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One of the greatest causes of failure stems from people experiencing success in their careers. Whether it is being given a new title, a raise, a position of increased job security, or other success, people often suddenly decide they have earned the right to relax. Security and comfort are certainly desirable results and may be a significant part of achieving your goals. However, when you focus on your comfort or bask in your success, you stop growing.
Executives and others who relax or let their guard down may quickly get crushed. They usually end up losing their jobs, or their careers quickly fade into obscurity. When you find yourself in a position that allows you greater comfort and security, you have an outstanding opportunity for further growth. Use this opportunity wisely. People are put in positions of responsibility and given higher incomes because they have shown growth in their current position. You never want to stop growing.
I would like to explain to you a pattern I have seen within my own companies and also among people I have known and worked with in the past as a legal recruiter.
I have worked with many people who have gone to top schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. The talent you need to exhibit to get into schools like these is phenomenal. You need to be academically gifted and have a long history of very high-level achievements. You also need to show talent in areas other than academics. People who attend top-tier schools also have to work exceptionally hard to earn the academic marks and other honors needed to succeed once they are accepted.
What ends up happening to people who attend these elite schools is very interesting to me. A good many continue to work hard once accepted, while others think just because they were accepted, that’s good enough. The students who continue to work hard ultimately crush these students.
In the legal field, most attorneys in the top law firms worked hard in college and continued to work extremely hard in law school as well. Their hard work landed them in positions in prestigious law firms. The competition to get a job with a prestigious law firm is even more challenging than what one must face to get into a prestigious college or law school.
Once in these prestigious firms, many of the new attorneys are already exhausted from having worked so hard in law school and college. Many believe that, because of their past achievements, they can now rest on their laurels. These new attorneys then end up losing their jobs quickly, and many even leave the practice of law forever because of this experience.
My career advice is to never let your guard down. Whatever you have done in the past has only given you the right to compete in the playing field you are on now. No one cares about your past successes. If you do not perform your best, you will become expendable.
I have witnessed a very familiar pattern in the work world. People get a job based on their enthusiasm, past employment record, and other related factors. Once hired, they work extremely hard to earn praise and recognition. They are given increased responsibility at the company, more and more tasks, and people to supervise. As these workers earn more responsibility, the company traditionally watches them less closely. These people have two choices:
1. Step up their efforts and keep improving, or
2. Coast and let others do the work, keep things the same as they are, relax, buy new things, take more vacations, and take time off.
The latter is what probably 50 percent of people do once they reach a certain stage or accomplish a certain goal in their careers. In my career, I have seen far too many go this direction. What ends up happening when people coast is one of two things: one, the company fires them, or two, the company puts pressure on them to improve, and they simply decide to leave, believing their status does not merit this sort of treatment.
Is this you?
This happens because too many people get too comfortable. You always need to be on your toes with any job.
Look at the headlines in the paper each day, and you will see business tycoons in their 80s and 90s who are winning and losing fortunes. They are still working. You will read about other prominent individuals challenging themselves in different ways. Ted Turner became famous for racing sailboats all around the world. Richard Branson has become known for trying to set records in balloons. These are some of the most successful men in the world. They are not sitting on a beach relaxing. They are challenging themselves in every way they can. They challenge themselves in their work and outside of work.
I live in Malibu, California. Up and down the twenty-six miles of coastline are some of the most magnificent homes you can imagine, some right on the beach. Some of these houses sell for $50 million or more. Some of the richest and most famous people in the world live in Malibu.
What is so remarkable about these houses is the fact that most of them are empty almost every day of the year. People visit these houses but, mostly, the largest and most expensive of the houses do not have families in them year-round and their owners drop in only occasionally.
The owners rarely visit their multimillion-dollar houses, but not because the properties are insignificant to them. The reason these people don’t visit their houses is that they simply do not have the time. They are always working. They enjoy their houses for short periods of time and then they are back to work.
The most successful people do not allow themselves to slow down and get too comfortable. Using the old analogy of the world as a jungle, I leave you with this closing thought: animals, fish, and birds are always on the move. Whenever a lion is hunting, he looks for the weakest animal in the herd—the one that is not moving.
THE LESSON
The most successful people never slow down and do not allow themselves to get too comfortable. Everyone works to achieve their goals, but failure comes when they decline the amount of effort they put forth after having achieved these goals. When people get too comfortable, they cease to put in the additional effort to progress further and consequently fail. People who succeed in the long-term constantly seek challenges, make room for further growth, and show their ability to take up further responsibility.
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.
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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.
