Career Suicide: 5 Steps to Failure

An Article I wrote 4 years ago, that seems as pertinent now as it did then.

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Your career can affect every area of happiness in your life, from your recreational options to your family-life, from your financial stability to your personal fulfillment. Yet so many of us fall into common traps that sabotage our careers and endanger our futures. Don’t let yourself fall prey to any of the self-destructive choices below:

1. Ignoring your talents
2. Living beyond your means
3. Torching the trellises
4. Not planning ahead
5a. Choosing a profession you don't believe in
5b. Choosing a profession you hate

1. Ignoring your talents. So what if everyone told you being an engineer would make you more money than drawing comic books? We get one life – do you want to spend it miserable and wealthy, or fulfilled and, well, maybe still wealthy? Last I checked, Todd McFarlane, the artist who rejuvenated Spider-Man and created Spawn, is worth several million dollars. Your talents exist for a reason – discover where they can take you.

2. Living beyond your means. No matter what you do, if you aren’t making enough money to cover your lifestyle, you will be unhappy, and ultimately unproductive and hazardous to your career. Either find a job that makes more money, or learn to live on what you currently make. When we learn to live a lifestyle that is in line with what we earn, we understand the true value of our efforts.

3. Torching the trellises. More commonly known as burning bridges, leaving a past employer or co-workers with a bad taste in their mouths will haunt you. If your career path doesn’t change, you’ll probably work with or for some of these people again. Even if you make a career shift or move out of state, anyone of them can turn into future clients, members of your church, or even next-door neighbors. Stay professional through every job transition, and you can preserve a wide base of support for the future.

4. Not planning ahead. Technology advancements, market conditions, layoffs – the workplace is more unstable today than at any time in the last 75 years. Stay abreast of changes in your industry. Educate yourself by keeping up with trade magazines, software updates, and company business. Be ready to land on your feet if the firmament under you falls away without warning.

5a. Choosing a cause or employer you don’t believe in. If you do not value the work you do, or the company for which you work, get out! You may be doing what you love, but if you are doing it without a strong belief behind it, it will ultimately undermine any short-term success you experience. Great newspaper salespeople may switch to billboards to make a higher income, but not be able to sell it as well if their belief in the product is too low. Take inventory of your values. Great defense attorneys don’t always make great prosecutors.

5b. Choosing a profession you hate. Sounds rather self-evident, but it happens continually. How many times a day do we deal with someone at a store, over the phone, or in our own offices who clearly hates their job? Don’t let yourself be swayed by prestige, promotion, or money if the job you will take is one you’ve sworn you’d never do, or spent much of your life de-valuing. The day will come when you look in the mirror and wonder who you’ve become.

Career failures lead to financial hardship, family strife, and depression, yet we often make knee-jerk decisions when exiting and entering the workforce. Keep these guidelines in mind next time you shift career paths: Examine your career decisions for at least 24 hours before accepting a position – if it’s the right job, it’ll still be there tomorrow.

Stay true to yourself by finding an accountability partner who can objectively discuss your career path, as opposed to a close friend or family member who may have too large a stake in your affairs. Finally, remember that you are in charge of your career, not the other way around – it exists to enable you to live the rest of your life, not to destroy it.

Who the Champion of Choice Really Is

When this all began back in May, I called myself The Champion of Choice. I have struggled with that 'title' because I've been so concerned with viewing it as a title, when, in fact, it is an action.

I champion choice. I fully believe we have the power to choose every action everyday, and we can deconstruct the present state of our lives based on the choices we have made, or chosen not to make. I know I am where I am right now because of each choice I've made. Continuing this blog is one of those choices.

Even after deleting the posts and videos from the first challenge, which I already regret, there is enough in this blog to let people know I'm not as financially successful as Tony Robbins, Ed Tate, or even OctoMom. Well, maybe OctoMom.

Do I want a meeting planner, corporation, or potential coaching client to read past posts know that I'm not an all-out success yet? That I still have goals I'm pursuing, and the big house, fast car, and massive bank account don't yet exist? That I'm still at the beginning of this journey, as opposed to being inundated with bookings and enjoying the speaker life in full? All it takes is a quick look at this blog, and they can see what struggles I face, without yet acquiring all the victories I aspire to achieve. (Of course, I don't have meeting planners bothering right now, since many of those goals revolve around marketing, but that's beside the point.)

Beyond this blog, the silver screen is lurking. Next year, a movie called SpeakEasy will come out, and it won't be hindered by my fear. It's a documentary about Public Speaking, with the storyline of the 2008 World Championship of Public Speaking as its overriding silver thread. I wasn't doing great during this time of my life financially, and was facing personal and family health challenges (some we knew about, some we didn't) throughout. Anyone who sees that movie will see a very stressed-out version of me in the midst of crisis. Of course, the viewer can also see it as "wow, he made it to the World Championship even through all that crap?"

There's no hiding from reality. I'm a financially strapped speaker/coach who can speak with the best of 'em, and inspire and coach others to transform their thought process and speaking skills in ways they never thought possible. Really. I hear that, or a version of that, every time.

I have allowed my present reality to hold me back, essentially extending my reality. My choice has been fear. Fear of being 'found out'. Fear that my competition will point to me and say "if he were really that good, would he be where he is?"

The reality of my reality, however, has nothing to do with talent or ability. It has to do with fear. Fear of not being credible, fear of investing everything and coming up empty, fear of giving others too much to judge. That means I haven't made the choices to succeed.

I've had enough. Because there isn't an audience out there that wouldn't benefit from what I have to say, there isn't a speaker I couldn't help improve in some way, regardless of my bank balance or stress level. Sound arrogant? I've been afraid of that too. No more.

So read the blog. Watch the movie. But remember to talk to my clients, too. Read Speak & Deliver, and my wife's blog Thriving with Neurofibromatosis. Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook. See who I really am. My life proves my own philosophy - our future is ours to create by choice. I've made the choices to survive. The choice to hold onto my family without losing grip of my dream. The choice to build my wife's dreams even as I pursue my own. But ultimately, the choice to fear failure so intensely I have failed by not charging forward with every ounce of energy. Which brings us to now.

The choice I'm making today, December 1st, 2009, is to stop being afraid of reality, in order to build a new one.

What is your reality? What can you do better than anything else, regardless of any other circumstances in your life? What choices are you making out of fear?

The future belongs to The Champions. The Champions of Choice.

Keeping the Momentum through Choice: Pt. III - Faith!

A quick shout out to Laura, Kristi, and Bari for joining us over at the Champion of Choice Challenge Community Site! Posting your goals, your personal challenge, is the next step! It doesn't have to be huge, and it can even be just one thing! Losing weight, writing a book, starting a blog, trying something new – whatever you want to achieve, come in, write it down, and we'll encourage you towards your success! We may even have some ideas on how you can reach those goals faster than you thought!

I've been talking about how you (and I) can keep momentum up on a daily basis. Wednesday we looked at the power of Change, yesterday the power of Ritual. Today's strategy is Faith.

This does not refer to faith in a “higher power”, though that certainly has its place. Instead, I mean faith in the process. In YOUR process. Once you've identified what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you are choosing to achieve it, having faith in the process is essential.

Few things happen overnight, and success is rarely an overnight event. Invariably, overnight successes have strong and long roots in obscurity, patience, and even repeated failure. Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln are famous example of people whose biggest accomplishments occurred only after years of repeated failures. While both had sparks of success along the way, their 'big moments' far outshined all they accomplished, and failed to accomplish, before that point.

Each had a faith that they would achieve something of value – for themselves, and for the world. Each found a way to keep moving forward after losing an election or seeing yet another experiment fizzle into darkness.

The faith doesn't even have to be in yourself – it may just be in what you're going to do. You know you're going to invent, write, sing, paint, or otherwise create something that brings value to others – through the value of the creation, and the by-product of the success achieved from it. Don't give up too soon, don't stop at the idea right before the idea that works.

Have faith in the process. Write that next blogpost – if its not genius, at least it brings you closer to genius. Paint that next painting – if its not brilliant, it brings you closer to brilliance. Launch that next product – if its not a success, know that your next one will be. Have faith in your ends, and your means will work themselves out to get you there.