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Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to climb Mount Everest. On May 29, 1953, he scaled the highest mountain known to man, 29,000 feet straight up. He was knighted for his efforts. He even made American Express card commercials because of it! However, until you read his book, High Adventure, you don’t understand that Hillary had to grow into this success. You see, in 1952 he attempted to climb Mount Everest, but failed. A few weeks later, a group in England asked him to address its members. Hillary walked on stage to a thunderous applause. He then moved away from the microphone and walked to the edge of the platform. He made a fist and pointed at a picture of the mountain. He said in a loud voice, “Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I’ll beat you the next time because you’ve grown all you are going to grow… but I’m still growing!”
I first read this quote several years ago and it stuck with me. I am not sure who recorded it, or why, but the importance of this quote to my life, the lives of my employees, and to you, cannot be overemphasized.
I grew up in a small city outside Detroit to which I do not return often. A few years ago, I had to go back, and in my few days in the town, I visited gas stations, hardware stores, and other such places. Inside many of these businesses, I saw people I grew up with working at cash registers and doing other, similar tasks. Many of these people are the nicest people you will ever meet, and they are also extremely happy. What struck me about the people working these jobs was that many of them had been far more intelligent, far better socially, and far more talented in many respects than I ever was. These were people I knew could have become doctors, lawyers, or anything else they wanted to be-and they still could. However, what happened to many of these people is they stopped growing and stopped trying to be the best they could be in all respects.
Don’t you ever stop growing.
One of the most shocking things I saw when I visited home was a girl I had a serious crush on growing up. She used to be an athlete and someone who was very concerned about her appearance. She was someone who I remember as being so attractive and in demand that, from the time she was 14 years old, she was always dating men a couple of years older. What struck me when I returned home and saw her was that she had probably doubled her weight and looked like a completely different person. There is nothing wrong with being overweight; nevertheless, she was someone who at some point simply gave up on trying to look the best she could.
There is a positive side to this: she has the potential to be who she was before. There is nothing more exciting than having an opportunity to improve yourself.
You should never stop trying to be the best you can be. Each day is a new opportunity for learning. Your career and your life need to follow the path of constant growth. You want to get better and better at each thing you do.
One of the men I respect the most in the world is Al Gore. After he won/lost the election to George Bush, I (and many others) believed that he would simply fade into obscurity like most politicians do after leaving office. Al Gore was different, though. Several years later, it almost brought tears to my eyes when I saw him campaigning for his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. To me, this was a huge comment on his character because it showed he kept growing, even after losing. I imagine if George Bush had lost the election, he would have simply returned to Texas. Gore was different. He kept growing and did everything within his power to continue growing. And he is still growing.
This is the sort of person we need to be in our careers. We need to always looking for room to grow and get better at what we do. The more we grow, the more exciting our lives and careers continue to be. There’s nothing more exciting than always growing in your career.
Some of the hardest things for attorneys to do are get a job in a major law firm when they graduate from law school and make partner at a major law firm. It’s interesting to watch the race between attorneys trying to make partner. What generally happens is there are some attorneys who grow and others who do not. Attorneys who do not continue growing typically don’t get better at their jobs and eventually leave the practice of law. The ones who end up with the best firms and with the best jobs are almost always the attorneys who kept growing. This is how it’s with everything: the ones who never give up and never stop trying keep growing.
When you drive down the street, you will see tons of businesses that are products of continual growth and reinvention, whether they are restaurants or department stores. Many people and businesses are content with staying small and never learning what it takes to grow and improve. Other companies keep growing.
All around you are businesses and people who will refuse to grow. Some of these businesses and people may be better than you are right now. If, however, you are always seeking to improve, grow, and move forward, you will eventually wind up on top. Don’t settle for mediocrity. As businesses, we seek to grow and improve every day while many of our competitors rest on their laurels. Remember that past achievements are never enough because you can always do better.
A few years ago, I drove by an open house in a very expensive neighborhood. It was the most expensive house in that neighborhood. I didn’t go into the open house, but the house was so remarkable asked my realtor about it because I was selling a house at the time. My realtor told me it belonged to a couple who purchased this incredible mansion in their 90s. They had only lived in the mansion for one year before dying. Living in a house like that had always been their dream and, through years of saving, stock trading, and so forth, they had finally made enough money to afford the house.
That is an example of two people who refused to stop growing. Think about it: while many people in their early 70s were checking out and going to nursing homes–or dying–this couple kept growing and pursuing their dream. It’s an incredible story to me.
You, too, should never stop growing. You can learn ways to get better and better at your job. If you have certain weaknesses, you can learn how to strengthen yourself in these areas. You can also work to improve on your greatest strengths. This is one of the smartest things anyone can do. Just keep getting better and better at everything.
