This post is a continuation of my series further explaining the ideas in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I am giving away the eBook version of this book to promote my career success coach business.  My goal is to giveaway 10,000 eBooks by the end of June 2010.  If you would like a copy, go to www.SuccessTweets.com.  Feel free to send your friends there too.

Today, I am focusing on Tweet 20…

Your values come from deep inside you.  Spend the time necessary to discover them.  Then hold fast to them.  Honor them with your actions.

I love blogging.  It gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas with people who can’t afford my career success coach services.  It also keeps me sharp.  My thinking on life and career success has grown and developed because of this blog.  I hope this is reflected in the quality of my posts.   I think I give my better career advice as a result of writing this blog.

There is a side benefit to blogging too.  People send me free books in the hopes that I will review them.  A while back, I received a copy of Masha Malka’s latest book, The One Minute Coach.  It’s a great little book. 

Masha has organized The One Minute Coach into bite sized chunks.  One three paragraph chapter entitled “What Does It Take to be Attractive?” makes a great point about being true to yourself…

“Being attractive comes from having that magnetic power that pulls people towards you.  A power that inspires them to talk to you and find out more about who are; a power that makes them want to be like you!”

She follows this up with five action steps.  I love the fifth step…

“Focus on who you are and not just what you look like.  People fall in love with the essence of you – your energy, the sparkle in your eyes, your passion for living, your unconditional love, everything that makes you unique and special…people fall in love with your beautiful soul.”

What is your essence, your beautiful soul?  It lies in your personal values.  Do you let your essence and values shine through?  Or do you keep them both under wraps, thinking that you won’t measure up in others’ eyes if you let your true self show.

When I was in high school and reading Hamlet, we got to the point in the play where Hamlet is setting off to avenge his father.  Polonius gives him some advice.  We were reading the play out loud.  I was reading just before Polonius’ advice.  Mrs. Yothers, stopped me and said, “This is some of the best advice on life that you will ever get.  Read slowly Bud, and the rest of you should listen closely.”

I can’t remember the entire verse anymore, but there was one line that has always stuck with me. 

“And above all else, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”

When my nephew Matt Seaton was going off to college, his grandfather and my father-in-law, Roy Blackman, gave him a piece of advice written on a scrap of paper.  It read “TTOSBT – figure it out and live by it.”

Can you figure it out?  Here’s a hint, read the quote from Polonius.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  We are all unique human beings.  Each of us has wonderful traits.  Our best traits come from deep inside ourselves, our personal values.  We all need to have the confidence to let our wonders shine through.  You create positive personal impact when you live by your values and let your essence shine through.  Pay attention to the advice in Tweet 20 in Success Tweets: “Your values come from deep inside you.  Spend the time necessary to discover them.  Then hold fast to them.  Honor them with your actions.”  Honor your values in the way you live your life.  Let your values shine through the next time you are in a room full of strangers.  You might be surprised at the way people respond to you.

That’s my take on Tweet 20, in Success Tweets – letting your essence shine through.  What’s yours?  Better yet, what is at your essence?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

This post is a continuation of my series further explaining the ideas in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I am giving away the eBook version of this book.  If you would like a copy, go to www.SuccessTweets.com.

Today, I am focusing on Tweet 17…

Clarify your personal values. Your values are your anchor.  They ground you. They center you.  They keep you focused on what’s important.

Your personal values are important for a number of reasons.  They can help you determine the types of people with whom you want to spend your valuable time.  They can help you determine which company you want to join.  They can help you make decisions in ambiguous situations.  This career success coach is a big believer in the power of personal values.

Here is what I value.  These values guide my life.  They ground me and center me.  They keep me focused on what’s important.

Common Sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “nothing so astonishes men as common sense and plain dealing.” I agree. I help my career success coach clients figure out the common sense solutions to creating the life and career success they want and deserve, and then to do the work it takes to apply their common sense.

Simplify the complex.  I believe that all too often people make things more complex than they really are. I help my career success coach clients simplify the complex, and develop and implement common sense solutions to their problems and issues.

Optimism. I believe that optimism is essential for anyone to grow and flourish.  I live by the words in The Optimist Creed.  I share these words with my career success coach clients.  If you would like a copy, go to http://budbilanich.com/optimist.

Human potential. I believe we all can accomplish great things.  I help my career success coach clients use applied common sense to achieve their full potential.