You need to provide people what they want, otherwise you will not have a job. Although they might not always be the most desirable kinds of jobs, certain jobs always exist because they provide services that people will always require. The only secret to continual employment is to provide a service that people always need; if you do this, and nothing else, you will always find yourself employed. Give people what they want.
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.
Determine whether you are a global or specific person. Most people are either too general or too specific in the way they treat information, and overly detail-oriented people risk losing sight of the bigger picture. General people are more comfortable in managerial positions, while detail-oriented people prefer everything to conform to a logical sequence. Understand which sort of person you are, and seek work that best harnesses your natural inclination.
In this article Harrison talks about releasing the lack that you feel, in order to reach your full potential. If a sense of lack dominates your thinking, it will affect your interaction with the world and how the world sees you. There are many areas of your life where you are coming from a position of lack. Your ability to release this lack and go forward with your life can create a tremendous sense of peace and more natural accomplishments in your world. The amount of lack that people see out there is profound and it has a massive impact on their lives. According to Harrison, the most successful people in the world see the world as a place of opportunity and not lack.
When faced with difficult times, you must develop the ability to transcend the trouble around you instead of giving up or assuming that nothing can be done about your situation. Keep your wits about you and take charge of the situation, and you will find yourself on track for constant improvement and career success.
It is extremely important that you enjoy your job. Most people find themselves in jobs that they resent, and eventually make this resentment known by appearing disinterested and distracted. Success comes from being engaged in and grateful for your work. You can define your job according to your own vision; you can either choose to engage with your work, or avoid and despise what you do. People recognize and appreciate those who are enthusiastic about their work.
Your résumé is an extremely important document. There are entire books written about how to craft them. I have written at least one myself. There are scores of résumé consultants, companies, and others that will work on your résumé for a fee. Hiring one of these services can be useful and can improve your résumé. Nevertheless, most résumés can improve dramatically by following the below advice.
In this article Harrison explains how you can do better in your career by selling. The most successful people are absolute masters at sales. Selling is among the most important career skills you can have. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune. Everything we do is about making a sale. Selling yourself is about showing others the value you can bring them. So package yourself to the best of your ability, always be at your best and sell yourself. Develop your sales skills and do not be afraid to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.
It is absolutely vital to be in control of your life and career. When you fail to control your life, someone else will step in to do so and fit your life into their plans. Understand that it is in others’ interests to establish control over your life and work, and instead exert control yourself over your life and the events around you.
Do not be a dabbler, or someone who turns away in the face of stress; the secret to long-term happiness is to instead confront and push through these stress factors. Do not be discouraged by difficulties, but find ways to persist and deal with the stress. Confronting problems head-on is the key to improvement, and will take you much further than the dabblers who fail to approach their careers with commitment.
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Dear Harrison Barnes.
Thanks for your INNOVATIVE view points on the futuristic topics like interpersonal communication……etc. If in case you would like to visit kerala in INDIA , then let us meet when I WOULD BE FREE FROM MY DAILY POSTINGS on the High court of Kerala, as I am practising as an advocate there. thanks. varghese.
Its realy good. I wish all the best.
Thanks for your INNOVATIVE view points on the futuristic topics like interpersonal communication……etc. If in case you would like to visit kerala in INDIA , then let us meet when I WOULD BE FREE FROM MY DAILY POSTINGS on the High court of Kerala, as I am practising as an advocate there. thanks. varghese.
It’s true that nothing succeeds like success but equally true is that nothing recedes like success if one becomes too comfortable with it. No doubt, one must enjoy his hard earned success but there should be no let up in the efforts to get more of it.
I agree with you sir.you are correct.Whenever a person gets enough responsibility he just has two roads to take one is the easy one and the other is the hard one.But sad to say most of them takes the easy one out and just tries “to get too comfortable” as you have just quoted
This article is very nice.It gives good career advice for job seekers.It mainly focus on dream jobs in the competitive world.
The article is not bad. I think it will encourage the job-seekers. There will be many ups and downs in life, but one should focus on his dreams.
Harrison Barnes Review is the unique job search advice engine in the world. This site is help people to find jobs. These sites are many job career advice are published. This website is creating employment opportunity to create their life beautiful.
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Feeling unconfident, uncomfortable, and dependent on how others perceive you is not a good place to be. It robs you of many precious moments. Always remember your own special beauty…it is who you are and the real value of what you have to offer. My very best wishes to you always!
Feeling unconfident, uncomfortable, and dependent on how others perceive you is not a good place to be. It robs you of many precious moments. Always remember your own special beauty…it is who you are and the real value of what you have to offer. You can get more from ….mordo-crosswords-solutionblogspotcom……… My very best wishes to you always!