Just saw the Under Armour’s “Rule Yourself” Ad with Michael
Phelps. It’s a tearjerker. As we watch the Olympians, we know it takes dedication,
hard work and sacrifices to make the Olympic dream a reality. But there’s a
difference between knowing something and feeling it seeing the look on Phelps’
face as he stands shivering by the pool in the wee hours of the morning.
In sports and in our professional career, success doesn’t
just fall into our lap. To achieve professional growth and success, we need to
manage our career like a high performing athlete. The talent and skills must be
there as a solid foundation to build a career upon, but then some key elements
are required to develop a career path and achieve professional success.
PERSONAL DRIVE
“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle
you arrive in” ~Bill Bradley
Success starts with a dream. Drive is the unshakeable commitment
to achieve that dream. Recently successful people tweeted about their first
jobs. It was interesting to read about celebrities’ starter jobs before they
climbed the ladder of success. It’s our personal drive that turns our dream
into actions, and our actions into results even when the climb up is long and
difficult. Being driven means constantly searching for opportunities to learn,
grow, and improve.
PERSISTENCE
“I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that’s why
I succeed.” ~ Michael Jordan
Success requires persistence and its twin sister
perseverance. Persistence is about having the stamina to chase our dreams. Perseverance
is about having the mental strength to deal with setbacks and the grind. As is
evident in the “Rule Yourself” ad, being an athlete means powering through
grueling physical conditioning and long workouts; those cold early morning
swims and the intense intervals at the gym. Staying motivated through the grind
is what makes winners. Sometimes in our career, we arrive at a point when it’s
no longer fun. It is a part of the deal in striving to achieve long term goals.
Persistence means not giving up on a dream when the going gets tough. The
difference between having a dream and making a dream come true is having a
plan, acting on it, and adjusting it as needed. It requires staying focused on
what’s important, learning from what isn’t working, and going after our goals
with sheer determination and unwavering belief that in one way or another,
sooner or later, we will make our dream come true.
CONFIDENCE
“The most important thing for success is self-belief and
confidence. Believing you deserve it. Believing you can do it. Believing you
will get it.” ~Anil Sinha
Successful people are believers; they believe they can do
the job and succeed. They know who they are and where their strengths are. They
have the courage to let go of the things that hold them back and do whatever it
takes to learn and improve. Real confidence lies in knowing there’s still more
we can do, that we can excel even more. It’s like the Skippy Squeeze It Peanut
Butter. It’s tough to get all the peanut butter out, but when we think it’s
empty, we can still squeeze out just a little more. But to give more we need
the confidence try new things: a new strategy, a new perspective, a new
training regime, and sometimes maybe hire a new coach.
RESPONSIBILITY
“The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to
accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you to either
success or failure, however you define those terms.” ~ Neal Boortz
Successful people take responsibility for their success.
They seek help from others to get the job done, but they take full
responsibility for their losses and share the credit for their wins. I was
lucky to find a great mentor on my very first job who told me “only hire, keep
and reward employees who see solutions, not problems and who make progress, not
excuses.” His advice proved invaluable as I was hiring and building work teams
throughout my career. To succeed, we need to take initiative and accept the
lessons learned in the school of hard knocks as part of the process of moving
forward. We have plenty of choices, and our decisions are ours to make. The
daily actions we make each day are paving the path to our success. We need to
own it when we mess up and find the way to get back on track.
BALANCE
“Balance is not better time management, but better boundary
management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices.” ~ Betsy
Jacobson
Career choices include the jobs we accept, the type of work
we do, the things we are willing to put up with and the number of hours we put
in. Our efforts, the quality of the work we do, and the relationships we build
today create our future opportunities. We’ve got to think about our long term
career prospects in the decisions we make and the actions we take. All of our
choices strategically position us for long-term career success. Sprinters can’t
run a marathon at their sprinting pace for the entire race. And it’s not likely
that even the fastest marathon runner would beat the sprinting world record. We
need to prepare for the race we are running: not go out too fast using all of our
energy too early, and be ready to sprint in our career and pull those
all-nighters when we need to. They key is to keep a good balance over the long
haul.
In sum, in sports and in our career, we get out of it what we put into it. And for all of us this is not the last goodbye. There are still untapped possibilities within us for the future.
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