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When I was a freshman in college, one of my older fraternity brothers once dumped a giant pail of soup over my head while I was eating dinner. This was during my “pledge” period when I was in the process of joining the fraternity.
Each of the kids in my pledge class experienced similar humiliations at one point or another, something that we all endured until we were officially inducted into the fraternity. The older fraternity brothers loved these sorts of pranks and mischief and I am sure it is still going on to this day.
I had suffered this particular indignity because I had not been present at an event the night before where my pledge brothers were blindfolded and individually led out to the front porch of the fraternity house, told to get on their hands and knees, and had a giant plastic trashcan of cold water dumped on them from a porch three stories above. Unfortunately, after being forced to drink almost a fifth of whisky in the hours of hazing leading up to this event, I had passed out on a floor of a bathroom and had been unable to be moved to the front porch to have water dumped on my head.
This soup was among the most humiliating experiences I had ever had. I was with 30 or so other guys who all thought it was hilarious; many were laughing so hard that they fell out of their chairs. I had been sitting at a table, innocently eating my dinner, when the people at the table all got up at the same time, ostensibly to go get some more food. A few seconds later my older fraternity brother came up behind me and dumped five gallons of soup on me. Needless to say, I was extremely shocked and upset.
Instead of remaining incredibly upset and dwelling on it, I decided that I needed to take action and fight back. The kid who had done this to me was older, bigger than me, and had a lot more friends in the fraternity house than I had. Nevertheless, I knew that I would never respect myself if I did not stick up to him and fight back aggressively. I did not want to be known as the sorry kid who had had soup poured over his head.
I had fun for months pulling all sorts of pranks on the guy who did this to me. Eventually, my pranks got so serious and I started pushing the line so much that the president of the fraternity came to speak to me and told me the pranks had to stop. Not only had I returned the favor by dumping soup on the guy–at least three times–I did other menacing things to torment him as well. He started avoiding me, not the other way around.
There was another guy in my fraternity who once got into a big fight with a couple of other kids in the fraternity house, also over someone pouring liquid all over him. He lost the fight and ended up being humiliated in front of a bunch of people. A fight with punches, screaming, and so forth had ensued. Apparently, moments before this, someone had walked up behind the guy and peed on him. I am not going to comment on the humor or the animalistic nature of my fraternity brothers, but I will tell you that they probably thought this was funnier than the soup that had been poured on my head. What was so different about this episode, though, was the ferocity of the guy’s reaction. He appeared to have been genuinely traumatized and was upset to a high degree by what had happened to him–and understandably so.
After this fight, the young man avoided the fraternity house almost completely. He moved off campus and was rarely seen. He would walk around the block so that he would never have to walk by the house. He did not go to parties there, and he pretty much avoided all of the people from the fraternity house the rest of his time in college.
One time, several of us were standing on the front porch of the fraternity house and we saw the guy crossing the street about a block away. It was clear that the guy was trying not to be seen by any of his fraternity brothers.
“What a loser!” one of my fraternity brothers shouted.
I have heard people use the word “loser” in multiple ways throughout my life. This use of the word really stuck with me, though, because this time the guy was being referred to as someone who had given up trying to fit in with the other kids. In this sense, once could say that many people out there are “losers,” to the extent that they are avoiding situations and people that are painful to them.
The reaction of other kids in the fraternity house to getting in arguments, being humiliated, and so forth was typically to keep pushing forward and doing their thing.
People react in different ways when negative things happen to them. Have you ever known someone who had a really bad experience, wherein something really awful happened to the person at work, in his or her personal life, or elsewhere?
It does not really matter what the situation is–what is most important is how the person reacted. When something bad happens, many people typically react in one of two ways: they either pick themselves up and keep moving forward, or they withdraw and try to avoid similar bad situations in the future. Many people spend their entire lives avoiding certain situations. Other people spend their lives continually pushing through and finding new, better situations. You are probably either one sort of person or the other.
I believe that the world is almost evenly split between moving toward people and moving away from people. Regardless of who you are and what sort of job you are doing, you are either a moving toward person or a moving away from person. Your success in your career and life will ultimately have a lot to do with whether or not you are motivated by moving toward something or are consistently moving away from something.
People who are moving toward something are constantly trying to make progress. They have various priorities that are important to them and they try to keep on top of these priorities, no matter what the cost. In addition, they typically go into situations without caring so much about what can go wrong. They are often perceived as fearless. When things are not working out very well, these people do not usually pay as much attention to what is not working as to what is working. They are the sorts of people who are
These sorts of people may have been “burned” or had bad experiences, but they have not given up. Instead, they are constantly pushing forward. Moving forward is often a state of mind, a perception, more than anything.
