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Over the past week I have been witnessing something extremely unusual in my backyard.
There is a crow outside, who appears to be ill – he’s not doing well at all. The crow appears to be infected with West Nile Virus. He wanders around appearing drunk, frequently falling over. He stands in one place most of the time. The interesting thing about this crow, however, is that all around him, there are a multitude of other crows cackling and cawing at him, almost as if they are supporting him – cheering him on. So many crows perched high up in the trees are making noise all day long, looking down upon him.
Anytime I go outside, the crows go crazy and warn their sick friend that I am around. They fly close to me overhead if I walk near the crow. My family and I have been doing what we can to help, offering him water and so forth. However, the crow appears to be too out of it even to drink water.
The crow spent his first several days wandering around the garden. More recently, he has taken up residence on some wooden steps. When humans are not around, groups of crows congregate around this particular crow keeping him company. All of the steps near the crow are completely covered in bird droppings.
Having never seen animals act like this, I am absolutely astonished by how supportive these other crows have been. Typically when an animal is dying, other surrounding animals leave it to die. However, here the crow has a huge audience of supporters cheering for him, hoping he will get better. These crows are really showing a ton of solidarity for this cause.
Most people do not want to be part of a losing situation. Being part of a losing situation makes us extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable, and it is something that we want to avoid altogether. In fact, this is almost a law of the world: Most people, animals, and others will do what they can to avoid a losing situation. That is what makes the situation with this crow so remarkable.
I spent a lot of time visiting relatives and others in hospitals growing up. Hospitals to me are about the most depressing places on earth. There are people who have lost their mind. Other people are writhing in pain. Some people are dying. The food is horrible. The surfaces are so hard, often cold. Most of the people are very impersonal. There is a lot not to like about hospitals.
I remember sitting in the hospital once with one of our old family friends when he had come to visit a very sick relative of ours. He was in his 40s at the time and had spent his life in a “hard charging” way having all sorts of adventures and mishaps. He drank a lot and used drugs. He had slept around a lot. He wore leather and rode around on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. He had inherited a lot of money and did not need to work.
But when we saw him that day, within a few moments of entering the hospital it appeared that everything had changed with him. I saw his entire face frown, his body slump, and he broke out into a sweat. I am not sure if it was that he was confronting his own mortality at the moment, or what it was. What I do know, however, was that the sight of the hospital made him physically ill. He excused himself and went to the bathroom where he must have thrown up.
We had walked through the corridors on the way to visit my relative, and the doors to all the individual patient rooms were open. Our friend had looked in each room and each room seemed to hold something that was more disheartening than the last. A man on a lung machine. Someone in another room who looked over 120 years old. Someone in another room who was bandaged from head to toe.
This friend visited my relative for only a few minutes, just enough time to turn down some warm apple juice that was offered to him by an orderly. This person had been close to our family, and specifically this relative, for his entire life. But after that hospital visit, he just dropped off the face of the earth. He did not even attend the funeral a few years later.
“I haven’t been in a hospital in 20 years!” I remember him exclaiming as we had walked through the automatic doors of the hospital entrance, with a smile still on his face.
But then, within a matter of moments, suddenly he was confronted with his own mortality, with losing, and with death. And he simply could not bear it.
None of us want to be associated with the losing side.
When I was growing up, my best friend lived with his grandmother, who had gotten multiple sclerosis at a young age, and eventually was confined to bed. When I used to visit my friend, his grandmother loved to sit and talk for hours on end. She was a nice woman and I would often sit and chat with her. However, I am ashamed to admit that sitting with her for long periods of time often made me uncomfortable. Looking back I think it was mostly because I was afraid of being sick myself. You might call me a horrible person, but I often feel uneasy when I am speaking with people who are sick and dying, because it reminds me that I too will not be around forever.
I also feel uncomfortable when spending time with people who are losing and doing horribly. For example, on the school playground when kids would pick each other for teammates, the children who are picked last are 99 out of 100 times not the most popular kids. The kids who are bad at sports also typically experience a spillover effect, wherein they also become unpopular with the other kids, due to their lack of athletic ability. The other kids do not want to associate with losers.
I think this is something in our genetic makeup, which helps us with survival. If we associate with people who are losing we are likely to lose as well. We want to stay on the side of the people who are winning. We know that being around winners is most likely to make us a winner as well.
If a man wants to attract the most desirable mate, he does not say to himself: “I am going to fail at everything I do, be unemployed, and lose at everything. I am also going to let my body go and get really depressed.”
