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Lately I have been coming across a lot of Indian gurus. In fact, a few months ago, I had one speak at my house. I also happen to live directly next door to a house owned by a well-known Indian guru. Several times a week this guru’s followers come by and maintain his yard and do all sorts of work around the property. In addition, I see these white-robed Indian gurus walking around my community of Malibu, California, regularly. Just a few days ago my wife saw the actor Owen Wilson walking around with one of them. These Indian gurus have been in favor for a long time. Even the Beatles had one, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The Indian guru may be viewed as somewhat exotic in the United States, but in reality most of us have our own gurus. In small and large towns across America each week people gather and listen to priests, rabbis, and pastors talk, and people seek them out for counsel. Other people visit psychologists, coaches, psychiatrists, yoga teachers, self-help practitioners, motivational speakers, and the like. Or people study various disciplines in an attempt to get guidance. Some people look up to and worship those who are rich and famous.
I have no idea why this is, but most people seem to have been born with the sense that they are somehow incomplete. Whether it is through religion, bodies of knowledge, or gurus–most people are generally seeking some answers about the state of their spirit, psyche and place in the world, and are in search of something that will “complete” them.
One of the most common messages of all religions is that we are living in this world without any understanding what is real. We see the world in many ways; however, religion often tells us that what we are seeing is not actually reality at all. Reality is found within ourselves: we do not see this reality because we are confusing the world–its sights, sounds and other indicators as being reality. Reality is actually far different from what we can see, hear and touch. It is more peaceful, happy and meaningful. In Sanskrit there is even a word for the confusing but untrue nature of the world we are experiencing, ‘maya’, which means illusion. The idea is that most people are experiencing the world as an illusion–not for what it really is.
Legions of religions, academic and nonacademic bodies of knowledge, gurus and people have drawn us to the idea that they can help us “see through” the illusion of reality created by our senses, so we can understand what the true nature of reality. The presumed promise of seeing through the “maya” is and always has been something akin to attaining peace, love and understanding. There are many ways that religions, gurus, and various bodies of knowledge go about leading man to this state:
First, there is the relatively uncommon practice (to Westerners especially) of seeking knowledge within, without any outside help: Buddhists believe that each person has the capacity to see this truth by taking the time to meditate and examine his or her mind each day, and also by learning and understanding the teachings of the Buddha. The idea of Buddhism is that everyone can see the truth if they work at their own minds. Buddhists do not require money from their followers, or any formal allegiance to a particular leader or body of knowledge. They simply require that people “look within”. The problem with “looking within” is that it can take years of meditation and a great deal of solitary work. This is the sort of work that Buddhist monks are doing in monasteries. The “breakthrough” has to come from the work of the individual, and cannot by obtained by receiving the blessing of another, for example.
The term that Buddhists use for this breakthrough is reaching “nirvana”–the goal of all Buddhists. Nirvana is believed to be freedom from the ego (i.e., an “individual-centered” existence) and freedom from mental suffering. When someone reaches nirvana, Buddhists also believe that he or she is enlightened, and is freed from greed, anger, hate and other similar negative emotions. While nirvana can be explained, to be truly understood it must be experienced. This Buddhist idea is the most rarely experienced form of truth seeking. It is not at the sort of truth seeking that most people are comfortable with, because it relies on us exclusively and does not require that we do much other than look within ourselves.
Some people that I know, who have practiced Buddhism, have voiced the complaint that it is too much work. For example, I have a relative who used to go to a Japanese monastery and spend months there at a time. The entire time no speech was allowed in the monastery; people were simply not allowed to talk to one another. The reason for this was that the monastery and its monks believed that people needed to be looking within, not distracting themselves by seeking approval, knowledge and reassurance from others.
The other, more common methods used by people to connect with this higher understanding of reality are through other people, bodies of knowledge, or even altered states of consciousness, as achieved through drug use. Most religions and disciplines require that you give your allegiance to a body of knowledge, leader, guru, or a church. You are usually required to give money and other things in order to find this sense of “grace”.
All of these are methods of gaining this understanding, or a sense of grace, through someone or something outside of you. For example, Christians are urged to surrender themselves to Jesus Christ. Other religions require that you give a percentage of your income to find grace. Still other religions require that you follow certain diets. This, in my opinion, is where it gets interesting because, in all of these examples, people look beyond their ability to achieve enlightenment through themselves; instead, they rely upon others, who are all too eager to dispense advice and bring people this “peace” that they seek.
I do not think there is anything wrong with following religion, gurus, and so forth. What I do know is that no one can agree on what the right answers are, and if you are to believe most religions and bodies of knowledge, according to them, they are right and all other bodies of knowledge are wrong. There are so many religions, so many gurus and so many ways that people go about finding inner knowledge and peace that it would probably be impossible to even come up with a comprehensive list. There are probably tens of thousands of methods that people use to find this knowledge and peace. It seems to be never ending.
In order to experience the greatest level of success in your career and life, I believe that there is no approach that is the correct one for finding this “knowledge” of what will make you happy. If you hitch your wagon to the right religion, then you may, in fact, find a great deal of happiness. Or, if you “look within” effectively enough and are self-reliant enough, you may also find happiness.
