Ask Yourself This: Have You Ever Thought About 2028?
Monday, March 31, 2008
Like many social entrepreneurs, if building your career is first in your mind, you're going to have to mind what you put first. Many a great vision in life has always put the well-being of others, and the person's vision in life and career objectives are focused on bring to reality a concept that will bless others ahead of themselves.
With the world becoming smaller and smaller, career building has actually become a little easier. By creating and working on a vision in life that impacts the world on a global scale, social entrepreneurs and visionaries like you can make a positive impact that can change the world as we know it.
Some career building individuals think about what they are to do twenty minutes later. Others dwell on their Christian personal vision plan twenty days from now. Yet others focus their career building efforts on results that show twenty weeks down the road. And yet others push to see the fruits of their twenty months into the future. Successful career building visionaries see the impact of their hard work in 20 years.
What about you? Are you thinking about 2028?
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Friday Four: Four Tips to Help You Weather Tough Times
Friday, March 28, 2008
That's the nature of a crisis, and, yes, it can be difficult to deal with. However, people who have passion for their visions in life, however, don't let crises get in their way. They look at these events as challenges and opportunities to tap.
If you aren't one of these visionaries, fret not. Here are four tips on keeping you focused on bringing your vision to life.
1. Prepare yourself for the road ahead. Any plan to bring your vision to life should always take into consideration emotional, spiritual, and sometimes even physical preparation. Bringing your vision to life is not going to be easy, so if you ready yourself inside and out, you prepare yourself much better for the rough times ahead.
2. Hone your skills and sharpen your tools. No soldier goes into battle without the proper training and weapons, yes? If your vision in life involves something that you feel you need preparation for, do not hesitate to pursue additional education to ensure you're ready and capable to meet the requirements of bringing your vision to life.
3. Have a solid support system in place. No career building professional is an island. When you have someone you trust on hand, someone who is ready to give you his personal or professional opinion about decisions you need to make, you ease the burden and accountability of bringing your vision to life, just a little bit.
4. The world doesn't end when you stumble. Career building goals will never be met in a day. If you stumble, the important thing is to get up. Don't punish yourself if certain moves weren't necessarily the right ones. There will always be opportunities to make up for those moves.
My book Bring Your Vision to Life prepares you significantly for the tough times ahead as you work towards making this world a better one. Click here to learn more about my book.
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Visionary: Henri Dunant
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sometimes, though, a vision in life can take place on a spur of the moment. Reacting a crisis, the way that Henri Dunant, founder of the organization that would become the Red Cross, did, can spell the difference between a successful but otherwise worldweary career or a visionary legacy that can last forever.
Henri Dunant was born in 1828 to a wealthy family that prized social work. After initial career building efforts that he set for himself as a banker did not prosper, Dunant attempted to build a career in Algeria as a wheat mill operator, but he needed the approval of Emperor Napoleon III for documents needed to operate it. Upon travel to Italy, where the emperor was commanding troops fighting the Austrian army, he was taken aback by the sheer number of dead and dying at the battle of Solferino.
Dunant quickly brought a new vision to life by responding to the grisly crisis. He organized the townsfolk around the area to treating the wounded, regardless of nationality. Shortly thereafter, he wrote a book about his experiences, a career-building tome titled A Memory of Solferino. The book led to the creation of the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, an organization that would soon be known to billions as the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Dunant’s vision of an organization that responded to crises led to the creation of an organization that has saved countless lives. The question is: if you are in such a crisis, can you respond with a vision greater than the crisis?
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Ask Yourself This: How Fast Do You React to a Crisis?
Monday, March 24, 2008
Career building goals, as a matter of fact, can benefit from the sheer fact you react to a crisis and call it by a different name. It says a lot about your vision in life when you call a problem by a different name, like ‘challenge.’ Or ‘opportunity.’ When you look at a crisis differently, when there is no fear of potential stumbling blocks, and when you react to a situation with grace and aplomb, well, people really sit up and take notice.