Value.  My career success coach clients pay hard earned money for my services. I provide them with extraordinary value-added services in order to justify their faith in me.

Trust.  My career success coach clients trust me. They openly discuss their hopes, fears, problems and opportunities with me. This trust is sacred. I will not violate it.

Individuality.  All of my career success coach clients are unique individuals. I honor this uniqueness. I don’t sell one-size-fits-all coaching  services. I am diligent about gaining a complete understanding of each individual’s unique needs as I begin working with him or her.

Hard work.  There are no shortcuts.  I am willing to put in the time and effort necessary to succeed.  I share this message with my career success coach clients.  I encourage them to be true to themselves by being diligent in pursuing their career success goals and dreams.

The Power of 1.  One person can make a difference. I do the work I do, because I believe I can make a difference — in the lives of my career success coach clients, and in the world. 

Those are my values.  What are yours?

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people live their lives by a set of well defined personal values.  They follow the advice in Tweet 17 in Success Tweets: Clarify your personal values.  Your values are your anchor.  They ground you.  They center you.  They keep you focused on what’s important.  If you haven’t taken the time to clarify your personal values, you need to do so – the sooner the better.  This is some of the best career advice I can give you.  Clarifying your personal values will help you deal with the ambiguity and complexity the world throws at you. 

That’s my take on Tweet 17 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.  Better yet, share your personal values with us.  As always, thank you so much for reading.  I really appreciate it.

Bud

I’m really excited about the positive feedback I’ve been getting on my new book Success Tweets.  I have a goal of giving away 10,000 copies of the eBook version of it by the end of June.  To claim your free copy, just go to www.SuccessTweets.com. 

I am in the process of doing a blog post to further explain the ideas in each tweet.  Today is Tweet 15…

Napoleon Hill on visualization: “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”  What is your vision for your future?

I am a big Chinese food fan.  I sometimes find inspiration for blog posts in fortune cookies.  It’s been a while since I did a fortune cookie post.  But, as luck would have it, last night my fortune cookie read, “Advancement will come with hard work.”  I agree.  This post is about doing the work necessary to make the vision of your career success a reality. 

While you need to visualize your life and career success, your vision is for naught if you don’t have the will and determination to work hard at making it a reality.  There’s a quote that I’ve seen attributed to many American football coaches, “Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.”  You have to be willing to work hard if you’re going to succeed. 

Yes, you need to work smart, not just hard, but hard work is the best way to create the career and life success you want and deserve. Fortune Magazine says it succinctly: “There is no substitute for hard work.” This career success coach agrees.  Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster at age 16.  However, he had nine years of hard work and intense study to get to that place.  Few of us are willing to work that hard at that early of an age.

The success literature is a full of quotes on hard work.  Take a look…

“I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.”   Margaret Thatcher

“I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson

“Love conquers all, but if love doesn’t do it, try hard work.” Unknown

“If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it.” James A. Garfield

“When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.” Steve Pavlina

“There is no substitute for hard work.” Thomas Alva Edison

“The daily grind of hard work gets a person polished.” Unknown

“Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.” J.C. Penney

“Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful, be prepared to give up your leisure time and work past 5 PM and on weekends.”  Charles Lazarus

“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.” Margaret M. Fitzpatrick

“Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.”  Nadia Comaneci

“Hard work certainly goes a long way. These days a lot of people work hard, so you have to make sure you work even harder and really dedicate yourself to what you are doing and setting out to achieve.”   Lakshmi Mittal

“Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”     David Bly

Here’s a story my friend Andy O’Bryan tells about his success journey…

The year was 2004.  I had left my high-paying marketing director position and was trying to get traction with a fledgling home business. To pay the bills I was cold calling from 9-5 for $400 a week.

From 7pm to 1am every night I was interviewing. Authors, speakers, coaches, trainers, gurus, icons, industry leaders. For a while I was doing 6 or 7 interviews a week.

Life lessons, business advice, sales training, inspiration, just an amazing amount of content came out of these sessions.

The calls were recorded and the mp3′s were put up on a website:
http://www.AudioMotivation.com.

Co-founder Josh Hinds and I grew this site to over 1,500 paying members and 800 affiliates. There are over 100 interviews in there. It was a very challenging but extremely rewarding time of my life.

