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.  Live your personal 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.  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 19…

Your personal values are things that you hold near and dear; things on which you absolutely will not compromise.

Kevin Eikenberry is a friend of mine, and a leadership expert.  I subscribe to his blog.  The other day he did a post in which he talked about the importance of a firm and steady foundation.  He used the bible parable about the wise man who built his house upon the rock, and the careless man who built his house on sand.  When the rains and winds came, the wise man’s house stayed strong; the other man’s was washed away.

Kevin went on to say…

“The story speaks to building on a firm and steady foundation.  The parallel for us as leaders is to build our leadership habits, values and beliefs on solid unshakable principles.  It is easy to read a book or article and be excited about a new technique, approach or method.  Most of these are sound and valuable.  But ultimately they will hold the greatest value for you when they are integrated into the foundation of your leadership house – and the techniques, methods and approaches are understood based on their underlying and unassailable principles.”

Your personal values are your career success foundation.  As Kevin says, they should be solid, unshakeable principals, things that guide your life and your decision making.  They should be fad proof; ideas on which you can rely in the long run.

A couple of days ago, I did a post in which I identified my personal values: common sense, simplicity, optimism, human potential, value, trust, individuality, hard work, the power of 1.   These values are the foundation on which I have built my life and career.  They guide my decision making.  I turn to them when I need help figuring out what to do.  They have served me well.  And, I will not compromise on them.

Let me give you an example.  Back in December I was approached by an HR executive at one of my corporate clients.  He asked if I would be willing to provide some coaching for one of the leaders at the operation for which he is responsible.  Of course, I said yes.

I submitted a proposal outlining how I would approach this specific coaching project.  Then, over the next few months, I answered a lot of questions about my approach to the coaching, how much it would cost etc.  I sent the HR exec several of my books gratis.  I really thought I had the gig sown up.  Last week he called me to tell me that while he would have preferred to use my services, his HR boss at corporate headquarters instructed him to use another coach who was doing some work in another part of the company.

If you’ve ever worked hard to make a sale and then lose it due to something completely out of your control, you know how I felt – frustrated.  I was discussing this situation with a colleague.  She said that she would have been very angry about this situation.  I wasn’t angry, stuff happens in business.  I was a little frustrated, but I chose to let it go.

I value optimism.  The Optimist Creed guides my behavior.  Point 1 of The Optimist Creed says, “Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.”  Point 4 says, “Promise yourself to look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.”  As I truly value optimism and this advice, I had to let go of the frustrating situation.  Holding on to it would have created negative energy that would have impacted my work.  I don’t have time for negative energy.  I’m an optimist.  As Point 10 of The Optimist Creed says, I am “too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.”  I value optimism.  Therefore, I let go of the situation and moved on.

By the way, I have created a frameable .pdf of The Optimist Creed.  If you would like free a copy to frame and hang in your workspace, go to http://budbilanich.com/optimist/ to download it.  I have given away over 1,000 copies of to readers of this blog and my career success coach clients.

Here’s another example.  I value trust.  I am a trustworthy person, and I assume that on the part of other people.  That’s why most often I do business on a handshake.  I will sign a contract if it’s absolutely necessary, some companies won’t hire me without a signed contract.  But I prefer my working relationships to be less formal.  Some people say this is naïve.  I think it is trusting.  I’m not trying to convince you to do business on a handshake.  I bring it up here to show you how my personal value of trust impacts my work every day.

I value hard work.  It’s in my genes.  I believe that the dictionary is only place success comes before work.  This doesn’t mean that I am inefficient about what I do.  That’s not the case.  I outsource a lot of my technical work because I’m not good at it.  I don’t want to become an html expert.  On the other hand, I use my time to do the things I’m good at – like writing books and this blog, appearing as a guest on internet and broadcast radio interviews, working with my career success coach clients.  I work hard at doing the things that help me advance my career success coach business and my success.  I believe the old adage, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.”

