There are several keys to success in career. But which of them is the greatest of all? And how can you use it to boost your career productivity and change your entire life? That is what this article is all about.
Many have resigned to an irresponsible life of ‘what-will-be-will-be’. They ignorantly walk through life believing that somehow fate will smile on them and success would just happen. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Every man’s career accomplishments are essentially determined by his or her ability to identify the things that are most important and committing to it completely.
It is true that we all have equal capacity and chances for success, but our degree of resoluteness sets each of us apart. And of course your degree of resoluteness determines your depth of achievements. How do you excel exceptionally in your field without cutting corners? The answer is CATCHING A VISION.
EVERYONE NEEDS A VISION
You may not be a CEO or a management executive but if you have a vision you can excel in your field. The secret of career leadership is INFLUENCE. The world has celebrated leadership by position before now, but in the 21st century, only those who develop capacity to influence others top the ranks.
Think about people like Ngozi Okonjo-Eweala, Dora Akinyuli, and Charles Soludo, who suddenly found themselves in the helms of political power during Obasanjo’s regime. None of these were politicians prior to their appointments. But each of them assumed substantial positions because they built character and competence in their respective career fields. It’s great to discover your turf (as I discussed in the last article). But if what you want is a genuine impact on this nation and the world at large, then what you need is something so powerful that it drives you constantly to think beyond the horizon; something that pre-arranges your future in fine mental details, and then reprograms you for greatness. We call it VISION. Its influence on you can be so deep that it constantly provokes you to creativity and productivity.
The greater your vision is, the greater your influence. Local visions attract local impacts. Global visions attract global impacts. Just as the book of Genesis puts it, As far as your ‘eyes’ can see I have given you.
HOW VISION CHANGES OUR LIVES
People with definite visions are so easy to identify. Vision is so dynamic that it intoxicates and controls whoever is carrying it. A man with a vision has no problem with getting people to support his or her cause. The passion, vigour and tenacity with which he holds on to his dream, become so intense that you’ll almost touch it. Let us take a look at three things you will notice when you catch a career vision.
1. IT DEFINES YOUR CAREER OBJECTIVES AND GOALS
Your career objectives are meant to determine your priorities. It is virtually impossible to achieve anything significant in life without the power of focus and that is what vision makes easy for you. It forces you to define your career objectives and goals. It draws a line between those things that are vital to your cause and helps you to say ‘no’ to distractions. As someone has rightly averred, ‘if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything’ It is at the point of goal-setting that you properly define what career success means to you in 5, 10, or 20 years from today.
You can push yourself to achieve much more than you have ever dreamt of, if you consciously set definite, challenging and achievable career goals for yourself. Visionaries are those who are sure of where they are going, judging by the quality of goals they set for themselves. In a nutshell, your career objectives and goals are a direct reflection of your vision.
2. IT DICTATES THE DIRECTION OF YOUR PLAN
A man with a vision creates an effective and workable plan. The beauty of deliberately creating a unique career plan is that it brings about an internal transformation. This transformation makes you to act consistently as a ‘man on a mission’ who is willing to make necessary sacrifices that would bring about the reality of your dreams. The mere fact that you have thought through the process of your aspiration has made you better placed than most aspiring people out there.
When it comes to career development, the man or woman with the superior strategy or plan becomes more successful than the one with the bigger talents. The comedian AY has proven to be far more successful than many of his contemporaries who are more talented because he carries a vision that drives him continuously.
3. IT ENERGIZES YOU TO TAKE MASSIVE ACTION
The world is only interested in your results. They are not interested in your fantasies or daydreams. A company right here in Nigeria currently pays a young lady in her twenties about three million naira every month simply because of the consistency of her results in the past. You need your plans to get results but the world wants to see what your plans will produce.
Virtually everyone at some point in their lives has made an attempt to do something exceptionally well. But building capacity to succeed requires more than just one or two attempts. It requires massive and endlessly repeated actions in the direction of their dreams. But this action requires physical, emotional and spiritual energy from within which can only be inspired by a great vision. The man with a vision will defy any obstacle to reach the top in his career. A man with a vision can start rejoicing because it carries a self-fulfilling force that no one can stop.
