more brilliant than they would have been under the management of my neighbors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises.             — P.T. Barnum

One of the greatest marketers of all time was P.T. Barnum who coined the phrase “The Greatest Show on Earth.”  P.T. Barnum was the absolute king of promoting various events during the 1880′s and understood advertising and marketing concepts that are still [Read more]

You Need to Be Relevant to Your Employer

In the mortgage industry many jobs have simply disappeared. This has put tens of thousands of people out of work. People who lose their jobs in the mortgage industry generally have a couple of options. Frequently they look for a new job in the same industry, because it’s the industry they know. They do their best to network, and email their resume out to every opening they can find in the mortgage industry. “The job market is really tight,” they will tell you. They may get an occasional interview, but [Read more]

The Sun Does Not Always Shine Forever

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was: “The sun does not always shine forever.” I don’t remember who the person was, or even when I heard it, but the words were so powerful I will never forget them. What this meant to me was good fortune does not continue forever. Instead, the most important thing we can do in our work lives is (1) be ready for change and (2) prepare for change. Instead, what many of us do is guard against change. Guarding against change rarely does any good and often [Read more]

Einstein, Visualization and Your Career

One of the most little known facts about Albert Einstein was that he attended a school that followed the teaching methods of the Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi.  Pestalozzi schools taught children in what was know as the Pestalozzi Method (the “Method”).  Under the Method, instead of dealing with words, it was believed that children should learn through activity and things.  They should be free to pursue their own interests and reach their own conclusions.  Much of his teaching methods can be found in a book he published in 1801 called How Gertrude Teaches Her Children.  In this book, he discusses the importance of spontaneity and allowing children to arrive at answers themselves. Visualization was a major component in this method.  Pestalozi believed that visualization was among the mind’s most powerful features, and that imagery was where all knowledge started.

The school environment created by Pestalozzi’s method of eduction created the perfect environment for Einstein to develop as he did.  According to a biography of Einstein, Einstein: His Life and Universe:

It  was a perfect school [Aarau] for Einstein. The teaching was based on the philosophy of a Swiss educational reformer of the early nineteenth century, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed in encouraging students to visualize images….The visual understanding of concepts, as stressed by Pestalozzi and his followers in Aarau, became a significant aspect of Einstein’s genius. ‘Visual understanding is the essential and only true means of teaching how to judge things correctly,’ Pestalozzi wrote, and ‘the learning of numbers and language must be definitely subordinated.

Given his early learning, it is no surprise that Einstein used visualization throughout his entire life.  It is well known that at the age of 16, Einstein used visualization when he discovered that the speed of light was always constant.   Einstein believed that visual understanding was the most important form of education and more important than knowledge.  Later in life Einstein would write:

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.  Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination circles the world.

Arguably the most important skill any of us can master is creative visualization. Visualizing events and outcomes before they occur is an incredibly valuable skill. Consider this quote:

When I was very young, I visualized myself being and having what it was I wanted. Mentally I never had any doubts about it. The mind is really so incredible. Before I won my first Mr. Universe, I walked around the tournament like I owned it. The title was already mine. I had won it so many times in my mind that there was no doubt I would win it. Then, when I moved on to the movies, the same thing. I visualized myself being a successful actor and earning big money. I could feel and taste success. I just knew it would all happen.        -Arnold Schwartzenegger

Creative visualization is the art of creating pictures in your mind of something you would like to happen in the future.  This is not a special skill that needs to be developed by people, it is just something that we need to use.  What you need to be able to do is to visualize positive events and outcomes.

[Read more]