We All Need a Little Help From Our Friends

In yesterday’s post, I focused on the importance of taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.  Just after I posted that blog, I read a very interesting article by Deborah Shane on the Careerealism site: “Success Begins Between Your Ears in Your Mindset.”

I’m a Careerealism Approved Expert.  It’s a great site offering a ton of common sense career advice.  I also like Deborah Shane and her ideas, so I’m sharing them here.  According to Deborah, there are five things you can do to nurture your positive energy, help you get focused, disciplined and set up your daily mindset…

1. Set aside quiet time to be focused and organized. Just 30 minutes early in the day can fuel your mind and spirit with motivation. It can have a huge impact on the rest of the day.  Rotate motivational or inspirational content around so it is fresh and has a more profound impact on you every day. Seek out books, websites, newsletters, inspiring people and other media from alternative sources.
2. Keep things in perspective. Focus on your goals and initiatives. Seek out alternative sources for news and information. There are so many examples of people or businesses finding positive opportunities in challenging times and representing the solution, not the problem.
3. Manage your time, tasks and interruptions. Practice time blocking. Build your daily and weekly schedule in advance. Assign periods for your activities. Stay on schedule to accomplish what you need to do through your day. Be flexible. When things change, go with the flow.
4. Stay in touch regularly with those that are important to you and always make you feel valued and special. Pick up the phone; call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a long time. Dash off a quick e-mail or note to someone and let them know you are thinking of them. Keeping your “positive people” active daily can be powerful for your future success and your positive well-being. Don’t isolate, congregate.
5. Have fun, practice laughter and develop your sense of humor. Enjoy your workspace and co-workers. Plan a family day. Take the dog to the dog park. Organize a game night with friends.

I particularly like number 4: “Stay in touch regularly with those that are important to you and always make you feel valued and special.”  Relationships are important. 

I have several Eagles songs on my iPod.  I know that it’s become fashionable to bash the Eagles these days, but I was a fan years ago and am still a fan today.  “Desperado” is my favorite Eagles song.  It came up on the shuffle the other day when I was flying home from a week of consulting work.  As I was listening, I was struck by the following words…

“And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talking.
Your prison is walking through this world all alone.”

These lyrics are right on.  You are putting yourself into a self-imposed prison if you choose to go it alone.  We all need other people in our lives if we’re going to grow, flourish and create our life and career success.  This is true in your personal life, as well as your career and professional life.  Building and nurturing strong relationships is one of the keys to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

Other people can keep you centered and feeling valued and special.  But I think it’s just as important to do the same for them.  Tweet 129 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “There is no quid pro quo in effective relationships.  Do for others without being asked or waiting for them to do for you.” 

By staying in touch with friends, you’ll not only be helping yourself and your mindset, you may be helping these folks.  You never know who is going through a rough patch in their life.  I have had many people say to me “I’m glad you called, I really need to talk to somebody about…” when I just called to say hello.  

This is a quid pro quo world: you do for me and I’ll do for you.  There is a fundamental problem with quid pro quo.  It is reactive not proactive and comes from a scarcity mentality.  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 building strong relationships.  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, paying it forward, giving with no expectation of return, comes from a proactive abundance mentality.  When you pay it forward, give with no expectation of return, you are demonstrating faith that the good you do will benefit others – and that good things will come back to you.

I believe this with all my heart.  So pick up the phone, or send an email or handwritten note to your friends for no reason.  Be there to listen to them when they are dealing with tough stuff.  When you help others, they’ll be there for you when you need them. 

There are two career success coach points here.  Both are simple common sense.  First, as Deborah Shane points out, to create your life and career success, you need to nurture your positive energy, and get focused and disciplined.  Second, strong relationships are the key to nurturing your positive energy.  Follow the life and career advice in tweet 129 in Success Tweets.  “There is no quid pro quo in effective relationships.  Do for others without being asked or waiting for them to do for you.”   In other words, don’t just get in touch with friends when you need something.  Stay in touch to build and strengthen your relationship with them.  You never know when someone might really need to hear a friendly voice on the other end of the line.

That’s the career advice I take from Deborah Shane’s ideas on success beginning with your mindset.  What do you think? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career success book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.