In my career as a legal recruiter, I learned to recognize that there are also generally two types of attorneys: those who are continually moving forward and those who are moving away from things.
When most attorneys get out of law school, they are ready to take on the world, and they typically want to go to work for the largest, most prestigious and “hardest charging” law firms. They want to make the most money and have the most prestige. At this point, the young attorneys are definitely in moving forward mode.
After a few years inside of law firms, a good proportion of attorneys get into moving away from mode. One of the most persistent things about most attorneys who start in large law firms is that they tend not to like working in large law firms after they have had considerable experience doing so. The reason is that law firms require attorneys to bill time and be accountable for each hour of their day. The larger the law firm is, the more the attorney is typically expected to work. There are all sorts of political pressures inside law firms, and multiple levels of supervision, and many other unpleasant things that attorneys simply do not want to deal with. For this reason, a good portion of attorneys out there are seeking to work, instead, inside corporations or at other jobs with different demands, which the attorneys perceive as less stressful. In fact, most attorneys who start out in large law firms spend the rest of their careers doing their best to move away from large law firm jobs.
I know this because for a good portion of my career I was counseling and speaking with attorneys about these things on a daily basis. Less pressure, fewer hours, more flexibility, and so forth are the sorts of words the attorneys would use to describe what they were looking for. I have heard this so frequently from attorneys, I can hardly believe it. These are the moving away from sorts of attorneys.
What is a moving away from person? Someone who is constantly moving away from something is typically motivated to avoid certain people and situations. He or she will avoid negative situations and will always do his or her best to steer clear of certain situations. These are the sorts of people who
I am sure that you know many people who are moving away from sorts of people, because these people are everywhere and they are just as common as the moving towards sorts of people. Moving away from people tend to be more interested in jobs that are “steady,” wherein they can avoid conflict. In contrast, moving toward people are more likely to be interested in a job with good pay, wherein they can continually find excitement and grow. The moving away from people tend to be more concerned about what sorts of hassles, conflicts, and so forth the job will enable them to avoid.
It is important for your career for you to understand whether you are a moving toward sort of person or a moving away from sort of person. The key to reaching your full potential is to put yourself in a situation in which you are the most comfortable. For example, you might not be interested in high-level achievement, advancement, and so forth, and are therefore going to be more comfortable in a moving away from sort of job than a moving toward sort of job. Most people realize they have a strong preference one way or the other, once they think about it.
There is nothing wrong with being one of these types of people or the other. Both are needed in the work world, and you can be happy being either. The danger occurs, though, if you become a moving away from sort of person for the wrong reasons. If you had a bad experience at some point in your life (like I did with the soup being poured over my head) you should not allow this to make you a moving away from sort of person. You should first overcome whatever fears, insecurities, and ill feelings that were instilled in you, and then decide if you want to be a moving away from sort of person.
Do not become a moving away from sort of person in response to bad things that happen to you. Push through and address whatever these bad things are, and then, only then, you should decide whether or not you want to become a moving away from sort of person in the future.
The reason this is so relevant to your career and life is that many people never address and confront the fears and insecurities that have turned them into moving away from sorts of people. They spend their lives hiding in anonymity and in careers wherein they are not reaching their full potential. They exert most of their energy and spend most of their time avoiding all sorts of things out there in the world.
Are you hiding in a job right now?
Are you avoiding a certain type of work due to something that happened to you in the past?
Nothing is more harmful than allowing yourself to be in a career in which you are hiding–especially when you are hiding from something deeper within yourself, which you need to confront. You need to confront everything that comes at you and then decide if you want to be a moving away from or a moving toward sort of person in your job and career. Once you determine this, you can create a path to the life that you desire.
THE LESSON
Avoiding problems, not challenging yourself, and giving up in the face of challenges are all forms of being a loser. Your reaction to any given situation is far more important than the situation itself. Whether you are the type of person who moves towards or away things will ultimately determine your career success; those who move toward things make consistent progress, confronting their fears by facing and dealing with them.
About Harrison Barnes
Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.
About BCG Attorney Search
BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive that gets results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities that its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.
