Chapter Five - How to Accomplish a Great Career

Part Two

Chapter Five How to Accomplish a Great Career

Write your own book instead of reading someone else's book on success

— Herb Brooks

Dr. P. Madhurima Reddy

The Essence of a Good Career

Your career is based on the path that you choose where you go in your life. Your career is one of the strongest factors that decides how successful you are and how satisfying your life is. A good career is one you find rewarding in every way. It should give you the financial strength you have aimed for, allow you to choose the profession you always wanted, giving your good scope for growth, giving you a position of value, and finally keeping you happy and satisfied with yourself and the people you care about. But choosing a career isn't easy unless you have a proper career plan, that determines the path you choose.

Steps Towards a Strong Career

Make a Career Plan

A good career plan helps you to pave your future securely. This planning usually begins as soon as you step out of high school. Choosing the right stream of your higher education, be it Arts, Sciences, Engineering, Law, Technology, Business etc., is extremely crucial as these later become the determining factors in your career. Once you have chosen your preferred stream of choice, it is essential you set your academic goals which can help you sharpen your focus. Accruing as much knowledge and developing skills in your specialised stream can help you become the ideal candidate for employers choosing you. While it would be advisable to focus on specific subjects that can fetch you a prospective employment, it is also imperative that you master soft skills such as attitude, communication, writing skills, social skills, time management, team skills, and essential life skills, that can help you live without depending on anyone. These and your academic skills combined together would make you a perfect candidate for any company since employers would like to pick up

candidates who have the right balance of both academic and soft skills as they would find them more easier to train and be adaptable. Set Your Goals

A career plan is the first step that lays out both your short-term goals such as envisioning your position say in about five years, and your long-term goal that can go beyond ten to twenty years. While getting a good job can be part of your short-term goal, reaching your dream job or becoming an entrepreneur can be your longterm goals. While some of the goals may seem challenging, they would become more manageable when you set your career plan properly. Creating a solid career plan helps you grow easily in the professional path of your choice. The career plan is a structured amalgamation of your education, your interests, skills, values, your goals, and your vision. Ensure you have a realistic career plan which will inevitably become a critical part of your growth, your personality, and your development. If you fail to put a career plan together you might end up having a career crisis too. Setting specific timelines for achieving your targets can help you immensely in your actual career. This way you are constantly motivated to pursue the set path and would more often than not, land the prized position of your focus. While there would naturally be several challenges in your pursuit of a good career, careful planning and a strong focus on your goals will give you the necessary confidence and strength to continue unwaveringly in your path and allow you to accomplish your objectives. Look for a Mentor

It would always be appropriate to look for a mentor when you wish to pursue a good career. Mentors can act as strong guides and help steer you in the path of the right direction in your career. Choose a mentor who is a master in your profession and someone who can

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give you the right guidance and advice for you to progress in your career.

The essence of a good career is your ability to plan your future, and visualise where you would be, not just in ten years, but where you might actually be after your retirement, say when you reach sixty or seventy. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Survey and research what jobs are the most prospective for the next ten to twenty years and take the help of a good mentor to decide on one. The one which you choose must match your interests, your education, your knowledge, and skills, and show how it can make you grow. Strengthen your professional skills by continuously preparing for the targeted job. Strengthen yourself on essential life skills such as: •Oral and Written Communication

•Critical & Creative Thinking •Problem Solving •Decision Making •Self-Awareness

•Compassion •Interpersonal Skills •Stress Management •Emotional Intelligence

•Time Management •Teamsmanship •Social Skills

Prepare a foolproof professional resume – This is the first document through which your profile is communicated to the potential employer. So, a well written, accurate and grammatically correct resume that effectively conveys your strengths and capabilities in a concise format must always be available with you. Identify the best companies that you think can hire you, list them out, prioritize them in the order of your choice, and apply to them for the available positions you are eligible for. Once you apply but do not get a response within a reasonable time frame, do follow up once again. It is likely the concerned personnel may not have seen your application. A few follow up mails should show you a responsible response. All respected companies respond to their mails. Try different methods of communicating with them, through mails, phones, messages or even through any possible internal contact. You must overcome your fears to apply and follow up if you are serious about a job. Once you receive the response and the interview call, with the level of your preparation, you should be easily able to get the job. Companies are constantly on the lookout for the best people to join them, and once they recognise that you possess all the traits they are looking for, you are in for an opportunity galore. Companies become great only because of the people that work for them. Once you are in, your career path begins. Give your best to the company you are working for. Learn to set achievable targets, ensure your knowledge and skills are in line and update with your job, maintain discipline, punctuality and be an excellent teammate and show the organisation that you are a dedicated, smart, and hardworking employee. Check the

