Staying Positive
Staying Positive Leave a Comment
View Count: 1402
When I was 10, I lost a fight that I did not realize I had lost. I went to a public school in Detroit where there were a lot of fights. Some of the fights were frightening to watch. People would hit each other with rocks and even baseball bats. Kids would often end up with broken bones and other serious injuries. Generally, these fights were about absolutely nothing.
One day, I was in a disagreement with a kid my age that as far as I knew, had never won a fight. He was not even really one of the kids who fought–because at the time he did not fight back. Someone would throw a punch (or even just a threat) his way and he would back down. This kid had been hit and intimidated so many times that he skulked around school and came and went to school out of back entrances to avoid other kids. He was a smallish guy for his age and was picked on quite a bit.
During our tiff, I tried kicking him and he managed to grab my leg and throw me to the ground. A second or two later, a teacher appeared and broke it up. I would have easily won the fight but did not have time to.
After this little fight, I noticed that the guy completely changed. He walked differently. He started smiling. He had won a fight in his eyes. I could tell that this little victory, as small as it was, meant a lot to him.
Over the next few weeks, an amazing transformation occurred. He got in a real fight a few days later and won. He fought back this time and hit his much larger opponent in the face, kicked him in the groin, and beat the kid up so badly that several other kids stepped in and pulled him off the other kid. I was not there at the time but heard about it.
Then he fought again and won.
Because he fought his fights in such a brutal way, other kids eventually became afraid to fight him–even much larger kids.
Despite his relatively small size, this kid’s social standing in our school changed completely. People began to respect him and he began to respect himself. He looked, walked, and acted differently. He changed from an outcast to someone who was considered part of the “in crowd,” and people wanted to be friends with him. He became a well-liked and social guy all throughout the rest of school. Girls liked him. He started participating in athletics. He became a decent student. In fact, he is a well-regarded scientist today. I never would have guessed that he would have achieved this result from his life when he was younger.
What brought about this incredible transformation? I think just one thing: He chose what he perceived to be a small victory (throwing me to the ground) and built on this. Building upon this one small victory helped him change his life.
There may be more to this guy’s transformation than a small victory, but I am pretty confident it was this moment that made the major difference. My school was a lot about fighting back then and you needed to be tough to stand out. This guy based his self-worth on his ability to fight back, and this one small victory completely changed the way he saw himself. He chose to focus on his success and build from there.
I’ve often heard people throw around the word “loser”–I’ve never used the word “loser” too much because it is too dangerous. “Loser” connotes someone who always loses and never wins. More than this, though, the word to me means someone who focuses mainly on their losses and not their wins. If you are going to have a life with any modicum of success, you need to be focused on your wins–no matter how small—and not your losses.
If you think about your losses, you will put your focus there and continually be losing. If you think about your wins, you will be empowered and find yourself looking at the world as a place where you win and not lose. This alone will change your life.
Unfortunately, there seems to be something almost instinctual about focusing on our losses. It’s a protective mechanism that keeps us from avoiding pain, but it also prevents us from recognizing our strengths. Because most people focus so much on their losses, their life and experience is mainly about losing.
Drive down the street in a bad neighborhood. Do you think the people you see sitting destitute on the side of the road are focused on their “wins”? Go into a dark bar at 10:00 a.m. Do you think the people sitting on those bar stools are focused on their wins? Call up someone you know who is unhappy and always complaining. Do you think that person is focused on his or her wins?
Nothing is more important for your life and career than focusing on your wins. If you do not focus on your wins, you will have nothing to build on. You absolutely must focus on your wins and not your losses. If you focus on your losses, then you are always going to be unhappy.
If you spend your time thinking about your losses you will be a loser.
Most people have a lot of experience losing, and I am sure you are no different:
In fact, if you look around, you will see that most people out there have experienced one loss after another. Most people have had so many losses it would take years if they tried to write them all down. If I were to list the failures I have had, they would take up pages and pages–and I am not sure that I would ever get to the end of the list. I am sure I failed at something yesterday, failed the day before, and the day before that. I will fail at stuff today that I do not even know I will fail at.
Everyone is constantly failing. It is what we do with those failures that makes all the difference.
There are, of course, people who have winning streaks. The world is fascinated when people experience periods where they are not losing.
Mike Tyson, one of the greatest boxers of all time, had never lost a fight until he was knocked out by Buster Douglas on February 11, 1990. Prior to this time, Tyson had won his first 19 professional fights by knockout (and 12 of these knockouts occurred in the first round).
I remember when Tyson was on his winning streak and the conversations men used to have about him. People just kept saying over and over again how he was “unbeatable,” spoke about his superhuman fighting ability, and more. The world is attracted to and fascinated by people who do not lose. When Tyson was winning, the world was completely fascinated by him and he had a cultlike status because of his winning.
