Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States.  He was a small government Republican.  Comments on his presidency are eerily similar to what is being played out in US politics today.    Many historians look favorably on the reduction of the size of government programs during his presidency.  Others feel that the federal government under Coolidge should have been more involved in regulating and controlling the economy, and are not so quick to heap praise on his administration.

Coolidge was known as “Silent Cal” as he was a man of few words.  But when he did speak, he came up with some gems.  One of my very favorite life and career success quotes comes from Silent Cal Coolidge…

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

I was skimming through Napoleon Hill’s classic book Think and Grow Rich the other day when I came upon his thoughts on persistence.  They reflect President Coolidge’s…

“One of the main causes of failure is a lack of persistence.  You may overcome this weakness through effort and intensity of desire.  Will power is the basis of persistence; increasing your will or desire will help to strengthen your persistence…Persistence is not reliant on education or intelligence, and requires only a little bit of time and effort.  There are four simple, but necessary, steps that will lead to the practice of persistence:  1) a stated purpose, backed by burning desire, 2) a definite plan, expressed in continuous action, 3) a mind closed against criticism and discouragement, and 4) a friendly alliance with at least one person who will encourage you to follow through with your plans.  Persistence should become a habit.”

I really like Dr. Hill’s third and fourth points.  Tweet 49 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Surround yourself with positive people.  Hold them close.  They will give you energy and help you create the career success you deserve.”  Tweet 50 says, “Jettison the negative people in your life. They are energy black holes.  They will such you dry; but only if you let them.”

Persistent people, successful people, surround themselves with positive people – people who are both positive by nature, and positive about their life and career success.  Positive people are optimistic; and optimism is the first step in building your self-confidence and life and career success.

As Napoleon Hill points out, positive people help you feel good about yourself and become more persistent, because they feel good about themselves – and life in general.  They help you build your self-esteem because they have a strong sense of self-esteem.  Positive people are there when you begin to doubt yourself or when you want to give up.  They are not threatened by you or your success.  They realize that self-esteem is not a fixed pie.  There is an unlimited amount of it to go around, so positive people are always giving it away.  You can build your self-confidence and jumpstart your life and career success by spending your time with upbeat, positive people.

It’s pretty simple.  When you surround yourself with positive, self-confident people, you become positive and self-confident.  On the other hand, when you surround yourself with negative or cynical people, you become negative and cynical.

The choice is yours.  I choose to surround myself with positive people.  Not only do they help my self-confidence, they are more fun to be around.

I’m a big fan of Mark Twain.  One of my favorite quotes of his gets at the heart of surrounding yourself with positive people and jettisoning the negative people in your life…

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Mark Twain and Napoleon Hill thnk alike when it comes to negative people.  Negative people are a drag on your goals and your ambitions.  They can hamper your chances of becoming a truly persistent and successful person.  They are quick to tell you what you can’t do, offer little encouragement, and hate to see you prove them wrong by succeeding.  Hold these kinds of people at arm’s length.  Don’t spend time with them.  Instead, invest in friendships with positive, upbeat people; the kind of people who not only don’t belittle your ambitions, but do what they can to help you make them a reality.

Cynics are negative people.  They are also dangerous, because they are seductive.  They always have something witty to say about others – usually others’ shortcomings.  At first, they seem to be funny and amusing.  But spend time with cynics, and you’ll find that they have little joy in life except in pointing out and reveling in others’ problems and failures.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Persistence will help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.  But as Napoleon Hill points out, no one — no matter how persistent — can go it alone.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 49 in Success Tweets.  “Surround yourself with positive people.  Hold them close.  They will give you energy and help you create the success you want and deserve.”  Positive people are great.  They feel good about themselves and life in general.  They are enthusiastic – and their enthusiasm is contagious.  When you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll become more positive and enthusiastic.  And, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.  Who are the most positive people you know?  Get to know them better, spend more time with them.  Don’t let negative people into your life.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 50 in Success Tweets.  “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry, but only if you let them.”  Avoid cynics.  They are jealous and petty, unhappy when others succeed.  Avoid jerks too  – people who are rude, insulting, sarcastic and two-faced.  They will only drag you down.  Make a conscious choice to spend time with positive, optimistic people.  Avoid negative, pessimistic ones.

That’s my career advice on how positive people can help you become more persistent – and to achieve the career success you deserve.  What do you think?  Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  Thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I really appreciate your support.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

You can find career advice in a lot of different places. But you have to pay attention.  The other day, Cathy my wife, received an email that was making the rounds of her friends.  Check it out…

I had a problem yesterday, so I called Eric, the eleven year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over.

Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.

As he was walking away, I called after him, ‘So, what was wrong?

He replied, ‘It was an ID Ten T error.’

I didn’t want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired,  “An, ID Ten T error? What’s that? In case I need to fix it again.”

Eric grinned…. “Haven’t you ever heard of an ID Ten T error before?”

“No.” 

“Write it down and I think you’ll figure it out.”   So I wrote down:
 
ID10T 

Eric was being a smart-assed kid, but there is some career advice in this little story.