Andy now has a very successful home based business.  But he put in the time and hard work it took to make it so.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people heed the advice in Tweet 15 in Success Tweets.  “Napoleon Hill on visualization: ‘What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.’  What is your vision for your future?”  Achieve is the key word here.  And achieve goes hand in hand with hard work.  Successful people not only create a vivid mental image of their success.  They put in the hard work necessary for realizing that vision.  There are no two ways about it.  If you want to create a successful life and career, you need to put in the time and effort necessary to succeed.   Sometimes this means working longer hours than others.  This career success coach has found that a well focused extra hour a week can yield big results.

That’s my take on Tweet 15 in Success Tweets, and hard work, high performance and success.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m really excited about the positive feedback I’ve been getting on my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I have a goal of giving away 10,000 copies of the eBook version of it by the end of June.  To claim your free copy, just go to www.SuccessTweets.com. 

I am in the process of doing a blog post to further explain the ideas in each tweet.  Today is Tweet 14…

Don’t visualize the pain of failure, Visualize the euphoria of success.

I think it goes without saying that positive visualization is more productive than negative visualization.  You don’t need a career success coach to tell you that.

“What if’s” can become a form of negative visualization.   You know what I mean.  “What if I try to do this, and I fail?”  That’s visualizing the pain of failure, not the euphoria of success.

Positive visualization will help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.  Take it from a career success coach; creating a vivid mental image of you as a career success is the first step in becoming a career success.  As the tweet says, focus on the euphoria of success.

You get this; it’s the law of attraction at work.  If you visualize yourself as a failure, you will attract failure.  If you visualize yourself as a career success, you will attract career success.

‘Nuff said about that.

I’d like to spend some time discussing the importance of failure – specifically how learning from failure can help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

The late Ted Williams is famous for having a season batting average of .411.  That means that out of every 1,000 times at bat, he got a hit 411 times. This considered by baseball fans as one of the greatest records ever and unlikely to ever be broken.  I met Ted Williams once.  By a strange turn of events, we were staying in the same corporate suite at the same time.  Ted Williams lived baseball.  He told me that he learned from every at bat – whether or not he got a hit.  He said that he wanted to get a hit every time he came to bat.  When he didn’t, he said he analyzed the situation to see what he could learn.

Ted Williams failed over half the time in his record setting year.  And he learned that failure is inevitable if you are trying for greatness. Failure is just a bump in the road to success.

Many people don’t even set out on the road to success because they fear that they may fail and not reach their destination.  I was speaking with one of my career success coach clients today.  She told me that she found a great job with Google – one that was a perfect match for her qualifications.  But she didn’t even apply because she was afraid she wouldn’t get the job.  By not applying, she guaranteed that she wouldn’t get the job.

To put this story in the context of Tweet 14 in Success Tweets, she visualized the pain of failure, not the euphoria of getting a job with one of the best companies in the world.

Fear works in a funny way.  When you embrace the fact that you will fail on your journey to life and career success, you’ll find that you have nothing to fear anymore. When this happens you’ll keep your eyes open, pick yourself up, learn from the failure, and move on.

As I tell my career success coach clients, “Failure is never failure unless you fail to learn something from it.”

I choose to call the bumps in the road that I experience learning experiences, not failures.  When things don’t work out for you, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” Even the smallest learning makes the experience worth it.

Treat failure not as an end but as a beginning. As Mike Ditka, the famous football coach says, “Failure is rarely fatal.”  This is true.  Treat failures as learning experiences; pick yourself up, make some adjustments and be on your way. There are always opportunities for new beginnings.  Don’t quit in the middle of a problem; failure happens only when you quit.  Don’t give up. Visualize the euphoria of success when you are tempted to quit.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people don’t quit.  They treat failures as mere setbacks on the road to career success.  They heed the advice in Tweet 14 in Success Tweets.  “Don’t visualize the pain of failure.  Visualize the euphoria of success.”  If you visualize yourself as a failure, you will attract failure.  If you visualize yourself as a career success, you will attract career success.  This doesn’t mean that the road will always be smooth.  But this career success coach will tell you that the road will always be smoother when you have a vivid mental image of your success awaiting you at the end.  Treat failure as the learning opportunity it is.  Give yourself a minute or two to be frustrated.  Find the learning in the failure.  Then use this learning to move forward to the life and career success that you have visualized for yourself.

That’s my take on Tweet 14 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your personal triumphs with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I am doing a series of posts further explaining the ideas in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice; All in 140 Characters or Less.

Today’s post is on Tweet 13…

Your vivid mental image is a blueprint.  It is a plan for success, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality.