Filed Under : Featured, Getting Ahead, Life Lessons
Tagged: job search guru | a harrison barnes, moving away, moving towards people
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Do not be distracted by your insecurities and doubts, or you will never achieve success because you will not allow it to happen. Focus only on the message about your skills and capabilities. Identify your goals and create a gameplan, and fill your mind with positive and hopeful messages that will drive you towards said goal.
In this article Harrison explains how you can ensure success in your career by externalizing your opponents. Your job is like a game; if you work hard, play by the rules of the company and are seen as part of the team you will be viewed as a valuable player for the company. The most significant part of any game is the presence of an opponent. Don’t look for an opponent among your co-workers. Never speak negatively of your team members. Instead, concentrate on the external opponents. External opponents bring you and the team closer as you work towards a common goal. In order for you and your company to succeed it is important to have an external opponent. Harrison advises people to consistently work hard and not participate in the politics. This is a sure way to score big in your career.
In this article Harrison discusses how people who stand for something always do better than those who do not. Companies who stand for something always do better than companies who do not. The most successful companies not only stand for something, but they are completely consistent with their core principles. This is what keeps them going and this is what makes them successful. One of the largest problems that people have in their careers is when they diverge from what they are good at. When you do not stand for something, you divert from your true strength. Everything begins to crumble and slowly fall apart when you are not doing something that you are really good at. The biggest success comes when you stand for something and are good at it.
Companies necessarily seek to employ positive, forward-minded people. A firm’s success depends on their employees, and they seek people who will enhance them rather than merely contribute to the bottom line. People with positive natures, who contribute to a healthy social environment, prove essential to the growth and success of their employers.
In this article Harrison discusses that the meaning you give to things will control the quality of your life. How we feel about ourselves is all due to what we tell ourselves certain things will mean. The meaning you give things is crucial for your career success. You need to choose meanings that make you stronger. You need to ensure you interpret things in a way that serves you and does not hurt you. You need to reach your full potential. Don’t classify yourself as someone who is not fit to succeed at the level at which you’re capable. You need to take charge of your mind to have the career and the life that you deserve.
In this article Harrison discusses the importance of ‘energy’ over technical skills. When people are hiring you they are purchasing your “energy” more than they are purchasing your technical skills. They are interested in your ability to influence the world around you through your energy. When you are marketing yourself and seeking a job, or working in a job, there are essentially two things you are marketing. You are marketing your technical skills, but more importantly you are marketing an intangible sort of energy. The most successful people have mastered the art of projecting positive energy. The better your energy, the more employable you will be and the farther you will go.
You can never become too comfortable if you wish to be successful. Your success will largely depend on your ability to become dissatisfied with your current position. Successful people are never satisfied with the status quo, and constantly push beyond their comfort zone. When do you this and succeed, you set a new standard for normality in your life. Be continually dissatisfied, and always pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.
Resourcefulness can make you better at everything you do, and separates the truly extraordinary people from the general herd. Do everything within your power to be resourceful in your job search, life, and career to give yourself the best possible chance of achieving your goals, and learn how to employ the resources currently at your disposal for maximum impact.
The most successful people in the world share the common characteristic of sharing, or concentrating on the value that they give back to others rather than on their own growth and profit. Focusing on yourself never leads to long-term success, but leads instead to unhappiness as well as emotional and financial challenges. Your greatest consideration, therefore, should be how you can contribute to others, and how your actions can impact their lives.
The best way to attain your goal is through small, incremental steps on which you can build. Establish a routine, and make sure you are consistently working towards some kind of goal. Start small, and always build upon what you have done before. Most people fail to achieve their goals because they believe everything should happen quickly and at the same time, instead of progressively building upon their past achievements.
Make sure that you are involved in groups that focus on positive things. Your success in life depends on your ability to focus on the outcomes you want, and the focus of the groups with which you associate will in turn shape your own focus. You must endeavor to always choose groups with a positive focus.
Everything you do is a form of preparation for your job interviews, as you are always under some form of scrutiny. The best employees can always spot other good employees, and you cannot “fake it”; merely doing a good job in your work is a form of interview preparation. Always put your all into your work, therefore, even if you do not have long-term plans to remain at your current employment. Switch jobs as infrequently as possible. The time to prepare for a job search is before you even realize that you need to do so.
Your greatest successes will come from some of the smallest actions in terms of meeting people. You will cause a “stacking effect” the more you meet and connect with people; conversely, people cannot connect with you when you are withdrawn and nothing will happen. You must do everything in your power to connect with as many people as possible.