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company’s set objectives and endeavour to align your personal goals with the same. Be a result-oriented worker who shows exemplary performance and productivity and maintain that consistency. Keep a careful record of every testimonial, incentive, award, or certificate that is given to appreciate your performance. In course of time your performance will yield the necessary results. If you are satisfied with your growth, you will be happy with the overall results of your career plan. However, if you believe there are better prospects in other organisations after you have put in a respectable period of service in the company, you may restart the process of shifting to another, using a similar strategy. You may use the services of recruitment consultants too. And if you believe you have achieved excellent growth and garnered enough experience, and possibly have the necessary backing, you might venture upon an entrepreneurship yourself. Achieving the desired level of success is completely dependent upon you. Your constant improvement with yourself and your determination to be the best will work wonders for your career. “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.”

— Walt Disney

Know your Purpose and Finetune your Focus “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee One of the most essential factors that is central to your success is your focus, your understanding of what you actually desire and truly yearn for. Once you have established that conclusively, just aim your focus on that one thing. You may have a bigger objective, a larger goal and huge mission, but they are achievable only when you determine your focus on the smaller

components of that dream and focus on them. Let the component of your target be as small as possible and put your complete focus on it. That way accomplishments get easy. Only once you reach there must you shift your focus to the next step. And your focus must display the grit and determination that you pursue it with. In the Mahabharata, when Arjuna was tasked with bringing down the fish in the ceiling by looking at the mirror beneath him, he looked at the object with complete focus. The rest of the world became completely closed to him. It was the only target and that was it. He achieved the impossible where even the greatest warriors of the time who attended the event failed at it. That was the power of his focus. Karna was as good as an archer as Arjuna if not better, but even he could not accomplish it. He was doubtful and that made him lose his focus. But Arjuna knew he would bring down the target. Nothing else mattered to him. And that is how he finally ended up winning the prize, Draupadi. Anything that you do with complete passion, focus and determination is bound to be accomplished, however large the ambition may be. Once you break it down to smaller ingredients or smaller steps, howsoever small, and concentrate on the sole objective of attaining it, reaching it, or accomplishing it, you are bound to be there. Most successful people do the same. They are plainly, completely, and fully focused; they set targets that are reasonable, and the results are always extraordinary. Only after they reach them do they shift their focus to something new or to the next step in their ambition. Success does not happen overnight; it’s not magical, it is built step by step and it is your willingness, your purposeful pursuit, your strength, and fortitude with which you pursue your goal and the determination with which you seek success, that will take you to it. Never lose focus on what you aim at. You cannot shoot two birds at a time. An individual without focus is never ever successful.

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Imagine a sharpshooter. In order to get his target, he carries himself with ultimate focus becoming blind to the entire world around and targeting only the set object. And that is how sharpshooters or snipers are mostly successful and the most handsomely paid set of elite warriors. A few keys to your success are: 1. Knowing your strengths and working to enhance them and identifying your own weaknesses and working strongly to eliminate or overcome them.

2. Setting realistic goals and making them as small and easy to achieve as possible. Try to predict all the challenges you may face in reaching the target, and it becomes easier to conquer them with your diligent planning. 3. Giving a reasonable time frame within which you can reach your goals, is essential to your path. In order to become a leader, you have to show yourself as one, to your closest circles first, and once you are there, endeavour to widen the circle gradually till you reach the top. 4. Working with strong focus, discipline, and determination in pursuit of the one and only goal. Persistence is one of the most crucial factors to get to success. If you give up easily you will never reach the pinnacles of success. Do not allow any distractions that will weaken your focus, whatever they may be. Working resolutely with a single-minded purpose will inevitably get you the success you always dreamt of. Do not allow any failure or setback work against your objectives. On the contrary, every failure should give you more determination and make you more purposeful and focused so that things do fall in your way and leverage your endeavours to become successful.