No. Generally, the man will do what he can to better himself and be as attractive as possible, as powerful and happy as possible, and as wealthy as possible. The goal is to always be, or at least appear to be on the winning side. In order to impress a woman, a man does not walk up to her and start explaining what a loser he is, and how he fails at everything he tries. Instead, he does the opposite. When you hear about the most desirable people getting married they are generally not marrying the weak, down on their luck, and depressed people out there. They are pairing up with those who appear to be on the winning side.
Did someone ever recommend a bad doctor to you?
“Hey, this guy is horrible and he will really misdiagnose and mess you up. He’ll hack you up real bad. You gotta check him out.”
Of course no one has ever said this to you. Instead, the doctors you get recommended are usually people who are “the best in their field” and the top of this or that. Every time someone has recommended a doctor to me they have told me how the doctor won this or that award – i.e., the doctor is on the winning side.
In the practice of law, no one ever recommends attorneys to others with a recommendation like:
“You need to use this guy. He lost the case for me and has lost his last several cases. Almost all of his former clients are in jail!”
We simply do not receive these sorts of recommendations from people. Instead we hear about the attorney who wins all of his cases – the best in town.
If a sports team is losing and doing horribly, its attendance will sag and go down. Some will go to watch the games, but far fewer people want to go watch a losing team than a winning team. We want to associate with winners.
In school growing up, and out in the adult world, you never see a group of happy people standing around talking to someone who is depressed and complaining. Instead, the person they are attracted to is the one who is positive in nature, smiling, and excited about the world. This is the person who attracts friends and followers.
Advertisers do not hire as spokespeople the athletes who have lost more than they have won; they hire the people who win and are constantly exuding excitement about what they are doing.
And this brings me to you: Everyone wants to associate with winners and hire winners, and everyone runs like hell from losers. The smartest employers out there typically hire based on attitude. The best people I have hired in my life have not had the best educations, the best families, or even the best experience: They had the best attitude. A great attitude is the most important possible quality you can possess, and there is nothing more important to an employer.
With very limited exceptions, almost any skill can be taught on the job. You could learn to fly, and land a 747 airplane with 500 passengers on it in a week, with no previous flight experience if you needed to. A surgeon could teach you how to remove a gall bladder in a week. A lawyer could show you how to write a brief in a week or so. Almost every skill is teachable but the one thing that is not teachable is your attitude. A winning attitude is what people want to associate with, and it will attract others to you.
I remember several years ago after I had been practicing law for a few years, I went out on some interviews. In virtually every instance where I was less than 100% enthusiastic about practicing law, my previous job, and law firm experience in general, I did not get the job. All it took was me offering up a couple of things I did not like or that rubbed me the wrong way. By contrast, In virtually every instance where I was 100% enthusiastic about practicing law and working in a law firm, I got the job.
You see, law firms like people who they can associate with the word ‘positive.’
One of the strangest things about law firms is that if someone has been laid off from their previous position they have an extraordinarily difficult time getting hired by law firms of the same prestige level again. The reason? Because the next law firm who interviews them knows that the law firm did not lay everyone off and wonders why the law firm decided to lay this person off and not others. The implication becomes, almost immediately, that this particular person was not on the winning team. Law firms do not want to hire losers.
I have noticed throughout the years that when people have been fired from their previous job, or if they left a law firm under bad circumstances, they will almost never get hired by another law firm if they talk about this in the interview. Instead, the smart ones bat around the subject, or make it sound as if they did not do anything wrong, and they somehow make everything seem as if they are on the “winning side.” Then they end up getting the job. But a top firm will not hire a lawyer who dwells on the negative, even for an instant.
Neither would you. Smart employers simply do not want any sour grapes when they are interviewing people. Negative people will almost always bring that negativity with them and infect those around them. This is just how it works.
As someone in the working world, your attitude is crucial for your success because this is largely what employers buy. If employers buy bad attitudes then they are going to hurt their organization. If employers buy good attitudes then they are going to help their organization. The right attitude is crucial for success.
If you have a good attitude then everything will fall into place. You need to look like you are on the winning team and constantly show yourself to be a winner–even if times are tough. People do not want to hire losers or people with bad attitudes.
THE LESSON
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.