The difference between the two approaches is that one is self-reliant and the other depends on others in order to find peace. The question is whether you can find what you are looking for alone, or whether you should surrender and follow another. This is one of the more fundamental struggles in our lives and careers, and it is something that virtually everyone goes through.
An alternative to both of these methods is deciding that everything (including yourself) is “ok the way it is”, and just going about your business, being focused on your goals. This method allows you not to be distracted by looking within, or following another. This method allows you to accept everything the way it is. However, most people are constantly looking for answers and change. What would happen if you stopped looking for answers and change? What would happen if you just relied upon yourself and upon what matters to you right now? What would happen if you allowed yourself to not be restless?
Most people spend a great deal of time being restless instead focused. They put their hopes and dreams for happiness on people, religions and things that are outside of themselves. Others isolate themselves under the belief that isolation will help them find something magical within themselves. But what if you stopped searching, and what if you just went through life accepting things the way they are?
In order to do your best work it is important that you always keep your mind focused. You need to focus on the here and now, and to believe that you can achieve the things you set out to do. You need to believe you are already complete. You need to realize that you can accomplish things on your own, and that you do not necessarily need to rely on other people, or some big change within yourself. You should accept things the way they are. You do not necessarily need a new reality.
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, Getting Ahead, Life Lessons
Tagged: career advices, focused on goal, job search guru | a harrison barnes, new reality
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The ability to fit into your work environment is among the most important parts of obtaining and retaining a job, even more so than your skill level. Fitting in means nothing more than being comfortable in one’s work environment, and making others similarly comfortable. Employers want to hire people who will embrace their approach to business and the world on physical and moral levels, so you must strive to fit in with their worldview.
Focus on what you are doing, not what others around you are doing. There are people to take action towards their goals, and then there people who sit on the sidelines and comment on the first group of people. People who are mostly interested in gossip and watching others usually lack the confidence and determination to take action themselves. The most successful people go account and accomplish things rather than sit back and watch others make things happen.
In this article, Harrison advises you to live the lives you wish to have, do the jobs you want to do, and basically live your dreams to your best possible ability. Life is fleeting and no one knows what tomorrow holds. So Harrison puts forward certain questions – when are you going to start living the life you want and when are you going to take charge of your life. The time to have the career you want is right now, not tomorrow, and not later. You need to take charge of your career and life and no one else is going to do it for you. Your entire life and the quality of it is a product of your decisions. You can have, do, or be anything you want. Do not create alibis for making comprises in life. What separates the best and the happiest people is the ability to stop to making excuses and Harrison wants you to be this person.
Anyone can be up when things are going well, but the real challenge comes when things are not. Do not look at problems, which are inevitable for any person or business, in a negative light; think of them instead as challenges, lessons, or opportunities. There is a silver lining to be found in every problem, and finding that silver lining will enable you to grow.
Understanding what you do for a living is very important for your career. You should understand the generality of your specific profession. You and your career are a product. You need to know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to be relevant and understand the skills you are offering. Being a relevant product is essential for your success. It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve. Being relevant is more than just getting a job. Being relevant also relates to serving the employers with the skills they need. You need to understand your market and what your customers want. This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.
Things will not always go the way that you want them to go, so you must not be discouraged by adversity in your job hunt. When you persist and consistently put forth your best effort, things are much more likely to go in your favor. Also, you must resist others’ efforts to undermine your efforts and potential; focus instead on doing everything in your power to fight on and complete the task at hand.
Having a goal or vision will propel you towards greater career success and happiness. Without a purpose, you will find yourself depressed and ultimately fail to achieve your goals. Do not subscribe to the unrealistic problem that you should never have problems, but instead regard problems as part of your overall growth strategy.
Don’t ever give up, and make the most of the tools at your disposal. Take chances and invest in your best skills, and persist in the face of unfortunate events. Have faith in your considerable work and capabilities, and use them to create value for others.
In this article Harrison discusses what a good hiring manager should look for. Many people who make hiring decisions really do not know what they are doing. In fact, they often make mistakes when hiring. They put too much emphasis on skills and experience. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, he/she will bring down the morale of the other workers. The person will harm the company through the negative outlook. The key to success is having the power to stick it out in jobs and finding happiness wherever you are. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers.
To reach the goals to which you aspire, you must compare yourself with people superior to you for motivation. Most people prefer to look at life the way they wish it to be, rather than as it truly is. Move out of your comfort zones and face reality. Don’t seek out or compare yourself with the average people around you, as doing so will only mire you in mediocrity rather than push you forward.
You can better market yourself by taking a stand against something. Peoples’ personal beliefs, including the things with which they do not agree, define who they are as people. Standing against something differentiates you from the crowd; when done in the correct manner, without disrespecting others’ opinions, such a stance can help you land your dream job.
Maintaining a routine in both life and work is important to success. Not only do you need to establish a routine, you must make that routine demanding and push yourself to the limit. Budget a certain amount of time each week for networking, applying to jobs, brushing up your interview skills, and following up with employers. Such consistent effort on a daily basis will make a huge difference to your career success.
