Crises arise in rugby matches and at work. The best way to deal with crises and ensure your career success is to slow down, get everything under control and then proceed to address the crisis. In rugby this is known as killing the ball. Killing the ball takes courage. But this type of courage generally pays off – in winning rugby games and in the career success game.

I’m a retired rugby player.  I played my first match at Penn State in 1968 and my last in Vail, CO on my 60th birthday in 2010.  I love the game.  Most of my friends have some sort of rugby connection.  I get together with old rugby mates the last Thursday of every month.  We have lunch and swap a few lies about how good we were 30 years ago.  I mention this because I have found that there are some great life and career success lessons that can be learned on the rugby pitch.
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In my latest career advice book Climbing the Corporate Ladder, I discuss the importance of taking personal responsibility for your life and career success. It’s simple really. Success is all up to you, and me, and anyone else who wants it. We all have to take personal responsibility for our own success. I am the only one who can make me a success. You are the only one who can make you a success.

Finding your dream job isn’t easy, but you can take charge of the process by following some of the common sense advice in Pete Leibman’s I Got My Dream Job and So Can You. Pete breaks down the job hunting process into seven simple, common sense steps. Follow these steps and you’ll be on your way to landing your dream job.

Twitter is a powerful job search tool. I use it to build my coaching and consulting business. If I were looking for a job, you can bet that I would be all over Twitter, finding job leads.

If you want to create the life and career success you deserve, you need to create positive personal impact. You need to have a magnetic personality. You need to conduct yourself in a manner that will attract people to you. The 15 tips in this post will help you do just that.

Successful people are outstanding performers. Outstanding performers remain outstanding performers by becoming lifelong learners. They continually expand their knowledge in order to get out in front of the pack and stay there. They follow the career advice in Tweet 82 in Success Tweets. “Learn faster than the world changes. In a world that never stops changing, you can never stop learning and growing.” Begin your lifelong learning journey by focusing on your strengths and working to improve them every day. Building on your strengths is easier than overcoming your weaknesses. When you build on your strengths you can make incremental improvements. However, if you have a glaring gap in your skills, address it now. Don’t wait to take necessary quantum leaps. What do you need to learn to create the life and career success you want and deserve? How do you plan on learning it? Remember what Ben Franklin had to say, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

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.

I am always looking for interesting content for this career advice blog. Recently, Kristie Lewis who writes for a site called www.ConstructionManagementDegree.com asked if she could share her story about her career success journey. When she sent it to me, I realized that Kristie’s story is some great career advice about clarifying the purpose and direction for your life and career – the first point I make about life and career success in my new book Climbing the Corporate Ladder. Here is Kristie’s story…

Successful people follow the advice in Tweet 37 in Success Tweets. “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it. Don’t dwell on the negative, use it as a springboard to action and creativity.” In her book No Problem! How to Focus on Solutions, Elizabeth Hanley offers four tips for dealing with problems and setbacks: 1) Define the problem. 2) Own the problem. 3) See the truth in the problem. 4) Stay balanced. These are great tips for proactively taking charge of your life and career. Get the book, read it, follow Elizabeth’s career advice and you’ll be on your way to the career success you deserve.