I probably should amend the tweet to say, “Your vivid mental image is a goal.  You need to create a plan (a blue print) to make this goal a reality – and then do the work.”  Regardless, the career success coach message here is simple.  You have to do the work to achieve your goals.  It’s up to you.  You’re the one who has to do the work.

My current vivid image of my career success is one in which I work primarily from home as an internet marketer. 

I have a plan to make this vivid mental image come true.  To implement this plan I need to manage my time well. Most of the really important work I do requires large chunks of unbroken time.  I create large chunks of time for working on big projects and important activities – like writing books, blogging and creating products.    

The same is true for you.  You have to figure out what’s important to you and then create chunks of time to do what’s important.  Besides my career success goals, my health is important to me; so I allocate 30 to 60 minutes a day for exercise.  I’m going for a bike ride as soon as I finish writing this post.  I have friend who reads inspirational literature for at least 15 minutes each night before he goes to sleep.  He says that this helps him begin each day inspired and ready to move forward toward his goals.

The important point here is to plan your days in advance.  Schedule specific fixed time periods for particularly important activities and tasks.  Make appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them.  Set aside thirty, sixty and ninety minute time segments in which you will work on and complete important tasks that move you toward your vivid mental image of success.

Stephen Covey tells us that successful people find the time to focus on the important, but not urgent tasks.  If you’re not careful, your day will get taken up with urgent (sometimes important, and sometimes unimportant) tasks.  If this happens, you will be keeping your head above water, but not gaining any ground.  You won’t be moving toward your vivid mental image of your success.

Writing and posting this blog is a good example of one of the chunks of time I carve out for myself.  My blog is an important, but not urgent activity for me.  If you’re a regular reader, you know that I post every day, Monday through Friday.  This structure helps me when it comes to composing my posts.  Right now, I’ve added even more structure.  I am doing a series of blog posts that further explain the advice in Success Tweets.  This is the 13th post in the series.  I will keep going until I have done a blog post on all 141 tweets – there is a bonus tweet in the book.  If you want a free copy of the eBook version, go to www.SuccessTweets.com.

I usually write my posts two or three days ahead.  At a minimum, I write blog posts the night before I post them.  It takes me 30 to 45 minutes to write a blog post.  My discipline in writing a day before I post means that I don’t feel under the gun to write something every morning.  I think it results in better quality posts, and moves me toward my vivid mental image of success.

I post my blogs first thing every day.  If I have a very early meeting, or will be traveling early, I post the night before.  It takes me about 30 minutes to post this blog, as I post it in several locations.  www.BudBilanich.com is the main page for this blog.  However, I also post to several other sites.  

All of this takes time and discipline.  The time I spend writing and posting every day is a very important part of maintaining my internet presence.  My internet presence is the cornerstone of my marketing efforts.  I carve out large chunks of time to do the important, but not urgent task of building and maintaining my internet presence.  I have disciplined myself to set aside 60 to 90 minutes per day writing and posting my blogs.

I also carve out time to comment on five blog posts, written by other bloggers, every day.  This also helps with my internet presence and takes about an hour a day.  I have identified a number of blogs I read regularly and on which I comment.  It takes about seven to ten minutes to compose a thoughtful comment for each post.

In the past, I have had good intentions of doing this, but the urgent tasks that come up every day have made this a hit and miss proposition.  Recently, I decided that I will take one hour at the end of every day to read and comment on other blogs.  I will do this before I end my business for the day. 

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  From a time perspective, you get the biggest bang for the buck from the activities that are important to your success, but are not urgent.  Unfortunately, important but not urgent tasks often don’t get done because of all of the urgent tasks that come up during any given day.  Tweet 13 in Success Tweets says “Your vivid mental image is a blueprint.  It is a plan for success, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality.”  One way to get started doing the work is to schedule time to work on the important but not urgent tasks that will result in achieving your vivid mental image of your career success.  My best career success coach advice is to keep your commitment to yourself and your career success by planning you work and working your plan.

That’s my take on Tweet 13 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I am blogging about the advice in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.

Today, I’m focusing on Tweet 12…

Visualization is powerful.  The more vivid the image you have of your success, the more likely you are to succeed.

As a career success coach, I suggest that once you define what career success means to you personally, you need to develop a clear mental picture of your career success.  This image should be as vivid as you can you make it.  Try to create you career success vivid image in 3-D.