Are you the type of person who others can expect to run to in times of trouble?
The speed with which you react to a crisis is an excellent indication of the passion with which you treat your vision in life. Red Cross founder Henri Dunant, for instance, saw an immediate need during the world wars, a crisis that necessitated the creation of some kind of organization that would save lives, regardless of color and nationality. He saw a crisis and reacted quickly, because time was of the essence.
You may not see crises around you just at a particular time, but a crisis is exactly like that. It happens when people least expect it, and wreaks a great amount of damage. React to it with maturity, creativity, and confidence, and you’ve just put yourself further into the right frame of mind to your vision to life.
For more information on how crises can affect bringing your vision to life, as well as how to deal with these in a timely and calm manner, click here.
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Friday Four: Four Tips to Make Bringing Your Vision to Life More Enjoyable
Friday, March 21, 2008
1. Work with people whose company you enjoy. Several studies have shown that career building goals and a Christian personal vision plan work so much more effectively when they are developed and brought to fruition by like-minded people who genuinely enjoy each other's company. So, if your career building objectives revolve around, say, doing something revolutionary in the field of toy-making, it certainly makes more sense to work with someone who enjoys making, designing, or working with toys.
2. Treat yourself to rewards every so often. The career building mentality has always been, push-push-push. What most people don't realize when it comes to bringing one's vision in life to reality, is that there really should be some rewards structure for milestones reached.
Whatever rocks your boat, as long as it is reasonable, shouldn't be denied you; after all, no one ever said bringing your vision to life had to happen at the expense of your happiness... or sanity.
3. Give yourself a break. How different are breaks from rewards? Immensely! While rewards are great motivational tools for the career building visionary, breaks offer you the opportunity to recharge, to step away from all the career building, and to examine your vision in life from a fresh perspective. It also makes getting back to work a lot more motivating.
4. Revel in the bloopers. People - even career building ones - make mistakes. If you do, don't get bogged down by the hiccup. Instead, use it as motivation to tweak the process to prevent future slip-ups. Rome wasn't built in a day, and a fire certainly won't burn it down in a day. Okay, maybe it will, but you know God is a God of second chances.
My book, Bring Your Vision to Life, contains a lot of information on how to really get the most out of your vision-building, as well as some ideas on how it can be more enjoyable. Click here for more information.
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Visionary: Walt Disney
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
When it comes to building your career, the life of Walt Disney is a great template. Disney followed his heart when he decided to pursue his love of motion pictures and the theater. He studied night courses at the Chicago Art Institute, becoming the cartoonist for the school's newspaper. He came a step closer to bringing his vision to life with his first job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he met another artist, a cartoonist by the name of Ubbe Iwerks, with whom he started an art business.
Disney soon set out to fulfill his career objectives when he pooled his money with his brother to set up a cartoon studio in his uncle's garage. This was the start of the rapid expansion of his career building efforts: a series of shorts - Alice Comedies, based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland - became successful. After the Alice shorts ran their course, Disney and Iwerks created a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and then a character named Mortimer Mouse, who eventually was renamed Mickey Mouse. The rest, as they say, is history.
Disney was legendary for enjoying the life he led, and it paid off in a big way. He was a visionary in entertainment and animation: to this day, his career building efforts are legendary. He holds the record for being the only man with most Academy Award nominations (64) and winds (26). He’s won seven Emmy Awards, and his company grosses more than US$35billion annually, mostly from merchandise and the famous Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, France, Japan and China.
What did Disney do that was so amazing? He centered his vision on entertainment, and enjoying bringing that vision to life.
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Ask Yourself This: How Much Do You Enjoy Bringing Your Vision to Life?
Monday, March 17, 2008
The most exciting thing about bringing your vision to life is that it agrees with you. If you believe in your vision in life, if you believe that this is what you were put on Earth to do, then whatever career building goals you set out for yourself, will all be relatively easy for you to do because your motivation comes from within!
