Featured
View Count: 3001
There is a famous story that comes from Buddhism, about a mother who loses her child. The Buddha was known not only as an enlightened individual but also as someone with the ability to bring the dead back to life.
One day a woman approaches the Buddha, begging that he bring back her child from the dead. “I hear you are compassionate,” she says. “Please bring my child back to life.”
Seeing the woman’s despair, the Buddha says, “Please go and find me a mustard seed from a household where no one has died; then I will bring your child back from the dead.”
The mother begins going from door to door in her village, but she cannot find a single residence where no one has died. She leaves town to continue her search.
Although empty handed, the woman is no longer discouraged upon her return to the village. She realizes that the loss she has experienced in her son’s death is something that is common to all people, and that she was being selfish in her grief, expecting that she should not have to experience death and loss, as every other household had experienced. By means of the mustard seed, the Buddha taught the woman that all people suffer death and loss. This resulted in a shift of perception that ultimately gave the mother great peace, and helped free her from an ego-centered emotion.
A similar and important lesson comes from the Bible: A woman who had committed adultery was brought before Jesus, and Jesus was asked his opinion about stoning her. His response was: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
The stories of the Buddha and of Jesus both represent the importance of a shift in perception. Our perception of the world before us determines our reaction, and our reaction determines our destiny.
What is your destiny? Destiny is mapped out by your response to life’s challenges. How do you respond to the challenges in your life?
As you respond to the challenges in your life, you are creating your future. To any given challenge, you will respond differently from the next person. External factors do not determine your peace and destiny as much as your response to external factors. Because your destiny is determined by your response to the world around you, you must be conscientious as you encounter various conditions and circumstances in your life.
Your response is usually dictated by your emotional state. This is why working toward personal growth and continual improvement is a must. The more you are able to grow and improve, the more appropriate and beneficial your responses will become over time.
A child begins crying madly when his mother leaves the house, afraid that he may never see his mother again. As the child ages, he comes to realize that the parent will always return; therefore the child no longer reacts this way each time his mother leaves the house. The child begins growing emotionally, so he responds in more appropriate ways to the conditions he encounters in the world.
Some people do not grow, and simply continue reacting to conditions inappropriately again and again throughout their lives. I know, as I am sure you know as well, many adults who are stuck, and who appear not to grow anymore, emotionally or otherwise. Their immature reactions and lack of interest in growing and evolving are consistently holding them back in their lives.
If you are repeatedly responding in a particular way to a given situation, it means you have conditioned yourself to respond this way again and again. The process of personal growth and transformation is about growing out of these reactions by shifting your perceptions to see more possibility and opportunity in the situations you encounter. You learn not to resist these situations, rather to accept and understand them, while mustering appropriate reactions.
We often fail ourselves as a result of not asking the right questions. The question we most commonly ask ourselves when confronted with undesirable external conditions is “Why?” As in “Why is this happening to me?” Asking ‘why’ is not necessarily the most intelligent response to undesirable external conditions. If we instead ask, “What can I do?” we would create a different emotion within ourselves, and therefore a different outcome to our situation.
For example, if you are standing on a street corner and suddenly a bullet comes out of nowhere and strikes you in the leg, you will most likely ask the following questions:
This is how most people react to pain. However, the question that is most likely to lead you out of the pain you are experiencing would be “What can I do to free myself of this pain?” Nevertheless, most of us do not ask this question because we are not paying enough attention to the emotional state that we are in.
The next time you are in pain, you will see that you are asking questions like “Why did this happen?” and “Who did this to me?” Instead, ask, “What can I do to be free of the pain?”
Our pain comes from a lack of understanding of the governing principles of our lives, and when we ask ourselves the wrong questions. When we fail to understand the principles that govern our lives, we become upset, we blame, we become judgmental, we ask the wrong questions, and we come to erroneous conclusions. Every time a similar event happens, or we fail to achieve the desired outcome, we start to think that we are cursed, or that life is a conspiracy against us. There are many universal laws in operation at all times. A lack of understanding of these laws causes many wrong beliefs and causes us to make harmful mistakes in our lives.