When I was 25, I conjured up a vivid image of myself as a career success coach, motivational speaker, management consultant and author.  I worked in my home office – where I wrote and developed the programs I delivered at client locations.  This office had a floor to ceiling wall of books that I could use for easy reference.  It also had a state of the art IBM selectric typewriter and a big, clunky telephone.  PCs and the internet were science fiction in 1975.

I also saw myself having one to one discussions with senior leaders in a variety of organizations, conducting training and team building sessions in conference rooms at their locations.  Amazingly, many of the people in the sessions were smoking. 

I had very vivid images of standing in front of large audiences at sales meetings doing talks.  I saw myself signing a book I had written at a bookstore.  I also saw myself on airplanes, traveling to my speaking, coaching and consulting gigs.

All of these vivid images came true.  My office is much as I had imagined it – except it has a two PCs and cell phone, not a selectric typewriter and clunky phone.  The wall of books is there – overflowing.  I’ve written 11 of the books on the shelf.  People don’t smoke in my training and team building sessions anymore and I use PowerPoint instead of handwritten flip charts, but the big stuff is the same as I’ve imagined it.  I’ve spoken to audiences all over North America, in Latin America, Europe and Asia.  I am a million mile flyer with Continental Air Lines.

I’m living my career success dream – in large part because I dared to dream it all those years ago.

What’s your career success dream?  Have you created a vivid mental image of it? 

I suggest that you take some time for yourself.  Ask and answer these three questions:

• Where do I want to be 10, 20 and 30 years from now?
• What will it look like and feel like when I’m there?
• What will my life be like?

Ask and answer these and any other questions that will help you develop a clear, vivid mental image of your career success.  This is not day dreaming.  It is real work.  You are designing your future in your mind.  

Keep this mental picture of your career success with you as you go about your day to day business.  Every once in a while, ask yourself if what you did that day brought you any closer to your mental image of career success.  If the answer is no, make sure that you take at least one action the very next day to move closer to your vivid mental image of your career success.  In this way, you’ll be keeping your dream alive – and moving toward your goal.

The common sense career success coach success point here is simple.  Successful people define what success means to them.  Then they develop a compelling and clear mental image of their success.  They heed the advice in Tweet 12 in Success Tweets: “Visualization is powerful.  The more vivid the image you have of your success, the more likely you are to succeed.”  They use their vivid mental image to help keep their dreams alive and to keep moving forward to what they want in their lives and careers.  Creating a vivid mental image of your success is not day dreaming.  It’s real work – it’s the work of designing your future, so you can take the steps necessary to create it.

That’s my take on Tweet 12 in Success Tweets. You can get a free copy of the eBook version by logging on to www.SuccessTweets.com.   What are your thoughts?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I have been giving away the ebook version of my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, and the response has been overwhelming.  If you haven’t received your free copy, you can do so by logging on to www.SuccessTweets.com and entering your information in the box at the top right of the page.  Success Tweets is my latest career success coach writing.  I think it compliments my other books quite well.

I am in the process of going through the book and writing a blog post about each tweet.  Today’s tweet is number 11…

Create a vivid mental image of yourself as a success.  This vivid image will keep you motivated and moving forward when things get tough.

Dr.  Martin Luther King is one of my personal heroes.  He helped lead our nation out of the dehumanizing segregation policies that flourished in the post civil war period.  I believe that he, more than any other single person, was responsible for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Today a black man is president of the United States.  This would have been unthinkable on August 28, 1963, the day Dr. King delivered his famous speech “I Have a Dream”.

I bring up Dr. King and the “I Have a Dream” speech because it is the embodiment of a vivid mental image of success.  Read the words below and see how they so clearly describe Dr. King’s vivid mental image of success, for himself and the nation.

“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

“I have a dream today!

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

“I have a dream today!

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together’.”

Those are powerful words and a powerful vivid mental image.  They kept Dr. King moving forward through the dark days in Selma all the way to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I urge all of my career success coach clients to develop a vivid mental image of themselves as a career success.  What is your vivid mental image of your career success?  Can you articulate it clearly and vividly as Dr. King?

The common sense career success coach point in this discussion of Dr. Kings “I Have a Dream” speech is simple.  Successful people clarify their purpose and direction for their life and career.  Few people have demonstrated such a clear sense of purpose and direction for their lives as Dr. Martin Luther King.  His famous “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the best examples of a clear, vivid mental image of not only personal success, but success for us as a society.  “I have a dream… that little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”  The dream is alive – although we still need to keep working on it.  You need to work on creating vivid mental image of yourself as a career success.  The more vivid the image the better.  As Tweet 11 in Success Tweets says, your vivid mental image of yourself as a success “will keep you motivated and moving forward when things get tough.”