When myriad candidates are applying to limited positions, practicing unusual tactics in your job hunt will prove far more helpful than following the established routine and waiting for positions to come to you. Much like in military strategy, well-planned and unconventional moves can help you conquer your goals without suffering significant losses. You can land an excellent position by focusing on companies’ needs, rather than depending on job and recruiting advertisements.
You can change your life forever by harnessing the power of persistence. Think about the people in your life, and whether they empower you or hinder you in achieving your goals. You must win at all costs, and persist until you succeed.
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Your ability to help people will determine the extent of your success; the more powerful and effective your help, the greater rewards you will receive. One of the rarest and most profound achievements is to follow through on your goals and create a paradigm-shifting idea. The more revolutionary your work, the more people you will affect and the more memorable of a career you will have.
You will greatly benefit your career by helping and promoting your company’s expansion. A common belief is that expansion is fundamentally positive, and a lack of expansion is fundamentally negative. You must be on the side of expansion rather than contraction in every area of your life. All employers seek people who will help them expand, and the more your ability to contribute to this expansion will provide you increased job security and a greater likelihood of being hired.
The ability to fit into your work environment is among the most important parts of obtaining and retaining a job, even more so than your skill level. Fitting in means nothing more than being comfortable in one’s work environment, and making others similarly comfortable. Employers want to hire people who will embrace their approach to business and the world on physical and moral levels, so you must strive to fit in with their worldview.
Focus on what you are doing, not what others around you are doing. There are people to take action towards their goals, and then there people who sit on the sidelines and comment on the first group of people. People who are mostly interested in gossip and watching others usually lack the confidence and determination to take action themselves. The most successful people go account and accomplish things rather than sit back and watch others make things happen.
In this article, Harrison advises you to live the lives you wish to have, do the jobs you want to do, and basically live your dreams to your best possible ability. Life is fleeting and no one knows what tomorrow holds. So Harrison puts forward certain questions – when are you going to start living the life you want and when are you going to take charge of your life. The time to have the career you want is right now, not tomorrow, and not later. You need to take charge of your career and life and no one else is going to do it for you. Your entire life and the quality of it is a product of your decisions. You can have, do, or be anything you want. Do not create alibis for making comprises in life. What separates the best and the happiest people is the ability to stop to making excuses and Harrison wants you to be this person.
Anyone can be up when things are going well, but the real challenge comes when things are not. Do not look at problems, which are inevitable for any person or business, in a negative light; think of them instead as challenges, lessons, or opportunities. There is a silver lining to be found in every problem, and finding that silver lining will enable you to grow.
Understanding what you do for a living is very important for your career. You should understand the generality of your specific profession. You and your career are a product. You need to know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to be relevant and understand the skills you are offering. Being a relevant product is essential for your success. It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve. Being relevant is more than just getting a job. Being relevant also relates to serving the employers with the skills they need. You need to understand your market and what your customers want. This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.
Things will not always go the way that you want them to go, so you must not be discouraged by adversity in your job hunt. When you persist and consistently put forth your best effort, things are much more likely to go in your favor. Also, you must resist others’ efforts to undermine your efforts and potential; focus instead on doing everything in your power to fight on and complete the task at hand.
Having a goal or vision will propel you towards greater career success and happiness. Without a purpose, you will find yourself depressed and ultimately fail to achieve your goals. Do not subscribe to the unrealistic problem that you should never have problems, but instead regard problems as part of your overall growth strategy.
Don’t ever give up, and make the most of the tools at your disposal. Take chances and invest in your best skills, and persist in the face of unfortunate events. Have faith in your considerable work and capabilities, and use them to create value for others.
In this article Harrison discusses what a good hiring manager should look for. Many people who make hiring decisions really do not know what they are doing. In fact, they often make mistakes when hiring. They put too much emphasis on skills and experience. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, he/she will bring down the morale of the other workers. The person will harm the company through the negative outlook. The key to success is having the power to stick it out in jobs and finding happiness wherever you are. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers.
To reach the goals to which you aspire, you must compare yourself with people superior to you for motivation. Most people prefer to look at life the way they wish it to be, rather than as it truly is. Move out of your comfort zones and face reality. Don’t seek out or compare yourself with the average people around you, as doing so will only mire you in mediocrity rather than push you forward.
You can better market yourself by taking a stand against something. Peoples’ personal beliefs, including the things with which they do not agree, define who they are as people. Standing against something differentiates you from the crowd; when done in the correct manner, without disrespecting others’ opinions, such a stance can help you land your dream job.