Every great human being in history has inevitably failed in the beginning, but these great people who created history, never wavered from their vision or objective, and did not allow setbacks, failures, or disappointments to demoralise or demotivate them. They stood strong amidst failures and relentlessly worked against all adversities. And towards the end, success was their ultimate and the sweetest result.

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. — Les Brown

A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory — Arthur Golden

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.

Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great

— Mark Twain

Factors that Cause Career Failures

While there are thousands of success stories of people who rose from nothing to greatness, there are also a pitiably equal amount of stories of people who having reached the pinnacle of success, could not hold on to it for some reasons and have miserably crashed, some quite tragically too. And then there are people who are never successful and remain a constant misery to themselves and everyone around, as perpetual failures. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

— Alice Walker

But why do some successful people fail in their careers, and some never succeed at all? Some of these factors usually are the reason:

•Undefined Purpose •No Proper Goal •No Ambition

•Poor Self Esteem

•Negative Thinking •Poor Professional Skills

•Poor Social Skills

•Lack of Commitment

•Being too Lazy •Fixed Mindset

•No Thinking Skills •No Career Plan

•Lack of Proper Focus •No Determination

•Too Much of Stress

•Too Ambitious

•No Discipline •Always Complaining •Fear

•Complacency •Mediocrity •Avoiding Criticism

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•Lack of Introspection •Setting Unrealistic Goals •Lack of Belief in Your Self

•Too Many Responsibilities All these factors can wreak havoc with our lives and can be major contributors to failure. Being far too ambitious and setting unattainable unrealistic goals can also be fatal to one’s career, just as not having any ambition or purpose to one’s life. While it is true that great men learn from failure, and rework their plans to achieve success, it is essential not to allow any of these elements to hamper our growth and interfere with our success. Some Greatest Success Stories of History Abraham Lincoln, the greatest President of the United States, and the man who worked to abolish slavery from the world, was born in abject poverty as the son of a woodcutter and carpenter. But his humble origins did not stop him from becoming the most powerful man in the world. His entire education and career were self-made with little help from others. He was able to identify opportunity, his visualisation of success, his determination, his discipline and his vision, and his empathy towards people who were considered slaves, will always remain as examples of greatness in humankind.

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” — Abraham Lincoln Albert Einstein, who is revered today as one of the greatest scientists ever born, and the proponent of the ‘Theory of General Relativity,’ was expelled from school for his rebelliousness and his outwardly thinking. He despised rote learning which was viewed seriously by the institution which threw him out. Rather than

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being beaten, he worked relentlessly up the career ladder and in 1921 won the Nobel Prize in Physics. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” ― Albert Einstein Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and one the richest men in the world, quit Harvard midway. His start-up Traf-O-Data was a miserable failure burning a large hole in his revenues. Undeterred he went ahead to found one of the greatest software companies of today with a net worth of 131 Billion Dollars. His greatness also extends to philanthropy of the highest kind with Melinda and Gates Foundation through which thousands of impoverished children from across the world are educated and taken care of.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure

— Bill Gates

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, started the venture in a garage along with one of his closest friends. Incredulously, as the company began to witness success, he was thrown out from the very company he started. Not discouraged and pursuing his goal with renewed energy he established Next and Pixar, and eventually got back to Apple, subsequently becoming its CEO, and giving the world some of the finest communication devices in mobile technology. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from

Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.” — Steve Jobs Oprah Winfrey, grew up in utter poverty, survived molestation and rape both as a child and in her early teenage and became pregnant at fourteen itself. She, however, became a successful anchor after she interned at a radio station. Though she was fired by a producer claiming she was unfit for television, she left to Chicago and

launched the Oprah Winfrey Show from a small time show AM Chicago. Today she is one of the most talked about social influencers of the modern world and is a multi-billionaire and spends a large part of her fortune on charitable activities. “The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance — and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.” ― Oprah Winfrey Walt Disney, creator of the greatest cartoons Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Tom & Jerry, and such iconic creations, had lost utterly in his early endeavours including being fired, experiencing multiple setbacks and massive failures including bankruptcy several times. However, his grit and resolve never failed him. His cartoon Mickey Mouse took over the world a few years later, and today Walt Disney Pictures is one of the largest movie production companies in the world regaling audiences with entertaining movies of the highest kind. “Somehow I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy.”