That my take on Tweet 11 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your personal vivid mental image of you as a career success.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

My new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is turning out to be quite a hit.  Over 200 people have downloaded the free eBook version and several people have purchased multiple copies of the hard copy book.  I think it’s a great addition to my career success coach writings.  Check out www.SuccessTweets.com and register to get a .pdf of Success Tweets for free. 

If you want to purchase a hard copy for yourself – or two or three to give to friends, associates, people you mentor, people you manage, your kids, your grandkids – send me an email at Bud@BudBilanich.com.  I’ll send you the special pricing information reserved for readers of this blog.  Graduation season is fast approaching.  Success Tweets makes a great graduation gift.

Today’s post is on Tweet 9…

Happiness doesn’t come from getting more things.  It comes from finding a worthy purpose and pursuing it.

I’d like to begin with three quotes.  The first is from T.E. Lawrence – the Lawrence of Arabia guy.

“All men dream, but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity.  But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

The second is from my favorite playwright, George Bernard Shaw.

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

The third is from Oscar Wilde.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

I dream by day, and I hope you do too.  I want to be thoroughly worn out before I’m thrown on the scrap heap.  I refuse to be a selfish little clod of ailments complaining about the world.  And I choose to live – completely and fully.  My purpose in life helps me do this. 

As you know, I’m a career success coach.  My purpose is to help other people create the life and career success they want and deserve.  That’s why I am a career success coach.  To me this is a worthy purpose.  More important, it’s a purpose that makes me happy. 

As I’m writing this, I keep seeing a tweet by the mythical Frank Tyger that has been retweeted at least 10 times in the past hour.  “Doing what you like is freedom.  Liking what you do is happiness.”

All of this goes back to Tweet 9 in Success Tweets.  Things don’t make you happy.  Happiness comes from doing something of value.  Success Tweet 4 says, “The mightier your purpose, the more likely you are to succeed.  It will give you a strong foundation when the winds of change shift.” 

If you want to create a mighty life purpose, it’s a good idea to write a life purpose statement.  However, many people tell me that they have tried to write a life purpose statement with little success.

Steve Pavlina offers a common sense, four step approach to finding your life purpose.  I really like these four simple steps:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
2. Head it, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

I love Steve’s simple common sense approach to finding your life purpose.  As a career success coach, I suggest you try it if you don’t have a clear statement of your life’s purpose.

However, once you find your life purpose, you have to live it every day.  This blog is one way that I live my purpose every day.  I post five days a week.  That means that five days a week I write 800 to 1,200 words on career and life success and post it here.  My daily success quotes are another way I live my purpose every day.  If you want to receive these daily quotes, go to www.BudBilanich.com.  Enter your name and email address in the box at the top right of the page.

My books are another way I live my life purpose every day.  I write books to help me clarify my thinking on life and career success – and to help others apply my career success coach thoughts to create their life and career success.

What is your purpose in life?  I hope it’s not getting more things.  I hope it has something that is bigger than you; something  that benefits others and all of us in general.  I hope it’s mighty.

Once you have determined your life purpose, ask yourself what you do to live it every day.  Then start doing that every day.  Doing something every day that reinforces your life purpose is the best way to creating a happy life and career success.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people identify their purpose in life and then pursue it with passion.  They follow the advice in Tweet 9 in Success Tweets “Happiness doesn’t come from getting more things.  It comes from finding a worthy purpose and pursuing it.”  Follow Steve Pavlina’s advice to develop your life purpose.  Ask yourself, “What is my true purpose in life?” Keep listing answers until you find one that makes you cry.  Once you get to this point, dry your tears and begin doing something every day to live that purpose.  The old saying, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins” is just flat not true.  As George Bernard Shaw says, success comes to those who are “used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature.”  I choose to be a force of nature, not a collector of things and toys.  I hope you do too.

That’s my take on Success Tweet 9.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts and ideas with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

My new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is turning out to be quite a hit.  Over 100 people have downloaded the free eBook version and several people have purchased multiple copies of the hard copy book.  I think it’s a great addition to my career success coach writings.  Check out www.SuccessTweets.com and register to get a .pdf of Success Tweets for free. 