Many career building professionals in the IT industry, for instance, dream of one day ending up at Google. What is so special about Google? Google seeks to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.' All the career building men and women have internalized this vision and work towards a variety of things aimed at meeting that one goal. In return, of course, Google provides an amazing work environment for its employees. How's that for career building motivation?
A Christian personal vision plan, on the other hand, always has in its center the desire to honor God. If building your career around Matthew 28, which tells Christians to go forth and make disciples in the name of Jesus Christ, is something you want to do, the kind of motivation that comes from inside (and from God) can be very strong... and very satisfying.
Whatever your vision in life may be, building your career around something that is enjoyable for you may be one of the best decisions you'll ever make. My book, Bring Your Vision to Life, is full of ideas on how to have a great time while building for yourself a lasting legacy. For more information, click here.
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Friday Four: Four Reasons Why Breaking Status Quo Works
Friday, March 14, 2008
Here are four reasons why breaking the status quo can work:
1. If done respectfully, breaking status quo shows your bosses you may have something extra. Career building moves that go against the flow can sometimes be seen as insubordination; however, it can also be interpreted as foresight. Visionaries bringing their visions to life will sometimes have to go against the grain, but if you sell your idea well, and introduce the good points, you may win allies over to your cause easier than you think.
2. Breaking status quo can show strength of character - or at least strong belief in one's personal values. When one breaks status quo in defense of one's vision in life, one is saying, I believe in this so much, I am willing to take large risks for that. And this shows strength of character.
3. Breaking status quo shows you can roll with the punches. Oftentimes, a career building move will require a great change that won't necessarily go to your liking at first. Bringing your vision to life isn't easy, after all. However, if you break status quo and it doesn't go well, and you handle the results with grace and aplomb, that can be a plus in your favor after all.
4. Breaking status quo is better than stagnation. Think about it: when it comes to career building, stagnation is the most terrible thing that can happen to you. No visionary ever succeeded in bring his vision of life and career objectives to life without challenging himself to go beyond the comfortable.
My book Bring Your Vision to Life contains several ideas on how you can challenge status quo in good and positive ways. For more information, click here.
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Visionary: Rosa L. Parks
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Parks is best known for her career building move of refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1900, the city had passed a law that allowed bus conductors to segregate passengers by race. Parks had a vision in life where colored Americans would be accorded the same civil rights given Caucasian Americans, and, true to her vision in life, she stayed put.
The bus driver had her arrested, which led to the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which carried on for almost 400 days and severely damaged the bus industry of that city, 75% of which was patronized by colored Americans. Parks said in a radio interview a few months after her arrest that her move not to vacate her seat was motivated by a desire to "know for once and for all what rights [she] had as a human being and a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama."
Parks' career building move led to her permanent fixture as a secretary at one of the United States' more prominent congressmen's offices. More importantly, it served to cement the vision in life and career opportunities of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose own vision in life changed the United States forever.
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Ask Yourself This: How Satisfied Are You With Status Quo?
Monday, March 10, 2008
When I was younger, I often looked at certain situations in school and often asked myself, "is this as good as it gets?" Sometimes, I'd get a great idea on how to make a process better, or how I might be able to study more effectively given the crunch time for studying, but there were moments when I was literally discomfited by the thought that something could be made better and I could be the guy to make it happen.
Little did I realize back then that the desire to do something new in an existing context was the very stuff of vision.
More often than not, successful visionaries often create their career building goals around the possibility of making a much-needed improvement or transformation in an existing situation to which they have access.
Building your career with a vision in life doesn't necessarily mean 'improvement.' It simply means changing the status quo. People with a Christian personal vision plan, for instance, may wish to incorporate their beliefs into their vision in life and therefore rock the boat; more secular visionaries, can look to the greater good when developing their vision of life and career objectives.
At the end of the day, all your career building efforts should still go towards making a difference and changing the situation from the way it was the day before. Ask yourself that: are you contributing to status quo, or are you interested in making a - hopefully positive - difference?
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Friday Four: Four Tips to Keep Your Obstacles at Bay
Friday, March 7, 2008
Here are four tips to help you handle the pressures of adversity that occasionally threaten to get in the way of your building your career:
- Don’t be afraid to consider worst-case scenarios, but always work to create the best-case scenario. There is one difference between a career building pessimist, a career building optimist, and a career building visionary: the first two see only one side of the coin and don’t really consider the other extreme; the third considers both, prepares for both, and works to ensure that it doesn’t have to come to worst-case scenario.
- Budget is budget. Prepare for it well! Not everyone can draft up a budget, and definitely not everyone can stick to it. One of the greatest pitfalls of any person’s career building goals is underestimating or overestimating his budget.
- Two words: back-up plan. One’s vision of life and career objectives will never come to fruition without a back-up plan. If something doesn’t go according to plan, there’s got to be a ‘Plan B.’ It is just common sense, really.
- Be careful when you compromise. At first glance, compromise is a good thing when it comes to building your career. However, you’ll also find that compromise can also end up derailing all your efforts if you aren’t careful. So ensure you stick to your values when it comes to making those decisions; at the very least, you can go to bed better at night.
My book, “Bring Your Vision to Life,” is home to several ideas that can help you deal with adversity and get through the pressures. For more information, click here.
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Visionary: Nehemiah
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Nehemiah’s career building history began as the royal cupbearer of Persian King Artaxerxes. Judea, Nehemiah’s home state, was a province of the Persian Empire, and its capital, Jerusalem, was in awful disarray when word came to Nehemiah via his brother Hanani about it.
After hearing of Jerusalem’s sorry state, Nehemiah revised his career building goals, and focused instead on a new vision in life: rebuilding the great wall of Jerusalem and helping bring it back to its former glory.
This was a cupbearer! Yet, Nehemiah’s career building efforts included a great relationship with the king, so when the time came for him to ask the king to let him leave so he could restore it, he was able to get permission. As a matter of fact, the king appointed him governor of Judea.
This was a cupbearer!
With assistance from the King, Nehemiah obtained assistance from the keeper of the royal forests and a strong escort. He rallied up the citizens of Judea, and together, they implemented a plan for the restoration of the city. Such was Nehemiah’s vision and life and attention to detail – assisted by God, of course – that the wall of Jerusalem was completed in a mere 52 days!
This was a cupbearer!
Of course, not everyone approved of Nehemiah’s vision in life, and soon enough, obstacles came his way. The most difficult of all were a group of naysayers led Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arab, henchmen of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria to the north of Judea. These three men tried to stop the rehabilitation of the city by harassing, bullying, and insulting the people led by Nehemiah. But the cupbearer’s faith in God and in his vision was extremely strong, and he saw the project through to completion. He even served as governor until his death.
Nehemiah was a cupbearer, but his vision in life and courage in seeing it through to completion despite obstacles and things greater than himself, standing in his way.
What about you? Can you see yourself handling intimidating obstacles standing in the way of your vision? Would you deal with it like Nehemiah?
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Ask Yourself This: How Do You Handle Adversity?
Monday, March 3, 2008
Not everyone, however, can survive, if you will, the situations that threaten to derail your career building efforts.
No person with a solid vision in life saw that vision through without asking himself the what-ifs and possibly preparing for them. What do you do if your store burns down? What’s the next step if you lose your right-hand man? How do you handle corruption in government that looms ominously over your shoulder like some bloodthirsty leech, waiting to suck you bone-dry?
A man with a vision in life that inspires him to forge on, despite the difficulties that arise, is a man with a master plan, and, likely, a man who will see his vision in life through to completion. No successful social entrepreneur ever made it through without being a stranger to adversity; no successful businessman ever saw his goals attained without preparing well – in every sense of the word – for the challenges guaranteed to come his way.
Ask yourself this: how do you handle adversity?
My book, Bring Your Vision to Life, contains great tips on how to sidestep adversity and keep your spirits up when times are hard. Click here for more information.
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