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people use their personal values as a foundation.  They will listen to new ideas, but don’t change on a whim.  They heed the advice in Tweet 19 in Success Tweets, “Your personal values are things that you hold near and dear; that on which you absolutely will not compromise.”  This means that you should think long and hard about your values.  They should come from deep inside you.  Once you clarify them, live them.  Be true to yourself and your personal values.  You’ll find that your personal values are a foundation that will serve you well when things get tough and frustrating.

That’s my take on Tweet 19 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.  I value and appreciate all of your comments.  Thanks again 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 18…

You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.  Your values help you make decisions in ambiguous situations.

If you know your rock and roll, you know that the first sentence in today’s tweet is the title of a John Mellencamp song – one of my favorites.  And it’s true.  You, me, all of us, need to stand for something if we’re going to create the life and career success we want and deserve.  Your personal values are what you stand for.

In yesterday’s post, I shared my personal values: common sense, simplicity, optimism, human potential, value, trust, individuality, hard work, the power of 1.   These values are the foundation on which I have built my life and career.  They guide my decision making.  I turn to them when I need help figuring out what to do.  They have served me well.

In April of 1988, I was facing a major life and career decision – stay in a good, secure, albeit somewhat unsatisfying job with a top notch corporation, or strike out on my own as an independent career success coach, speaker and consultant.  I looked to my values.  Optimism, human potential and hard work jumped out at me.  I am an optimist.  I believe in human potential, including mine.  I have always been a hard worker. 

Reflecting on my values – especially these three – made the decision easy.  An optimist, someone who believes in human potential, and a hard worker would take the chance and start a small business – which is what I did.  I became The Common Sense Guy over 22 years ago and have never looked back.  My values guided me through the decision making process.

Here’s another example.  As I began my work as a career success coach, I found that many of my clients were overwhelmed by the complexity of creating the life and career success they wanted.  They were looking for simple answers to complex questions.  I created my 4 C’s of Success Model to help provide these answers.  By studying successful people, I was able to create a simple, straightforward, common sense model that showed my career success coach clients how to create life and career success…

1. Clarify your purpose and direction in life and your career.
2. Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
3. Build unshakeable self confidence.
4. Get competent in four important areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication, and relationship building.

I’ve used this simple model to help hundreds of people create the life and career success they want and deserve.  Success Tweets is organized around it.  Tweet 18 is one way to clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.  My personal values of common sense, and simplifying the complex helped me figure out a simple, but comprehensive model of life and career success.  I use this model in my work as a career success coach.

I am a career success coach in large part because of my commitment to my personal value of the power of 1.  I believe that one person can change the world.  That’s why I work so hard to help the people in my life see that they can become a life and career success.  My personal value of value comes into play here as well.  I always provide my career success coach clients with more than I have to. 

I give away a lot of my books.  In this way, people have a reminder of the things we’ve talked about to which they can refer over and over again.  I have a goal of giving away 10,000 copies of the eBook version of Success Tweets.  If you want a copy, go to www.SuccessTweets.com.  Feel free to send your friends there too.

The career success coach common sense point here is simple.  Successful people clarify their purpose and direction in life.  Your personal values are an important part of your personal clarity of purpose and direction.  Tweet 18 in Success Tweets says, “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.  Your values help you make decisions in ambiguous situations.”  Once you’ve clarified your personal values, you need to live them.  Using your values to guide your decision making is a great way to live them on a day to day basis.  Your values will help you stand for something – so you don’t fall for anything.  Just ask John Mellencamp.

That’s my take on Tweet 18 in Success Tweets.   What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  And, if you leave a comment sharing your favorite John Mellencamp song, I’ll send you a copy of the eBook version of my bestseller, Straight Talk for Success.  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 help you determine the types of people with whom you want to spend your valuable time.  They help you determine which company you want to join.  They 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 solution 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 clife and career success aspirations.

