Featured
View Count: 4271
Recently, I heard Tony Robbins state in a lecture that his mother had divorced four different men during the course of his childhood. After some time, his mother would divorce each man, claiming he wasn’t successful enough.
Imagine what sort of message this must have sent to Mr. Robbins as a young child. Much of our response to life is shaped by what we see happening around us, especially in those formative years. Based on what happens around us, we learn to interpret what’s required of us in order to be loved. We form beliefs about what will bring us pain and pleasure. We all want to be loved and to be valued, perceived as important by others. Out of this yearning, we do our best to behave so we will be accepted by the world.
Seeing his mother leave so many men due to their lack of success gave this person an incredible charge. He vowed to be the most successful person imaginable, and he made this goal a priority–more so than you can imagine. Studying success became a driving passion and this man did everything within his power to learn what it would take to become successful.
By the time he was 19 years old, Tony Robbins was traveling around the country, lecturing and giving seminars on how to be successful.
When he was in his mid-20s and lecturing virtually every day of the year about success, he wrote a bestselling book about how to be successful.
Before he was 30 years old, he was lecturing the leaders of different countries, CEOs of important corporations, celebrities, and others about how to be successful.
He became a coach to the most successful people of our time such as Bill Clinton and others. The story of Tony Robbins is inspiring because it shows how people’s reactions to situations can have an enormous impact on their direction in life.
I remember when I was in boarding school, a kid whose dad had gone to an elite Ivy League school. The kid enrolled in the boarding school at the same time I did. After his first semester, receiving some mediocre grades, the young man realized there was little chance he would ever get into an Ivy League university, what with one mere semester’s worth of bad grades. He was incredibly disappointed. At the moment he saw his marks, his destiny was taking shape. He had the option of trying harder in school and improving his grades, or the option of dropping out of the competition. The young man chose this latter option. Instead of trying, he started smoking pot, drinking, and goofing off. Within four or five months the young man was kicked out of boarding school. It took him six years to graduate from a public high school. A large part of his destiny was shaped by how he chose to react to his situation when he received a less than impressive report card.
I knew another guy when I was in college, who had been first in his high school class and had grown up in a small Midwestern town. He wanted to be a doctor. When he arrived at the University of Chicago he took the hardest chemistry class he could in his very first semester. After all, he was extremely intelligent and motivated. After a few weeks, he realized he couldn’t keep up with or really even understand what was going on in the class. He flunked altogether. From that point, he believed his hopes of being a doctor had been crushed. This person started partying every night, and eventually, he barely managed to graduate from college.
Our destinies are shaped by our responses to the situations we face day-to-day. Every single one of us is continually facing challenges in our lives. Some of these challenges are incredibly serious and others are minor and quite trivial. However, what is certain is that the results we achieve in our lives are directly affected by our responses in each situation. We can choose to respond in either a positive or a negative way. We can choose to be empowered by what happens to us–or destroyed by it.
You are always going to have problems. The myriad issues you face throughout your life aren’t going to magically disappear one day. Your strength comes from an ability to respond to these problems in an empowering way that can push you forward, rather than hold you back. Some of the issues you may face:
In fact, the number of negative things that could potentially happen to you is almost limitless. The world is constantly throwing you one challenge after another. Many times you simply can’t control what happens to you. What you can control, however, is your response to what happens. No one other than yourself can choose for you how to respond to your own situation.
One of the things that many people say after losing a job, or being in an industry that is undergoing incredible transformation, is that it’s very difficult to be happy when things are so uncertain. Many people, for example, believe their success and happiness is a direct result of their financial security, or lack thereof. We define happiness based on things that are occur outside of ourselves.
When you speak to people, however, and ask about the best moments in their lives, the response is almost always about moments like the birth of a child, a marriage, meeting someone special, spending time with loved ones, or taking a walk with someone close to them. These valued moments and happy memories don’t cost money, and are completely irrespective of one’s financial situation. As goes the old adage: The best things in life are truly free.
Some people choose to respond very powerfully to situations by becoming better and better, and expecting more from their lives.
Others choose to respond with incredible sadness and frustration, and they resign.