If you want to purchase a hard copy for yourself – or two or three to give to friends, associates, people you mentor, people you manage, your kids, your grandkids – send me an email at Bud@BudBilanich.com.  I’ll send you pricing information.  Graduation season is fast approaching.  Success Tweets makes a great graduation gift.

Today’s post is on Tweet 8…

Don’t focus just on making money.  If you do, you’ll be asking too little of yourself.  Focus on how you can be useful in this world.

I loved the 1972 movie, Cabaret (I can’t believe it was that long ago).  If you haven’t seen Cabaret, rent the DVD.  It’s a funny and sad movie at the same time.  I bring up Cabaret here because one of the dance routines in it popped into my mind when I typed Tweet 8 just now.  It features Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli and is called “Money Makes the World Go ‘Round.”   

Yes, money does make the world go ‘round.  We all need money.  It is difficult to live with little or no money.  But I suggest that choosing a career solely on the basis of the money you can make is not a good idea. 

John D. Rockefeller, once the richest man in the USA, said, “If your only goal is to become rich, you’ll never achieve it.”

This is great common sense career success advice.  Your goals in life should be more than just making money.  Your goals should spring from your purpose in life, your passion.  This isn’t to say that you should choose a career in which you can make little or no money.  Choose your life’s work based on what you love to do, and you’ll find a way to make money.  The old saying, “Do what you love, and the money will follow” is true.

Michelle Schubnel is a coach to coaches.  She runs a program called Coach and Grow R.I.C.H.  Her R.I.C.H. acronym applies here:

R    Rewarded
I     Inspired
C    Confident
H    Happy

I think this is a great way to think about making money and being useful in this world.  You are rich when you are: rewarded for your contributions; inspired by what you do; confident as a professional; and happy with the way you spend your time.  Let’s talk about each of these.

Rewarded — We all deserve to be appropriately compensated for the work we do and the value we bring to others.  This means that you shouldn’t feel bad about making money, only that making money shouldn’t be your sole goal in life.  Some might say that the current financial crisis is the result of some people who valued making money at the expense of others.  Do your job, get good at it and the money will follow.

Inspired – You can find inspiration in the work you do every day.  If you’re a realtor like my niece, Morgan, you can be inspired when you help a person or a couple find the home of their dreams.  If you’re a pharmaceutical sales rep, you can be inspired by the fact that you’re helping doctors understand how the medicines your company makes can save lives.  My dad was a steel worker for 37 years.  He found inspiration in the buildings and bridge he helped build.  I find inspiration every time someone leaves a comment on this blog or tells me that one of my tweets made a difference in their life. 

Confident – Doing something you love, doing it well and being useful in this world will build your confidence.   Your confidence grows as your skill level grows and you begin to make bigger contributions at work and in the world.  A world of confident people would be a wonderful place to live.  Confident people see the world from a win-win perspective. 

Happy – When are you happiest?  I’m willing to bet it’s when you accomplish something – or help someone else accomplish something – not when you get your pay check.  When you do something you love everyday you can’t help but be happy.  I am happiest when I finish a book.  Writing a book takes a lot of time and effort.  And, I’m a perfectionist.  I want to make sure my books are the best I can make them, so I put in a lot of time and effort making sure they’re just right.  And, you know what?  I’m really happy when I first hold a copy of one of my books in my hand.  At that moment, I know the work was worth it.  I’m happy when I help others succeed too.  I love the moments when I can see the light go on in one of my career success coach client’s eyes.  I love it when I help other people get it.

I saw a young woman wearing a T shirt the other day that made a profound point.  On the front it said, “Wealth is not the opposite of poverty.”   On the back it said, “Enough is the opposite of poverty.”  This message goes to the heart of the message in Tweet 8.  Successful people know what “enough” is for them and their family.  They are happy with enough.  They pursue a life and career that fulfills them.  They know that being rich is more than having a lot of money.

If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that my mom passed away a little over a year ago.  She was one for schmaltzy cards.  I’m not.  But several years ago, she sent me a card on my birthday.  I cut out the message and taped it to my printer.  I look at it several times a day…

“That man is a success who is happy with himself and gives happiness to others; who makes the world a better place simply by being a part of it.” 