Maintaining a routine in both life and work is important to success. Not only do you need to establish a routine, you must make that routine demanding and push yourself to the limit. Budget a certain amount of time each week for networking, applying to jobs, brushing up your interview skills, and following up with employers. Such consistent effort on a daily basis will make a huge difference to your career success.
A recommendation from a powerful person can make a huge difference in your job search; a reference from an influential person makes a tremendous difference to a prospective employer, and thus can be a major advantage for you. When an important person whom the company trusts recommends you, you instantly qualify for positions that may previously have been unattainable. Make the absolute most of your connections with the powerful people in your life, because doing so can instantaneously change your career and life.
You must plant seeds in the minds of others, so that they will be more likely than otherwise to think of you when a future need arises. In planting seeds, you are making people aware of what you have to offer; you must make sure that you are ever present in the minds of your potential employers. Planting seeds is the most effective way to generate top-of-mind awareness, and ensure that the right people remember you at the appropriate time.
Recent immigrants exemplify the benefits of willpower, passion, and excitement in the way that they work so much harder for their goals than the people who have been here for most or all of their lives. Like most Americans, you need to rekindle the spirit of your immigrant ancestors and become hungry for what you want. The entrepreneurial spirit that brought people to America has often faded over time; adopt the fire and work ethic of new immigrants in order to achieve your goals.
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I am little confused as to how you link juvenille attorney pranks to sophisticated career choices. It sounds like you were just baited in your fraternity to do stupid things instead of taking the high ground. It really seems like you were sort of an outcast in your fraternity and a target for humiliation. If that is true then I am more impressed with the person who just removed himself from a ridiculous set of people and circumstances. That sounds like the person “moved forward” rather than get distracted while you became part of the problem. It also sounds like your frat brothers didn’t like you very much. I thik that I read something like that a long time ago in your blog or on one of your web sites. If you were so disliked by your frat brothers whay did you decide to stay instaed of finding a better crowd. I also wonder what it says about acting out of fear of how people will think about you. Sorry, but what you wrote really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
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i’m still not sure how to get in touch with Mr. Harrison Barnes for him to revise (as necessary) my resume? Is there no direct email?
I’m still not sure whether Mr. Harrison is reachable via an email address so I may forward my resume to him for revisions (if necessary)?
You’ve the most impressive web-sites.
you need help
I think it is sad and disgusting to embrace the notion that being unwilling to associate with a group of people who would accept allowing someone to be urinated on makes you a loser. I think your hold premise is based on a classification system which is far too narrow. And I think your approach of classifying people as losers in any context is a poor way in which to counsel or motivate anyone. Does you being so menacing that you had to be told to stop pranking someone make you a winner? In my opinion your behavior was that of one who could have been classified as a loser.
Use the privilege you have of reaching thousands of people to impart positive motivational words. Stop calling people losers. By implication anyone who does not agree with you gets classified as such and that I do not agree with.
I respectfully disagree. I can see the perspective you had in fighting back, but I think this sort of hazing perpetuates negative and inappropriate behavior that detracts from the college experience and ultimately results in a loss for the university and people involved. I have seen fraternities bond by positive activities instead of the hazing that can lead to such destruction. I would not choose people that treated me that way, displayed such negativity or inappropriate behavior, or who pushed me into destruction. I would seek out and choose people that tried to help me develop my academic potential and participate in healthy activities.
Barnes Jewish Hospital had a research administrator who was territorial and who pushed everyone down in order to build herself up. I saw research coordinators who I knew were competent and who would go the extra mile by being available in off hours suddenly become anxious because the horrible research adminstrator was so negative towards them. I disagree with how they were treated because I think they had some real strengths that were not appreciated. I was able to achieve a lot with research before they hired the horrible research administrator. For the last two years this horrible research administrator has done nothing but try to make my life difficult, steal the value that I brought in, and to push me down. I could have achieved much more if they would have developed the competent research coordinators instead of destroying the relationships I had worked to build. I find the horrible research adminstrator repulsive and unattractive because she created a negative, punative environment. This ultimately resulted in a loss for the hospital of potential revenue because of the turnover and loss of my research progress. When the competent research coordinators were still there I was able to achieve a lot more because there was a positive, cooperative, and motivating environment. I was very dedicated when there was this positive environment, and disappointed when it was changed to a negative one.
Written by a male.
You may be moving long distance because you’re starting a new job, or perhaps there’s been a death in the family, or maybe you’re getting divorced and are moving away to start a fresh new life.