A couple of years ago, I went to see Anthony Robbins speak for five days. Prior to attending this conference, I was always kind of secretive regarding my profound interest in self improvement. I must admit, I love self improvement and have been pushing myself for as long as I can remember with one self improvement product or another. In school, if I became aware of a vitamin that would help me think better to get better grades I would take it! Today, if I hear about a good business book, I will generally do my best to read it. I have thousands of books on different subjects.
What I realized at the Anthony Robbins event was the majority of people there were among the most successful in society. There were surgeons, investment bankers, and numerous others who I didn’t expect to see there. I realized most of these people were like me and also interested in continually becoming better and better. They never stopped improving.
When I look around at the people I’ve known in the past who have been the best at anything, what I notice is that they, too, never stop improving. All they care about is ensuring they make their next performance much greater and more effective than the last one. This is not confined to Anthony Robbins’ conferences. It’s seen everywhere you find the most talented people.
The past is over. What you need to do now is focus on growing in the future and getting better and better. Do this and you will always come out on top.
THE LESSON
Never stop growing and trying to be the best person you can be. Realize every day is a new learning opportunity, and place your career on a path of constant growth. Progress and improve at everything you do. You can learn how to address your weaknesses, and build upon your strengths. Just keep improving at everything you do and you will inevitably find yourself on top.
Read More About Ask Your Superiors What They Think You Need to Improve at and Perfect It:
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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Tagged: career goals, job search, law job, legal job
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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.
In this article Harrison discusses how persistent pursuit of something you believe in, against all obstacles, is one of the most important keys to success. So many of us just decide at some point not to push through and not to keep going even when a little bit of extra effort would push us through. The secret to being incredibly good at everything is pushing through and getting better and better when others around you are quitting. Even while hiring, employers want experts and people who are the best at what they are doing–they do not want dabblers. They want to hire the person who is incredibly committed to a job and has persisted against odds in one direction when others have given up.
In this article Harrison suggests that you actually may be safer getting a job without the help of family or friends. It is exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. They may not even want to help you get a job for various reasons. Their involvement in your job search may actually hurt you. The organization may actually look upon you negatively if you try to use a friend or family member to get a job. So going through a close contact is often counterproductive to your job search. Even if you get a position through a friend or family member, you could harm your relationship with that person in the process. Your friend or family member’s act of kindness may ultimately unbalance your relationship. The risks involved in this kind of job far outweigh the potential rewards.
A powerful sense of self will make all the difference in your life. You must understand that your sense of yourself and your capabilities come from inside of you, not from the external forces that have brought you to your current place in life. What you feel internally might be completely different from what the world is telling you, and you must learn to focus on the former rather than the latter.
In this article, Harrison explains the importance of making an effort in your job which is way above what is expected of you. When you have been given certain responsibilities, it means that someone is dependent on you for certain things. When you fulfill these duties far more efficiently, put in a lot more time and effort, and even stay back on weekends and holidays to complete or do extra work, your employers get the message that you are sharing their burden of pressures with them and begin to place tremendous trust in you. This is what paves the path to your promotion and growth in the company. Harrison believes that you need to develop the correct attitude and possess an extraordinary work ethic to thrive in the job you do.
In this article Harrison discusses how resisting change and not taking necessary and relevant action can be the biggest obstacles to a better career and better life. Resistance is something that prevents most people from ever changing. Resisting change can be highly damaging to your growth in your career and life. Instead of allowing your life to be controlled by external circumstances, choose to take action and bring about a change. Conduct a brutal self analysis if needed, to clear the blocks you have in your mind and to bring about change that is necessary. Most people give up. They do not persist. You need strategies and beliefs that will allow you to persist and persevere, so that you can change. The best strategy is to be focused, and this focus will help you overcome the resistance you face whenever you make an effort to begin changing.
Adopting a positive attitude will always bring you closer to success, as nobody wants to be associated with a losing side. Everyone wants to associate with and hire winners, and avoids losers. Nothing is more important than maintaining a positive attitude, as many employers hire people based primarily on attitude; with the right attitude, everything else will fall into place. You must look like you are on the winning team, even if times are tough; nobody wants to hire a loser.
The past does not dictate the future, so you should not use inductive reasoning to make conclusions about your life or career. Recognize when you are making incorrect conclusions based on past events, and switch to deductive reasoning in which you are not limited by the past. You will find your conclusions to be much more accurate, and you will succeed as a result.
When I was an attorney, I stopped going out to lunch with other attorneys during the day. The reason was not that I was not hungry. Instead, I stopped going out to lunch because just about everyone I worked with would want to dedicate the lunch to a critique—whether it was critiquing our bosses, coworkers, or others. When these people were not being critiqued, the job itself was being critiqued. When the job was not being critiqued, the attorney’s home life was being critiqued.
In this article Harrison discusses the significance of conditioning yourself to develop behaviors that will elevate you in your life. One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is to get leverage over themselves and condition themselves to go in a new direction. Very few people are ever able to make very fundamental transformations in their lives and become someone completely new and completely improved—and stick with it. Major improvements in our lives come only when we condition ourselves over and over again in one direction. You need to get leverage over yourself and condition new habits and behaviors within yourself to make any sort of fundamental and lasting change. The conditioning needs to be part of your lifestyle. You need to condition yourself to adopt new patterns in your life.
Going after companies on an “explosive growth” trend is among the most interesting and beneficial things you can do in your job search, as many such companies will hire you even if they do not have openings. Similarly, you can get hired in booming industries and geographical areas even if there are no openings, simply by showing up. Apply to growing companies, even if they do not have open positions.
Two fundamental laws of the universe are that order leads to disorder, and disorder leads to order. Since disorder always leads to order, you must always view disorder as a positive rather than a negative; disorder in your life is an opportunity to reorganize your life and career into something better. Making both order and disorder work for you will enhance your chances of success in career and life.
Think about your ultimate purpose in life, and what you are currently doing to accomplish it. Everyone is gifted with unique talents, and a failure to identify and utilize yours would be tragic for your life and career. The greater purpose you identify in your life, the greater the obstacles you will face. If you persevere and push through these hurdles, you will find the rewards to also be correspondingly greater.
Your perceptions of the world determine your reactions, and your reactions in turn determine your destiny. External factors do not dictate your life and destiny so much as your response to them, which is usually dictates by your emotional state. You must challenge yourself to make the best use of disorder in your life, and use it as a basis to develop a superior kind of order.
Be the person you want to be; if you see yourself naturally going in a certain direction, then you must allow yourself to go that way. Be grateful for every little thing in your life, and you will position yourself to receive more good things. You must hold the correct mindset to achieve a successful life and career; “get your mind right”, look at the world differently, and get away from your established ways of doing things.
There are two kinds of people; value creators and value extractors. Your career success will largely depend on your skill at either of these two things. Value extractors prefer an environment where value is already being created, while value creators look for areas of maximum opportunity. While value extractors seek stable careers, value creators seek to build up organizations rather than work within them. You need to decide if you are a value creator or extractor, commit to one or the other, and never look back.
It is important to have high standards. For the most part, life will pay any price you ask of it. The people who achieve the most in the world have incredibly high standards. It is like this with businesses as well. A great piece of machinery, or a great service, is like this because of the standards that are followed.
Rely on facts and statistics rather than opinions; when you depend on mere opinions, you inevitably face disastrous consequences. You must understand the difference between facts and opinions, analyze both, and adopt the former while disregarding the latter to make productive decisions.
Your skills and abilities merit profound appreciation; you must therefore place yourself in an environment where you will be so appreciated, and not subject to the negative opinions of others. People tend to believe the negative information that they hear about themselves. A work situation where you are unappreciated will tax your two greatest assets, your self-worth and your sanity.
Salesmanship is one of the most important skills you can have in your job hunt. You can use personality as a means of standing out and selling yourself, making sure that it comes through in everything you are doing. By injecting personality into your job search, you will soon notice changes in your life and career. People with personality succeed in sales because they draw attention; employers want to hire people with personalities, and a good personality can be your best job hunting tool.
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thanks for that article.. gave me alot to think about
now all i need to do is.. FOCUS!
“[I]n the town I visited gas stations, hardware stores, and other such places. Inside many of these businesses I saw people I grew up with working at cash registers and doing other, similar tasks. Many of these people are the nicest people you will ever meet, and they are also extremely happy…These were people I knew could have become doctors, lawyers, or anything else they wanted to be-and they still could. However, what happened to many of these people is that they stopped growing and stopped trying to be the best they could be in all respects.”
Bad example. It’s better to be a happy sales clerk than an unhappy lawyer. If a man is called to be a street sweeper….
By reading your article I learn a lot about work, job, career and mission.It’s mean that everyone must know the difference between work, job, career and mission.Now I have a large sight of this words and its means.You show clearly the difference between work and job.I agree.A career is the more important thing that a man must have if he wants to succeed and to go far during his life.You say that I need to have a mission like you and you explain me that your mission is to get jobs for people all around the world.Yes I congratulate you, but you know quite well that this mission that you want me to have will not be easy to get by my person because realities are different from an area to another and my position is so hard to realize it.But after all hope is permissive and I can believe that it will be (perhaps) possible if opportunities come next at time.All I can say you is to thank you every day and to invite you to know that my real ambition is to do great things with you dear Sir Barnes for ever.I recognize that Sir Anthony Robbins is a great man and is also a reference for me like you.
Cordially
Tine
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thanks for the article