My mother believed this about me.  I do my best to live up to it every day.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people see money as the byproduct of their work – not as their sole reason for working.  They follow the advice in Tweet 8 in Success Tweets.  “Don’t focus just on making money.  If you do, you’ll be asking too little of yourself.  Focus on how you can be useful in this world.”  Successful people know that being rich doesn’t mean you have tons and tons of money.  They know that being rich means that you are: Rewarded for your contributions; Inspired by what you do; Confident in your skills, and Happy with the way you spend your days. 

That’s my point on doing what you love and the money will follow.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I was in line waiting to pay at a book store the other day and I saw a small book on the counter.  It was called How Successful People Think, and written by John Maxwell, a prolific writer.  He has sold over 16 million books.  Because I’m a career success coach who is always looking for new information to help my career success coaching clients, I bought the book.  And I’m glad I did.    It contains some great career success advice.

Chapter 10 is titled, “Practice Unselfish Thinking.”  Relationship building is one of the success competencies in my Career Success GPS System.  I always advise my career success coaching clients to pay it forward when it comes to relationship building – to give with no expectation of return.  This is what John Maxwell is talking about when he encourages us to practice unselfish thinking.

He says that unselfish thinking…

• Brings personal fulfillment.
• Adds value to others.
• Encourages your other virtues.
• Increases quality of life – yours and others.
• Makes you a part of something greater than yourself.
• Creates a legacy.

I agree.  When you practice unselfish thinking you are paying it forward, and increasing the quality of your life of those around you.

John goes on to describe how to practice unselfish thinking…

• Put others first.
• Expose yourself to situations where people have needs.
• Give quietly or anonymously.
• Invest in people intentionally.
• Continually check your motives.

I really liked one passage in the chapter on unselfish thinking…

As you go into any relationship, think about how you can invest in the other person so it becomes a win-win situation.  Here is how relationships most often play out:

I win, you lose – I win only once.
You win, I lose – You win only once.
We both win – We win many times.
We both lose – Goodbye relationship.

The best relationships are win-win.  Why don’t more people go into relationships with that attitude?  I’ll tell you why.  Most people want to make sure they win first.   Unselfish thinkers, on the other hand, go into a relationship and make sure that the other person wins first.  And that makes all the difference.

This is exactly what I’m talking about when I tell my career success coaching clients to pay it forward. 

I am a contributor to a book called 42 Rules for Creating WE.  One of the rules I contributed is “There is No Quid Pro Quo in WE.”  Here is some of what I have to say in that chapter…

This is a quid pro quo world: you do for me and I’ll do for you.  While there is nothing wrong in reciprocating a good deed or a favor, there is a fundamental problem with quid pro quo.  It is reactive not proactive.  Too many people wait for others to go first.  They adopt the attitude, “When and if you do for me, I’ll do for you.”  This scarcity mentality is not conducive to creating WE.  When you come from a scarcity mentality, you focus on holding on to what you already have.  This can prevent you from receiving what you might possibly get.

On the other hand, giving with no expectation of return comes from a proactive abundance mentality.  When you give with no expectation of return, you are acknowledging the abundance of the universe.  You are demonstrating faith that the good you do will benefit others close to you and the world at large – and that good things will come back to you.

Giving with no expectation of return is ironic.  I have found that the more I give, the more I receive; often from unlikely sources.  But that’s not my reason for giving — and I hope it is not yours.  The best reason for giving is the basic joy of making a difference in other people’s lives and in creating a WE-centric world.

In the end, giving with no expectation of return comes down to your mentality – scarcity or abundance.  If you come from a scarcity mentality, you will live by quid pro quo, and perpetuate the I-centric status quo.  If you come from an abundance mentality, you will give with no expectation of return and begin to create a WE-centric world.

I choose abundance and to take an active part in creating a WE-centric paradigm in my circle of influence.  I agree with Winston Churchill who once said, “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”  When you give with no expectation of return you will get a good life.  You’ll also get a better world; one in which we all look out for one another.

I think John Maxwell would agree with that.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are competent in four key areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, communication skills and relationship building.  As a career success coach, I believe that you build strong relationships by doing three things.  First, get to know yourself.  Use this knowledge to better understand others.  Second, pay it forward.  Or as John Maxwell says, practice unselfish thinking.  Third, resolve conflict in a manner that strengthens, rather than weakens your relationships.  If you practice all three of these ideas, you will not only build strong, mutually beneficial relationships with the people in your life, you’ll be on your way to creating the career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on unselfish thinking and success.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to act unselfishly and leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud