Essential Principles of Career Success

Essential Principles of Career Success : Sometimes we pay too much attention to KPIs, targets and career objectives we forget to pay attention to a set of principles that should guide us. These are the basis for career planning success you may like to follow.

1. A Positive Mental Attitude
As boring as it sounds, this is important. It is probably the most important of all. As you think so you are. You want positive things to happen to you, you must first have a positive attitude. That means looking on the bright side of things regardless of how tough your days, months and year is.

You dread going to work tomorrow; your day will turn out a dread just as you thought it would be. You are a master of your thoughts, not a slave to it. You feel you have lost interest; remind yourself why you found interest in the first place. Almost always it will reignite you.

You don’t know how to be positive? Start with a single thought. As pathetic as it sounds, say to yourself – “Look at the sun today. Such a nice day.” But that is also as easy as it gets. It’s tough? That’s because you think it is tough. Again, it goes back to your thought. Make positive thinking part of your career planning success.

Think, feel, and do. Think happy thoughts, feel the energy and act happy. When you do it often enough you become a positive person. The same energy needed to think worrying and negative thoughts is the same that is needed to think happy and positive thoughts. Why waste that energy? Think a happy thought now.

2. A Sense of Purpose
We think when people say, what is your purpose in life? The answer must surely be grand. Maybe, go to such and such country, start a charity, volunteer at a home and so on and so forth. Sure, if you know that is your calling, so be it. Go ahead and do it. But what if you do not and are still muddling through life? Is life’s purpose so easily discovered? If your life’s purpose was revealed to you today, would you even know it? Are you willing to pay the price for it? While you discover your purpose in life may I suggest this?

Your work is not a hindrance to that search for your grander purpose in life. If it is, you have a choice. If it isn’t, do not blame your work. Get angry at it, you will drift further from your answer. In fact, your work now is part of the process of discovering your grander purpose in life. It is filled with hints, clues and challenges that point you to that purpose.

To do that, find a sense of purpose in your work now. What is your purpose at work? What role do you play? What services do you offer to your fellow colleagues to that make this a better place to work and a better world, and also through the services and products offered by your company? Understand that role and you will understand your grander purpose better, if not discover it. This is an important part of your career planning success and a factor for career success.

3. Joyful Effort
Too many times, you hear people talk about effort. About having to work hard and how you need a combination of working hard and smart. You want to make your career success journey a happy one. Remember these two words. Joyful effort. Effort itself is not enough. You must do it joyfully. Work will become a dread whether through monotony or constant challenges that comes your way. If it was just plain effort, you get tired easily.

Joyful effort gives you energy and endurance in pursuit of your goals. It keeps you from being sidetracked by laziness and challenges. It keeps you from becoming disillusioned by challenges and adversity.

How do you put joy into effort? One way is to have a strong and healthy mind. How do you have a strong and healthy mind? Think positive. How do you think positive? Seed a positive thought. The other way is to see setbacks as lessons that increase chances of success and adversity as a test of mental strength. When you see how these efforts contribute to your success (and discovery of your purpose, if that is your goal), you will do things joyfully.

4. Focus
You can be doing many things with joyous effort and yet fail because you do not focus. Being focused means to train your mind not to wander. Do not focus on one goal now only to switch goals before you even do enough for the previous one.

Be mindful and aware of everything that you do is also being focused. Detach from your ego. There is no need to be right all the time and argue for the sake of wanting to be right. Concentrate on the task at hand and single-mindedly pursue it. When you focus, you gain clarity to situations that are confusing and insights into misconceptions that feed negative thoughts to your mind. Then your career planning success has a higher chance of coming to fruition.

What does this mean? For example, if you have a project that everyone has agreed to pursue but half way someone outside the group criticizes it. Focus. Those comments only bring confusion to you if you do not focus and allow your ego to get into that situation. You will become confused and distracted. Gain clarity by focusing and you will know those comments aren’t important to the pursuit of your goals. Focus is an important factor for career success.

5. Right Ethics
Big words but it really just means in the things that we say or do – we abstain from lying, abstain from using harsh words, abstain from gossiping, abstain from using divisive speech and abstain from being malicious.

Always think win-win at work (and in life). You have to believe that there is such a thing as win-win. Do not scheme and plot your career success. There are no such things. Even if it happens by such means, it wouldn’t last. If you put in the right effort, good things will happen to your career soon enough. Your career planning success is really as simple as that.

Of course it is tough practicing this principle, but the more you are able to do it the more freedom you will feel. The more self-discipline you have in doing it, the less you will be caught up in confusing situations and it frees you from malice and wrong views. Being nice is really just that easy. Practice the right ethics.

6. Embrace Setbacks
There are no failures in life. Only setbacks. In your career planning success do not ever believe in failures. And you truly only fail when you give up. So long as you continue to try and do and focus on your goals, you will still be in the running for success. Learn to embrace setbacks. They teach you what not do the next time and they test your patience. It is also a test of your resolve.

You are not born to know how to do such and such. Hence, everything is a learning process. As with all learning process, there are bound to be setbacks. Even if you know how to do something there is no guarantee of success, as we are prone to forget. Setbacks can be just that. A reminder of what we have forgotten. Include this factor in your career planning success.

When faced with setbacks, know that they are just that – setbacks. You can still spring forward. Learn from it, plan and activate what you have learned. You need not beat yourself over it. Cut yourself some slack, so to speak. Minimize the anger and sadness and move on.

7. Teamwork and Support Group
No one can teach you everything. No one can know everything. No one can do everything. You need to know the value of teamwork and the process to forge teamwork. You increase your own success when you help the team succeed. The team’s goals are intrinsically weaved into your own goals. Just as your goals at work are weaved into your personal goals. The more people you help succeed, the faster you succeed. Include others in your career planning success and you will succeed faster and easier.

Create a support group of positive people in the office and outside to motivate, encourage or just to slap some senses into you when you need it. This support group can be made up of individuals who are your friends whom you meet often. It need not and is not meant to be a formal meeting. The important thing to remember is to have POSITIVE people. When you are down and negative you do not need more negative energy infused into you.

You need to remember not to be a positive energy drainer as well in such situations. Do not go to your friends and expect to be convinced to be positive. You must allow others to make you positive. Positive people have a tendency to avoid negative people who drain them too often.