Tweet 36 in my latest career advice book Success Tweets says, “Don’t be afraid to fail.  You fail only if you don’t learn something from the experience.  Treat every failure as an opportunity to grow.”

Most people fear mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection.  It’s only normal.  We all want to feel good about ourselves.  Mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection are not pleasant experiences.  They lower our self esteem and make us feel bad about ourselves, so we often avoid doing things that we think might lead to mistakes, failure, criticism or rejection. 

However, if you want to become create the life and career success you want and deserve to be, you have to have the courage to do things that might result in mistakes, failure, criticism or rejection.  More important, you have to learn from mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection.  If you don’t, you’re an ID10T.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide you with the opportunity to grow and develop – to succeed.   You can’t take mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection personally.  Mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection are outcomes.  They are a result of things you have done.   They are not who you are.  We all make mistakes and fail.  We all do things that cause others to criticize or reject us.  This doesn’t mean that we are failures.  It means that we have made some poor choices and done some not so smart things.

Mistakes, failures, criticism and rejection provide the opportunity to start over – hopefully a little smarter.  Buckminster Fuller once said, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence of trial and error experience.  Humans have learned only through mistakes.”

That’s why fear is the enemy of self confidence and career success.  Take it from a career success coach.  If your fear of making a mistake, failure, criticism and rejection paralyzes you to the point where you aren’t willing to take calculated risks, you’ll never learn anything or accomplish any of your career success goals.  You’ll be an ID10T.

Don’t be too hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fail, or when others criticize or reject you.  My best career advice is to put your energy into figuring out why you failed and then do something different.  Here are four career success coach questions to ask yourself the next time you make a mistake, fail or get criticized or rejected.  They will keep you from becoming an ID10T.

1. What mistake did I make?  Why did I fail?  Why did I get criticized or rejected?  What did I do to cause the mistake, failure, criticism or rejection?
2. What could I have done to prevent the mistake, failure, criticism or rejection?
3. What have I learned from this situation? 
4. What will I do differently the next time?

If you do this, you’ll be using failure, criticism and rejection to your advantage.  In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.”  I know it’s hard to see the benefit or opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection.  But it’s there – you just have to look hard enough.  But it all begins by facing your fear and acting.  The less you fear mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection the more career success you’ll create.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  You are an ID10T if you don’t learn from your mistakes and failures.  Successful people are self confident.  Self confident people face their fears and act.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 36 in Success Tweets.  “Don’t be afraid to fail.  You fail only if you don’t learn something from the experience.  Treat every failure as an opportunity to grow.”  Our most common fears are failure, criticism and rejection.  Follow this career advice.  Choose to find — and use — the learning opportunity in your failures and you will become more self confident and successful.   It’s sad but true – mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection are often the tuition you pay for becoming a career success.  Facing your fear of failure, criticism and rejection and acting will pay big dividends when it comes to your life and career success – and you won’t be an ID10T.

That’s my career advice on not being an ID10T and learning from mistakes, failure, criticism and rejection.  What your take?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my career success musings.  I appreciate you.

Bud

I’m still writing about the career success coach advice in my latest book: Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.

Today’s career success coach post in on Tweet 48…

Procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear and is a confidence killer.  Act – especially when you’re afraid.

As I’ve mentioned in several previous posts — especialy the posts on Tweet 45 and Tweet 46, fear is the enemy of self confidence and success.  Most people fear failure, criticism and rejection.  It’s only normal.  We all want to feel good about ourselves.  Failure, criticism and rejection are not pleasant experiences.  They lower our self esteem and make us feel bad about ourselves, so we often avoid doing things that we think might lead to failure, criticism or rejection.  As a career success coach, I advise my clients to have to have the courage to do things that might result in failure, criticism or rejection.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide you with the opportunity to grow and develop – to become a life and career success.   You can’t take failure, criticism and rejection personally.  Failure, criticism and rejection are outcomes.  They are a result of things you have done.   They are not who you are.  Remember this career advice.  We all make mistakes and fail on occasion.  We all do things that cause others to criticize or reject us.  This doesn’t mean that we are failures.  It means that we have made some poor choices and have done some dumb things.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide the opportunity to start over – hopefully a little smarter.  Buckminster Fuller once said, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence of trial and error experience.  Humans have learned only through mistakes.”  That’s great career advice.  I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Fear manifests itself as procrastination.  That’s why putting off things you want to do – and need to do — can really hurt your self confidence and career success.  If your fear of failure and criticism, and rejection paralyzes you to the point where you aren’t willing to take calculated risks, you’ll never learn anything or accomplish any of your goals.

Don’t be afraid to fail, or too hard on yourself when you fo fail — or when others criticize or reject you.  Instead, put your energy into figuring out why you failed and then do something different.  Here are my four career success coach questions to ask yourself the next time you fail, or get criticized or rejected.

1. Why did I fail?  Why did I get criticized or rejected?  What did I do to cause the failure, criticism or rejection?

2. What could I have done to prevent the failure, criticism or rejection?

3. What have I learned from this situation? 

4. What will I do differently the next time?

If you do this, you’ll be better able to face your fears and act; and you’ll be using failure, criticism and rejection to your advantage.  In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says…

“Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.” 

I know it’s hard to see the benefit or opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection.  But it’s there – you just have to look hard enough.  But it all begins by facing your fear and acting.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are self confident.  Self confident people face their fears and act.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 48 in Success Tweets.  “Procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear and is a confidence killer.  Act; especially when you’re afraid.”  Our most common fears are failure, criticism and rejection.  However, if you choose to find and use the learning opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection you will not only become more self confident, you will become more successful.   It’s sad but true – failure, criticism and rejection are the price you pay for becoming a personal and professional success.  Facing your fear of failure, criticism and rejection and acting will pay big dividends — and help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice in Tweet 48 in Success Tweets and the importance of facing your fears and acting.  What’s yours?  What have you learned from facing your fears?  How has it helped you become more self confident?  Please leave a comment sharing your story with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden passed away last Friday.  He was 99 years old.  Recently, he was named as the best American sports coach ever.  Vince Lombardi was second.  John Wooden was not only a great basketball coach.  He was a great man.  He had things in perspective.  His players all say that he taught them more about life and career success than he did about basketball.  I have many of his books on success in my library. 

John Wooden defined success in the following manner…

“Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

This is great common sense life and career success advice.  Please keep it in mind as you read my posts.  I agree with Coach Wooden.  You can never be a failure if you can honestly say to yourself that you always did the very best you could.

On to today’s post…

My latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is now available on Amazon.com and in bookstores.  I am in the process of blogging about each of the tweets in it. You can get a free copy of Success Tweets at www.SuccessTweets.com.  If you like it, I’d appreciate a positive review on Amazon.com.

Today’s career success coach post is on Tweet36…

Don’t be afraid to fail.  You fail only if you don’t learn something from the experience.  Treat every failure as an opportunity to grow.

Fear is the enemy of self confidence – and career success.  Most people fear failure, criticism and rejection.  It’s only normal.  We all want to feel good about ourselves.  Failure, criticism and rejection are not pleasant experiences.  They lower our self esteem and make us feel bad about ourselves; so we often avoid doing things that we think might lead to failure, criticism or rejection.  However, if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to have the courage to do things that might result in failure, criticism or rejection.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide you with the opportunity to grow and develop – to succeed.   You can’t take failure, criticism and rejection personally.  Failure, criticism and rejection are outcomes.  They are a result of things you have done.   They are not who you are.  We all make mistakes and fail.  We all do things that cause others to criticize or reject us.  This doesn’t mean that we are failures.  It means that we have made some poor choices and done some not so smart things.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide the opportunity to start over – hopefully a little smarter.  Buckminster Fuller once said, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence of trial and error experience.  Humans have learned only through mistakes.”

That’s why fear is the enemy of self confidence and career success.  Take it from a career success coach.  If your fear of failure, criticism and rejection paralyzes you to the point where you aren’t willing to take calculated risks, you’ll never learn anything or accomplish any of your goals.

Don’t be too hard on yourself when you fail, or when others criticize of reject you.  My best career advice is to put your energy into figuring out why you failed and then do something different.  Here are four career success coach questions to ask yourself the next time you fail, or get criticized or rejected.

1. Why did I fail?  Why did I get criticized or rejected?  What did I do to cause the failure, criticism or rejection?
2. What could I have done to prevent the failure, criticism or rejection?
3. What have I learned from this situation? 
4. What will I do differently the next time?

If you do this, you’ll be using failure, criticism and rejection to your advantage.  In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.” 

I know it’s hard to see the benefit or opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection.  But it’s there – you just have to look hard enough.  But it all begins by facing your fear and acting.  The less you fear failure, the more career success you’ll create.

I am proud of my niece Brett.  A little over a year ago, she left a good job in Florida and moved to San Diego.  She had no job lined up in San Diego when she moved, but that’s where she wanted to live.  Some members of the family thought she was silly to leave a good job to move across the country with no job.  I thought that she demonstrated amazing optimism and courage in making such a long move in such a difficult economy.  Brett wasn’t afraid to fail.  17 days after she arrived in San Diego she landed a job as an account manager for an athletic apparel manufacturer.  She has since received two promotions.  I’m proud of Brett.  She didn’t let her fear of failure, criticism or rejection stop her from pursuing her dreams.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are self confident.  Self confident people face their fears and act.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 36 in Success Tweets.  “Don’t be afraid to fail.  You fail only if you don’t learn something from the experience.  Treat every failure as an opportunity to grow.”  Follow this career advice.  Choose to find — and use — the learning opportunity in your failures and you will become more self confident and successful.   It’s sad but true – failure, criticism and rejection are often the price you pay for becoming a career success.  Facing your fear of failure, criticism and rejection — and then taking action will pay big dividends when it comes to your life and career success.

That’s my take on the career advice in Tweet 36 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  What have you learned from facing your fears?  How has it helped you become more self confident?  How has it contributed to your life and career success?  Please leave a comment sharing your story with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud