Just saw the Under Armour’s “Rule Yourself” Ad with Michael Phelps. It’s a tearjerker. As we watch the Olympians, we know it takes dedication, hard work and sacrifices to make the Olympic dream a reality. But there’s a difference between knowing something and feeling it seeing the look on Phelps’ face as he stands shivering by the pool in the wee hours of the morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh9jAD1ofm4
In sports and in our professional career, success doesn’t just fall into our lap. To achieve professional growth and success, we need to manage our career like a high performing athlete. The talent and skills must be there as a solid foundation to build a career upon, but then some key elements are required to develop a career path and achieve professional success.
PERSONAL DRIVE
“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in” ~Bill Bradley
Success starts with a dream. Drive is the unshakeable commitment to achieve that dream. Recently successful people tweeted about their first jobs. It was interesting to read about celebrities’ starter jobs before they climbed the ladder of success. It’s our personal drive that turns our dream into actions, and our actions into results even when the climb up is long and difficult. Being driven means constantly searching for opportunities to learn, grow, and improve.
PERSISTENCE
“I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeed.” ~ Michael Jordan
Success requires persistence and its twin sister perseverance. Persistence is about having the stamina to chase our dreams. Perseverance is about having the mental strength to deal with setbacks and the grind. As is evident in the “Rule Yourself” ad, being an athlete means powering through grueling physical conditioning and long workouts; those cold early morning swims and the intense intervals at the gym. Staying motivated through the grind is what makes winners. Sometimes in our career, we arrive at a point when it’s no longer fun. It is a part of the deal in striving to achieve long term goals. Persistence means not giving up on a dream when the going gets tough. The difference between having a dream and making a dream come true is having a plan, acting on it, and adjusting it as needed. It requires staying focused on what’s important, learning from what isn’t working, and going after our goals with sheer determination and unwavering belief that in one way or another, sooner or later, we will make our dream come true.
CONFIDENCE
“The most important thing for success is self-belief and confidence. Believing you deserve it. Believing you can do it. Believing you will get it.” ~Anil Sinha
Successful people are believers; they believe they can do the job and succeed. They know who they are and where their strengths are. They have the courage to let go of the things that hold them back and do whatever it takes to learn and improve. Real confidence lies in knowing there’s still more we can do, that we can excel even more. It’s like the Skippy Squeeze It Peanut Butter. It’s tough to get all the peanut butter out, but when we think it’s empty, we can still squeeze out just a little more. But to give more we need the confidence try new things: a new strategy, a new perspective, a new training regime, and sometimes maybe hire a new coach.
RESPONSIBILITY
“The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you to either success or failure, however you define those terms.” ~ Neal Boortz
Successful people take responsibility for their success. They seek help from others to get the job done, but they take full responsibility for their losses and share the credit for their wins. I was lucky to find a great mentor on my very first job who told me “only hire, keep and reward employees who see solutions, not problems and who make progress, not excuses.” His advice proved invaluable as I was hiring and building work teams throughout my career. To succeed, we need to take initiative and accept the lessons learned in the school of hard knocks as part of the process of moving forward. We have plenty of choices, and our decisions are ours to make. The daily actions we make each day are paving the path to our success. We need to own it when we mess up and find the way to get back on track.
BALANCE
“Balance is not better time management, but better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices.” ~ Betsy Jacobson
Career choices include the jobs we accept, the type of work we do, the things we are willing to put up with and the number of hours we put in. Our efforts, the quality of the work we do, and the relationships we build today create our future opportunities. We’ve got to think about our long term career prospects in the decisions we make and the actions we take. All of our choices strategically position us for long-term career success. Sprinters can’t run a marathon at their sprinting pace for the entire race. And it’s not likely that even the fastest marathon runner would beat the sprinting world record. We need to prepare for the race we are running: not go out too fast using all of our energy too early, and be ready to sprint in our career and pull those all-nighters when we need to. They key is to keep a good balance over the long haul.
In sum, in sports and in our career, we get out of it what we put into it. And for all of us this is not the last goodbye. There are still untapped possibilities within us for the future.