Read More About Why Your Attitude is Just as Important as the Quality of Your Work:
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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Filed Under : Featured, Staying Positive
Tagged: apply for a job, career advice, good attitudes, hire losers, job market, job search guru, job search guru | a harrison barnes, job seeker, lawfirm jobs, legal profession, legal recruiter, negative people, new job opportunities, potential employer, winning team
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In this article Harrison discusses the role of self-motivation and self management. Self-motivated and self managed people always perform well. In contrast people who are forced to follow massive amounts of procedures and rules can never perform. It is important that our rituals and sense of responsibility is internal, and something we learn to do naturally–not something we only do when it is imposed on us by people on the outside. The best people in every job are self- managed and responsible individuals. Also, the more self-managed people there are working for an organization, the stronger the organization generally is. Instead of creating problems in the workplace, you should seek out responsibilities, and ritualize your work routine. These responsibilities will drive you forward in your daily work, in your career, and in your life.
Your must always strive to create value for your organization, and your organization must in turn strive to add value to the world. Since value comes from teams of individuals rather than any single person, the best companies strive to maximize their staffs’ efficiency. You must also ensure that your company weeds out the employees who do not create value in favor of those who do, and that you belong to the latter group.
When you try to mask or suppress aspects of your personality, those traits will inevitably come to the fore anyway. You need to develop a comprehensive understanding of yourself, including your darker or deeply buried traits; once you know how your dark side limits and controls you, the better you will do in your life and career. Self-discovery will ultimately lead to inner peace, which in turn will enable you to more fully develop your goals.
The number one thing that makes people fail and not reach their potential is competition. If get into an area where there is not much competition and you genuinely have something to offer, you will succeed. Everyone is successful to the extent they are doing something others around them are not that provides value.
Creating a sense of urgency is one of the most important things you can do in your job search. Understand that your career is itself a commodity and you need to sell yourself, and your salesmanship will determine your career success. Creating a sense of urgency will always help you close your sale.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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That’s absolutely right. It seems u are an animal lover and care for them. Continue your work and may GOD bless you.
If you have a good attitude then everything will fall into place. You need to look like you are on the winning team and constantly show yourself to be a winner–even if times are tough. People do not want to hire losers or people with bad attitudes.
Very nice article. You definetly are a gifted writer, able to hold the reader’s interest. Article of interest also. Thank you and God Bless.
You obviously haven’t been in my situation or know what you are talking about. Employers do want losers. Why do you think its been 10 months and I don’t get a break? Because employers don’t want the best. They want losers. One example is a friend who couldn’t hold a job. Yet, he received a break at many places. Another coworker quit her job and was a felon. Yet, she received a break at multiple places. But do I get a break? I know more, can do more and am a much better worker then any of them. But I don’t even get a break to talk to anybody. Attitude doesn’t mean nothing when you can’t even talk to somebody to show it. There are those like me who can do a much better job then any of the others. Yet, the employers want losers who are late to work, quit and can’t do a good job. They don’t want the best like me. If everything fell into place then I would be doing something right now.
Very astute perspective on human nature. Having watched more people than I can count get jobs they were unqualified or minimally prepared for, I can look back now and see that it was their attitude that carried them into their new job. I can say this from watching a person with 6 months working next to me that had no training other than what I and others provided get a job that I tried for at another company while I had 20 years more experiance.
Dear Esq. Barnes:
I enjoyed reading your article, although I think some people enjoy watching co-workers fall flat on their face and it is certainly no fun to work in a hostile environment with no appreciation from the boss. I am writing this to mention how an attitude can certainly change from positive to negative in a matter of a few months. I also believe that it takes a new attitude and job change to refresh and gain a new prospective from a negative work setting. I can also relate to the school gym class, I was picked due to my athletic ability. To be picked last is the most degrading and humilating experience possible I hope that it’s not allowed in schools anymore.
Winning, like Charlie Sheen said. It’s true, no one wants to associate themselves on any scale with defeated people. All that comes from a mentality. It’s a mind thing, some control it and some can’t. Some are blatant with it while others try to hide it. I received with clarity the message about the crow. Check out the song by Marvin Gaye “sparrow” itll bring you to tears if you allow it to rest in your soul.
I spent a few years working in hospice/elderly care/dementia units. Spending time with people who were dying never made me feel uncomfortable or like I was on the losing side. I just knew, if that were me, I would want someone to make me comfortable when I go out of this world.
But after reading this article, I could understand why my friend didn’t want to work around people who were dying and traded it for the hospital. He said he liked seeing his patients get better.
This gives me a better idea of “why”. I never really understood his attitude before reading this article.
So I thank you for that.