During Tyson’s winning streak, he was on a Barbara Walters special with his wife, Robin Givens. At the time it seemed to everyone that he could do no wrong. In the interview, Givens spoke negatively about Tyson and the sort of husband that he was. Tyson was shown in a negative light and the television interview became something that was repeated constantly over the years because it was the first time the public ever saw Tyson portrayed as anything other than an absolute immortal. Suddenly, all the wins, fame, and fortune seemed inconsequential for a man whose own wife said his life was out of control.
A short time later Tyson was divorced. Then he lost a fight. From there, things continued to get worse and worse for Tyson and more stories came out about his troubles. Soon Tyson was in prison on rape charges.
Several weeks ago I was watching 60 Minutes. One of the stories was about an undefeated racehorse, Zenyatta, and how the horse could not be beaten. Interviews with the horse’s owners, jockey, and others seemingly confirmed the horse had incredible abilities and could not be defeated. Watching the story I was reminded that the horse and its record were similar to what people were saying about Mike Tyson when he too was having a winning streak.
The week after the 60 Minutes story ran, Zenyatta lost her first race–just like Mike Tyson eventually lost. Prior to Tyson there was the boxer Muhammad Ali’s winning streak (he lost to Leon Spinks in 1978). Horses, boxers, everyone eventually loses.
The greatest athletes, businesspeople, and others eventually lose. Everyone loses. It is just a fact of life. Everyone loses. It is what you do with that loss that matters.
Several years ago, I was in Turkey and there was a young Greek man in his 20s who had become legendary for sleeping with so many women. In fact, the man ended up becoming internationally known and I even read an article about his Casanova abilities in an American magazine more than ten years later. The article I read said the guy had slept with something like 5,000 women by then.
I was staying in a hotel in Turkey where said Casanova worked as a bartender. One day this guy sat down with me and several other guys my age in the bar and had a coffee. The guy had slept with two women the previous day and had been doing the same thing for weeks.
I was fascinated by this guy and his success with the opposite sex and later that day I saw him sitting in a square having lunch alone. I sat down with him and started talking with him about nothing in particular. Then we took about a half mile walk back to the hotel where he lived and I was staying. What should have been a twenty-five minute walk took over two hours.
To my astonishment, he stopped and spoke with just about every mildly attractive female tourist around our age on the walk back. He told them he wanted to play his guitar for them and sing. He told them they were beautiful and he wanted to buy them flowers. The thing about this guy was that he was not particularly attractive. Most of the girls acted flattered by his attention but quickly brushed him off since he was a stranger they had never met. Even some of the girls he had spoken to the day before brushed him off again. A few of the girls were very rude to him and even insulted him –one called him “a midget” from what I remember (he was not all that tall).
In fact, I would estimate that the out of the twenty-plus girls he spoke with, only two or three were even mildly receptive to him. He set a time to meet with one of the girls “to look at the stars” (he was very romantic sounding) after his shift at the bar ended at midnight that night. Another girl he suggested meet him for dinner that evening, and he told her he was going to pick her up with flowers at his hotel.
I did not spend a lot of time getting to know this guy, but I learned a great deal. He looked for success and when failure came, he did not care at all. I had never witnessed one man take so much rejection from women in so little time. This guy did–and in the process he ended up becoming a legendary and internationally famous Casanova. He was famous for his successes and not his failure. He succeeded more than any other man I have ever heard of with the opposite sex.
Have you experienced failure? I have. There are failed relationships, failed business ventures, failed decisions, failed investments, failed philosophies … just one long list of failures. In fact, if I were to concentrate my efforts on thinking about my failures constantly, I am not really sure what my life would be like. I probably would be depressed most of the time, resentful about the world, afraid to take action, and paralyzed, angry, fearful, self-depreciating, and more.
I would focus on my weaknesses and this would help me continually feel bad about myself. I would look at the world and the people in it in a way that would continually reinforce my negative beliefs.
If this sounds crazy–it is. Nevertheless, this is how most people choose to look at the world. They put their focus on their failures and not their successes. Compare this to our heroes: When people are winning and continually winning, their focus is on their successes. They build up their confidence and see the world in terms of their success and not failure. When Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali were on their winning streaks, they believed that failure was impossible.
Once they saw failure was possible, though, they started to look at the world much differently I think, and things changed for them. You need to continue thinking about your successes and not your failures.
Being a winner and not a loser is easy. Stay focused on your successes—no matter how small—and do not focus on your losses at all. Forget about your losses and concentrate on what is going right and what you are doing right. Think about this and build upon the things you are doing best.
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 : Staying Positive
Tagged: apply for a job, career advice, financial losses, job search, job search guru | a harrison barnes, job search industry, legal jobs, legal profession, lot of fights, physical losses, protective mechanism
Job Market
recent posts
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.
Related Posts:
Harrison Barnes:
Getting Ahead:
The Role of Jobs in Today's World:
Career Advice:
© 2025 Harrisonbarnes All Rights Reserved
Speak Your Mind
Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
You must be logged in to post a comment.