A recommendation from a powerful person can make a huge difference in your job search; a reference from an influential person makes a tremendous difference to a prospective employer, and thus can be a major advantage for you. When an important person whom the company trusts recommends you, you instantly qualify for positions that may previously have been unattainable. Make the absolute most of your connections with the powerful people in your life, because doing so can instantaneously change your career and life.
You must plant seeds in the minds of others, so that they will be more likely than otherwise to think of you when a future need arises. In planting seeds, you are making people aware of what you have to offer; you must make sure that you are ever present in the minds of your potential employers. Planting seeds is the most effective way to generate top-of-mind awareness, and ensure that the right people remember you at the appropriate time.
Recent immigrants exemplify the benefits of willpower, passion, and excitement in the way that they work so much harder for their goals than the people who have been here for most or all of their lives. Like most Americans, you need to rekindle the spirit of your immigrant ancestors and become hungry for what you want. The entrepreneurial spirit that brought people to America has often faded over time; adopt the fire and work ethic of new immigrants in order to achieve your goals.
Determine whether you are a global or specific person. Most people are either too general or too specific in the way they treat information, and overly detail-oriented people risk losing sight of the bigger picture. General people are more comfortable in managerial positions, while detail-oriented people prefer everything to conform to a logical sequence. Understand which sort of person you are, and seek work that best harnesses your natural inclination.
In this article Harrison talks about releasing the lack that you feel, in order to reach your full potential. If a sense of lack dominates your thinking, it will affect your interaction with the world and how the world sees you. There are many areas of your life where you are coming from a position of lack. Your ability to release this lack and go forward with your life can create a tremendous sense of peace and more natural accomplishments in your world. The amount of lack that people see out there is profound and it has a massive impact on their lives. According to Harrison, the most successful people in the world see the world as a place of opportunity and not lack.
When faced with difficult times, you must develop the ability to transcend the trouble around you instead of giving up or assuming that nothing can be done about your situation. Keep your wits about you and take charge of the situation, and you will find yourself on track for constant improvement and career success.
It is extremely important that you enjoy your job. Most people find themselves in jobs that they resent, and eventually make this resentment known by appearing disinterested and distracted. Success comes from being engaged in and grateful for your work. You can define your job according to your own vision; you can either choose to engage with your work, or avoid and despise what you do. People recognize and appreciate those who are enthusiastic about their work.
Your résumé is an extremely important document. There are entire books written about how to craft them. I have written at least one myself. There are scores of résumé consultants, companies, and others that will work on your résumé for a fee. Hiring one of these services can be useful and can improve your résumé. Nevertheless, most résumés can improve dramatically by following the below advice.
In this article Harrison explains how you can do better in your career by selling. The most successful people are absolute masters at sales. Selling is among the most important career skills you can have. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune. Everything we do is about making a sale. Selling yourself is about showing others the value you can bring them. So package yourself to the best of your ability, always be at your best and sell yourself. Develop your sales skills and do not be afraid to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.
It is absolutely vital to be in control of your life and career. When you fail to control your life, someone else will step in to do so and fit your life into their plans. Understand that it is in others’ interests to establish control over your life and work, and instead exert control yourself over your life and the events around you.
Do not be a dabbler, or someone who turns away in the face of stress; the secret to long-term happiness is to instead confront and push through these stress factors. Do not be discouraged by difficulties, but find ways to persist and deal with the stress. Confronting problems head-on is the key to improvement, and will take you much further than the dabblers who fail to approach their careers with commitment.
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.
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Hello Mr. Barnes.
I discovered your great outlook on everyday personal and business philosophy on iTunes, starting with your classification of people by how they react inside one of your cars.
I admit I have a lot of work to do untangling some toxic work-related processes that have been piling up. I had a chance to help launch a 1500-website project (!) that has been gathering dust for the last three years because the owner, a former real estate agent and Ph.D, had been increasingly hard to work with because of intermediate to late stages of Lyme disease.
So in those last few years, I’ve been trying to find something of an equivalent, all the while working at the supermarket I started at in 1986, working my way back up out of a $2.75/hour pay cut. At the same time, I’ve been aiming (im)possibly high, trying to find something that offers the same prestige and importance that my website job had. I’ve had occasional success, helping build a website for an agricultural institute last year.
I do need to accept that my current reality is something I can improve on, instead of trying to market myself as someone who was once near the pinnacle of a seriously profitable career.
I will keep reading and listening more. I know something will improve if I just knock down a few more odd-shaped building blocks I’ve put up in my professional house. Thank you for all the thought and effort that you’ve put into your site and podcasts.
Christianity is not a theory. You must read the gospels to understand and grab hold of the basics. God alone is your justification. Reality is seeing the world as God sees it. This truth is difficult for man to accept so people often avert to unsound philosophies such as yours – typical California 1970s genre.
Reading this is a great start to a new day. Thanks!
Thank you for this incredibly insightful post. I believe that our personal and professional life should be integrated – along with the spiritual. I plan to use this wisdom in my life as well.