There are two worlds out there—the external and the internal world. The external world involves things like the health of the economy, the health of our company, accidents, and other twists of fate and circumstance that occur. We have some–but certainly nowhere near total–control over what happens in the external world.
However, we do have control over the internal world. The internal world is comprised of our own emotions, how we think and feel about those events that occur in the external world. It’s important we do everything within our power to control our internal worlds. We should guard our internal world and take care to use it for ourselves, and not against ourselves. This internal world is what matters most.
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, Life Lessons
Tagged: comprised of emotions, internal world, positive strength, the external world
Job Market
recent posts
Do not be distracted by your insecurities and doubts, or you will never achieve success because you will not allow it to happen. Focus only on the message about your skills and capabilities. Identify your goals and create a gameplan, and fill your mind with positive and hopeful messages that will drive you towards said goal.
In this article Harrison explains how you can ensure success in your career by externalizing your opponents. Your job is like a game; if you work hard, play by the rules of the company and are seen as part of the team you will be viewed as a valuable player for the company. The most significant part of any game is the presence of an opponent. Don’t look for an opponent among your co-workers. Never speak negatively of your team members. Instead, concentrate on the external opponents. External opponents bring you and the team closer as you work towards a common goal. In order for you and your company to succeed it is important to have an external opponent. Harrison advises people to consistently work hard and not participate in the politics. This is a sure way to score big in your career.
In this article Harrison discusses how people who stand for something always do better than those who do not. Companies who stand for something always do better than companies who do not. The most successful companies not only stand for something, but they are completely consistent with their core principles. This is what keeps them going and this is what makes them successful. One of the largest problems that people have in their careers is when they diverge from what they are good at. When you do not stand for something, you divert from your true strength. Everything begins to crumble and slowly fall apart when you are not doing something that you are really good at. The biggest success comes when you stand for something and are good at it.
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.
In this article Harrison discusses that the meaning you give to things will control the quality of your life. How we feel about ourselves is all due to what we tell ourselves certain things will mean. The meaning you give things is crucial for your career success. You need to choose meanings that make you stronger. You need to ensure you interpret things in a way that serves you and does not hurt you. You need to reach your full potential. Don’t classify yourself as someone who is not fit to succeed at the level at which you’re capable. You need to take charge of your mind to have the career and the life that you deserve.
In this article Harrison discusses the importance of ‘energy’ over technical skills. When people are hiring you they are purchasing your “energy” more than they are purchasing your technical skills. They are interested in your ability to influence the world around you through your energy. When you are marketing yourself and seeking a job, or working in a job, there are essentially two things you are marketing. You are marketing your technical skills, but more importantly you are marketing an intangible sort of energy. The most successful people have mastered the art of projecting positive energy. The better your energy, the more employable you will be and the farther you will go.
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.
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.
Related Posts:
Harrison Barnes:
Getting Ahead:
The Role of Jobs in Today's World:
Career Advice:
© 2025 Harrisonbarnes All Rights Reserved
Thank you for this inspiring article, Mr. Barnes. My challenge is how to keep remembering this distinction. Sometimes, I can re-arrange my thinking quickly to get perspective. Sometimes, I’m stuck for days.
Do you have any particular ways that you “practice” to keep on track? I’ve noted that you meditate every day. Is that a key component? What else would you recommend?
Yes, the ability to stay mentally strong under the most challenging events, job loss, death of a loved one, illness and lack of financial resources is a wonderful attribute to help create positive results. Not quitting but thinking out of the box and having the mind set to to find a way to overcome the most horrendous situation can prove to be beneficial to one’s life in the short and long term.
The power of the mind has been proven to overcome illness. The individual must draw upon their most inner strength and avoid emotional weakness or sympathy for oneself and look for solutions to make each event a learning experience to gain wholeness. Some people struggle through life, while others cruise through life. No matter, when faced with problems the best approach is to identify the problem and create a solution.
Hello, Neat post. There’s an issue together with your site in web explorer, could check this? IE still is the marketplace leader and a good portion of other people will omit your fantastic writing because of this problem.
It is truly a great and helpful piece of information.
I am satisfied that you simply shared this useful information with us.
Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
very powerful message and an interesting article. Thanks.