HOW TO ACQUIRE A GREAT VISION
A great vision is people-based. An ambition is about acquiring material possessions but a vision is about genuine and positive impact on people. If what you call your vision does not reflect a passion for helping people- whether as a lawyer, engineer, doctor, or teacher etc.-then what you have is not a vision. Pray to God for a genuine vision today. He is sure to give you one.
Success!
Showing posts with label career success. Show all posts
Showing posts with label career success. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The World Needs You!
Are you confused about what career to pursue in life? Do you have something you would love to do but you haven’t figured out how to make money from it yet? Do you constantly feel depressed that you have to work on that eight-hour job daily while your true potentials waste within you burning for outward expression?
Answering ‘yes’ to any of these questions doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you. It only means that you need to re-evaluate your career focus and values. I’ve been there. I spent several years struggling with boring jobs, failed projects, and painful financial investments wondering why life won’t favour me for once. But all these happened because I had a wrong perception about life, money and career.
The world is full of unhappy, frustrated and impoverished people facing this same dilemma. Many of us grew up among people who believe that ‘some careers are lucrative while others are not’. So everyone makes a run for the ‘good’ careers because they seem to be the only passport to social acceptance, wealth and happiness. Eventually they get stuck in unfit careers, not being able to excel and yet too fearful to quit- because of family responsibilities. You can get out of this rut today by realising that the world needs you.
THE WORLD NEEDS YOU!
Life can be fun, exciting and exhilarating if you develop enough courage to follow your heart when locating your ideal career. There are laws that govern everything we do. If we break them we face the consequences. These laws have no respect for personalities, emotions, sincere intentions or social status.
Career doesn’t make ‘something great‘of a man. It’s the responsibility of the man to make ‘something great’ of his career. In other words, find the right career and you’ll eventually make more money than you will ever spend; but if you make a blind run for the ‘high-paying’ career, all the financial management skills in the world won’t help you become rich.
Not all medical doctors are successful. Neither are all cleaners poor. The medical career would not make success of a doctor, who has never treated a patient successfully in five years. But a passionate and determined housekeeper can skilfully evolve his work into a multimillion dollar cleaning company. Therefore bother less about what will make the world run after you. Instead, bother about what makes you come alive; because what the world needs are people who have come alive. And you can only come alive when you locate a career that reveals the best of you to the world. Unfortunately, only about 10% of all races ever get to locate their ideal careers.
THERE’S ONLY ONE VERSION OF YOU
One of the reasons why people make wrong choices is because of the plague called identity crisis. You see a good looking man in a black Italian suit walking out of a bank and suddenly you begin to ‘feel’ like pursuing a banking career. Someone else sees a singer’s exotic mansion on TV and then begins to fantasize about recording a musical album. It’s great to admire, but it’s suicide to envy. When a person isn’t sure of who he really is, it becomes difficult to draw the line between admiring and envy.
The cure is to understand that you are UNIQUE. And that’s the best gift you can give to the world-your uniqueness. Miss it, and the world misses a chance to meet the best ‘you’ in your lifetime. Express your uniqueness and the world will eventually reward you with fame, happiness and fortune. There’s only one Tiger Woods. Neither do we have two Nelson Mandela’s in this generation. How about our very own Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha? We are yet to find his replacement in the Super Eagles. This reflects how irreplaceable you will become if you locate and pursue your ideal career. Now let me ask you, what will you be known for in the next few years? I leave you to answer that.
MOST PEOPLE ARE MISSING IT!
A research finding I read about recently shows that 87% of the world’s population don’t like their work. And 80% of the world’s workforce agrees that they don’t use their most treasured talents on a daily basis, meaning that their best talents are not relevant to the career they are currently pursuing. That is why a good part of the world is unhappy and frustrated. I hope you are not part of this saddening statistics? Not to worry if you are, because you have the chance to reverse it as I deal with the ‘how’ in next month’s article.