One of the strongest governing principles is the law of order and disorder. We all go through ups and downs. For example, one day life will be perfect for us and the next day it will not be: All of a sudden something horrible may happen. It could be a disease, a relationship problem, or the loss of a job. Regardless of our place in the world and how happy we may be today, tomorrow something horrible could happen and everything could change for the worse.
Impermanence is the nature of life and the universe. Some day even the sun will burn out and die. Eventually, everything necessarily comes to an end. The laws that apply to the macro also apply to the micro: Just as the sun will die, so too will we, our family, political parties, religions, nations, and civilizations.
We can strive to have perfect lives but the “perfection” we experience will generally last only for a short time. We can strive through exercise and diet to have perfect health, but we will eventually lose our health and vitality. Life constantly oscillates between order and disorder–and the disorder part of the equation is inevitable–no matter what we may do to fight it. Disorder is a universal law, no different from gravity; trying to prevent or delay disorder, death, and so forth is futile. We must accept this fact.
You will eventually lose your job or be unable to work.
You will eventually get sick.
While it is a great challenge, accepting disorder can put us in a place of great potential. Disorder can be compared to a frog. After a frog leaps, while it is airborne, it cannot change direction. However, when the frog lands, it has a choice of choosing which direction it is going to go next. This next step, choosing where to go next, represents our reaction to disorder. How we react is a crucial choice we have to make.
When there is political disorder, we know that there will eventually be a new order. The order that comes out of a political revolution could be communism, for example. Or, the order could be martial law, or it could be democracy. What is the correct order? The state of disorder creates the opportunity for the group of people to reorganize under a different sort of order.
Our perceptions, emotional state, ability to solve problem, and so forth when we are confronted with disorder is what determines our outcome. For example, if you lose your job, you will be confronted with extreme disorder. How will you react to this?
Out of the disorder you are experiencing when losing a job, you will be faced with the challenge of reacting in either a positive or a negative way. Your ability to grow and your response to disorder will determine the quality of your life and will shape your reality. Your future is a set of possibilities that is related to the choices you make.
Disorder is a place of great potential. Your challenge is to make the best use of disorder, in order to create a superior order therefrom. Once you have mastered this, the life and career you desire can begin to take shape.
THE LESSON
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.
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, Finding a Job, The Role of Jobs in Today’s World
Tagged: career advice, career advice | a harrison barnes, external factors, how to find a job, job market, job search, job seeker, legal recruiter, new job opportunities, potential employer, self improvement, the buddha
Job Market
recent posts
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.
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.
Related Posts:
Harrison Barnes:
Getting Ahead:
The Role of Jobs in Today's World:
Career Advice:
© 2025 Harrisonbarnes All Rights Reserved
Tools like personality and behavioral assessments, skill building techniques, and self-reflective exercises, and lots of self development trainings will empower people to develop both professionally and personally. This is the smartest thing to do in managing any business.
Ready to start selling for you again!!
Matt Winger
Martin Luther King is purported to have said that the “questions we ask shape our destiny”. Very profound. It is common for most of us when experiencing events that we think will jeopardize our wellbeing (like losing a job) to feel the fear of what this loss will mean to ourselves and the people that depend on us. I don’t think this is an unusual human reaction. I do believe, however, that these feelings must be acknowledged and dealt with before we can move on to asking ourselves what to do about it. By acknowledging and examining the feelings that came from our upsetedness, enables us to take a step back and to begin to think differently about the situation we find outselves in and to begin to ask: What am I actually fearful of? Will what I am fearful of be an inevitable consequence? Am I the only one going through this? Then the next step of constructing a question or questions to pose to someone else, will be much easier. By inwardly questioning ourselves leads us to formulate a question or questions to ask of others. The relief from realizing that it is ok for feel vulnerable and afraid, that what you might feel is inevitable may not indeed be so, that you cannot be the only one who has gone through this before, and that no one person has all the answers, will help put you in the frame of mind to be hopeful so that you will find the right person, people (or essay like this) to help you to think differently about the situation(s)in which find yourself in. Reading your article has helped me do just that. Thank you.
Harrison,
What the hell is up. How are things going? I’m ready to start selling for you again!!
Matt Winger
814-528-1141
mwwstinger@hotmail.com