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: 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.  I’ve already given away over 1,000.  To claim your free copy, just go to www.SuccessTweets.com. 

I am blogging about each tweet.  Today is Tweet 16…

Use affirmations to realize your vision of your success.  Affirmations are statements about the future stated in the present tense.

Self confidence is an important key to life and career success. This career success coach has learned that self confidence is an upward spiral.  Self confidence leads to career success, which leads to increased self confidence, which leads to higher levels of career success, and so on.

You might be saying, “That’s great, but how do I become self confident if I’m new in my job or if I haven’t had a lot of success to bolster my self confidence?”  There’s an old saying that applies here: “Fake it till you make it.” In other words, act as if you are a career success already. This will help you succeed. Your success will help you build your self confidence.

How do you “fake it, will you make it?”  As Tweet 16 in Success Tweets says, begin with affirmations. If you’re in a new job, tell yourself something like, “I have the skills and desire to succeed in this job,” several times a day.  If you repeat this to yourself often enough, you will begin to believe it. This will help you perform at the level necessary in order to actually succeed in your job.

Affirmations are positive self talk. The idea behind affirmations is simple.  When you think of the things to which you aspire, like becoming a career success, and then tell yourself that you are a career success, you will believe that you can become a career success. More important, you will be more likely to do the work it takes to make your career success aspirations come true.

I follow my own career success coach advice.  A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called Star Power, Common Sense ideas for Career and Life Success. I used a star to depict this model. I urged readers to think of themselves as a star and to aspire to becoming a life and career success star. I like the star metaphor. Daily, I repeat the following affirmation to myself: “Bud Bilanich is a star.”

I’ve done a lot of working in making this affirmation a reality – redoing my website, developing better promotional materials, speaking, writing books, blogging.

I’ve also done something a little unusual. A few years ago, right after Star Power was published, I went to the “Name a Star” website and named a star after myself. Now I can say “Bud Bilanich is a star” and really believe it, because Bud Bilanich really is a star.

Bud Bilanich the star, is Catalog Number TYC  868-1011-1 in the constellation Leo. Bud Bilanich has a Visual Magnitude indicator of 11.2. Right Ascension is 11h 58m 21s. Declination is 11degrees, 43,’18.”

I don’t have a clue what all of these things mean, except the constellation Leo, which I chose because my birthday is August 14. But I do know one thing. Bud Bilanich is a star!

How’s that for an affirmation?

Affirmations work. I have become a minor star in the career success coach world. 

You don’t need to go to the lengths I did to make your personal affirmations work either. Just decide what you want, visualize yourself as having it.  Tell yourself you have it.  Repeat that affirmation several times a day. Then do whatever it takes to make your affirmation come true.

Affirmations alone, however, are not enough to guarantee your career success. You have to do the work. Spend the time necessary to accomplish your goals. Volunteer for projects that will get you noticed. Become an expert on your company, its competitors, and your industry. In other words, bust your butt, and you will succeed.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are self confident.  If you want to become self confident, you need to become an optimist, face your fears, and hang around with self confident people.  Your self confidence will improve as you begin to become a life and career success. The self confidence => career success => self confidence cycle is an upward spiral. You have to enter the cycle somewhere. You might not have a strong track record as you begin your career, move into a new job, or start a business. Therefore, you have to “fake it till you make it” by “acting as if” you are a career success.”  Find ways to bolster your self confidence until you have some real successes on which you can build.  Tweet 16 in Success Tweets says, “Use affirmations to realize your vision of your success.  Affirmations are statements about the future stated in the present tense.”  Use this career success coach advice.  Affirmations are a great tool for helping you “fake it till you make it.”

That’s my take on Tweet 16 in Success Tweets, self confidence and faking it till you make it.  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.  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.  Take it from a career success coach, 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.  I have 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.

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 is 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 act 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.  What’s your?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.  You can get a free copy of the eBook version of Success Tweets at www.SuccessTweets.com.

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