The world needs you. You are Unique!” The best of you will never surface until you believe in this timeless truth. Set yourself free. Be all you can be. But it all begins with choosing the right career. You can’t choose the right career with an unhealthy crave for money in your innermost being. Go in search of your true career and money will follow. This is the first step to a truly successful career.
We’ll continue next month. Success!
Answering ‘yes’ to any of these questions doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you. It only means that you need to re-evaluate your career focus and values. I’ve been there. I spent several years struggling with boring jobs, failed projects, and painful financial investments wondering why life won’t favour me for once. But all these happened because I had a wrong perception about life, money and career.
The world is full of unhappy, frustrated and impoverished people facing this same dilemma. Many of us grew up among people who believe that ‘some careers are lucrative while others are not’. So everyone makes a run for the ‘good’ careers because they seem to be the only passport to social acceptance, wealth and happiness. Eventually they get stuck in unfit careers, not being able to excel and yet too fearful to quit- because of family responsibilities. You can get out of this rut today by realising that the world needs you.
THE WORLD NEEDS YOU!
Life can be fun, exciting and exhilarating if you develop enough courage to follow your heart when locating your ideal career. There are laws that govern everything we do. If we break them we face the consequences. These laws have no respect for personalities, emotions, sincere intentions or social status.
Career doesn’t make ‘something great‘of a man. It’s the responsibility of the man to make ‘something great’ of his career. In other words, find the right career and you’ll eventually make more money than you will ever spend; but if you make a blind run for the ‘high-paying’ career, all the financial management skills in the world won’t help you become rich.
Not all medical doctors are successful. Neither are all cleaners poor. The medical career would not make success of a doctor, who has never treated a patient successfully in five years. But a passionate and determined housekeeper can skilfully evolve his work into a multimillion dollar cleaning company. Therefore bother less about what will make the world run after you. Instead, bother about what makes you come alive; because what the world needs are people who have come alive. And you can only come alive when you locate a career that reveals the best of you to the world. Unfortunately, only about 10% of all races ever get to locate their ideal careers.
THERE’S ONLY ONE VERSION OF YOU
One of the reasons why people make wrong choices is because of the plague called identity crisis. You see a good looking man in a black Italian suit walking out of a bank and suddenly you begin to ‘feel’ like pursuing a banking career. Someone else sees a singer’s exotic mansion on TV and then begins to fantasize about recording a musical album. It’s great to admire, but it’s suicide to envy. When a person isn’t sure of who he really is, it becomes difficult to draw the line between admiring and envy.
The cure is to understand that you are UNIQUE. And that’s the best gift you can give to the world-your uniqueness. Miss it, and the world misses a chance to meet the best ‘you’ in your lifetime. Express your uniqueness and the world will eventually reward you with fame, happiness and fortune. There’s only one Tiger Woods. Neither do we have two Nelson Mandela’s in this generation. How about our very own Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha? We are yet to find his replacement in the Super Eagles. This reflects how irreplaceable you will become if you locate and pursue your ideal career. Now let me ask you, what will you be known for in the next few years? I leave you to answer that.
MOST PEOPLE ARE MISSING IT!
A research finding I read about recently shows that 87% of the world’s population don’t like their work. And 80% of the world’s workforce agrees that they don’t use their most treasured talents on a daily basis, meaning that their best talents are not relevant to the career they are currently pursuing. That is why a good part of the world is unhappy and frustrated. I hope you are not part of this saddening statistics? Not to worry if you are, because you have the chance to reverse it as I deal with the ‘how’ in next month’s article.
The world needs you. You are Unique!” The best of you will never surface until you believe in this timeless truth. Set yourself free. Be all you can be. But it all begins with choosing the right career. You can’t choose the right career with an unhealthy crave for money in your innermost being. Go in search of your true career and money will follow. This is the first step to a truly successful career.
We’ll continue next month. Success!
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