— Walt Disney

Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance and the Ambani Group, was just a simple clerk in the beginning, working at Yemen. However, he returned to India and ventured into business. His sheer intelligence in identifying opportunity and relentlessly pursuing his ambition enabled him to envision growth. Years later after he passed on, his sons Mukesh and Anil went ahead to build on the strong foundation he laid, making Reliance, one of the biggest corporates in the world, with presence in global industrial sectors such as Telecom, Infra, Retail, Petroleum, Entertainment, and several others.

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"Our dreams have to be bigger. Our ambitions higher.

Our commitment deeper. And our efforts greater. This is my dream for Reliance and for India."

— Dhirubhai Ambani

JK Rowling, is the creator of Harry Potter, the character that wove awe, magic, and sensationalism among hundreds of millions of children and young adults in the world and was one the most successful book series and movies in English literature and entertainment history. But she had a terrible life in her early teens and as a young adult. She grew up with a strained relationship with her father and had to deal with a perpetually ill mother. At twenty-five she got married into an abusive relationship which ended in divorce and leaving her as a single parent leading her into depression and suicidal. Her first book 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' was rejected by all the major publishing houses she approached. However, her persistence paved way as she got the book published with an advance of just 1500 Pounds. But in just a few years, she is recorded to be the first author in the world to become a billionaire through book writing. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default

— J. K. Rowling

Henry Ford, the man who created one of the most popular car brands of the world, was an automobile engineer. But the car design he modelled first was not successful and he lost backing of several investors which dealt a mighty blow to his aspirations, leaving him terribly bankrupt. However, his shrewdness allowed him to finally find a partner who agreed to finance his ambition without interfering in it. In just a few years, Ford became the talk of the town, the world over, making it one of the most affordable

cars of the day. Today it remains one of the most talked about brands in the automotive sector across the world.

There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

— Henry Ford

Vincent Van Gogh, recognised as one of the greatest painters in history, and is considered as the founder of modern art, was never successful in his lifetime. His paintings were not of interest to any art promoters of his day. He was able to sell only one painting all his life, though his works were prolific and covered multiple themes and genres and were bold, artistic, and emotional. He suffered mental illness, breakdowns and considered himself a complete failure. Finally, he tragically shot himself to death at just 37. Ironically after his death, his real talent was discovered, and his works quickly grew to prominence catching the imagination of the world by fire. Today he remains one of the most prominent painters and artists of modern art fetching his works millions of dollars.

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

Dr. Madhurima Reddy, herself is a great story of success, from the kind of background she hails. Born in an orthodox family from a region that abounds in conservativism when it comes to the education of a girl, she crossed all barriers and societal pressures and went ahead to pursue her higher studies and her career, never stopping or giving up against any adversity. Going against the traditional taboos that typically go against women in the region, where the education of women is considered more of a chore than a necessity, she defied all odds, defying convention, obtaining twin doctoral qualifications and a total of

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nine highest qualifications, while earning hundreds of medals, certificates, awards, and honours from organisations across the globe. Today she is recognised among several countries as a renowned Clinical Psychologist, Life Coach, Business and Wealth Coach, Motivational Speaker, Counsellor, Therapist, and Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming. Also, as an entrepreneur and founder of La Winspire International, she is respected widely in the global training community.

How to Manifest your Dream Career The Law of Attraction will be a source of great help when you desire to obtain the right career and the right degree of success in your life. The universe exists to give you what you want, based on how truly you want it and what steps you take to get to it. By setting things in motion for any objective, in appropriate and accurate steps, you will be able to manifest your dream career. Setting your goals and making a plan, discovering what you actually want, eliminating doubts in yourself that could limit your abilities, identifying signs such as surprise offers, invitations, meeting someone who can help you correct your path or strengthen your purpose, developing good habits, moving forward resolutely, taking responsibility for yourself and your purpose, learning from mistakes, attempting various strategies, undertaking calculated risks, having the right mentor, developing relationships, staying constantly positive and showing gratitude, are some of the steps which will certainly help you in your journey to success. Once you consistently follow all these aspects in your pursuit for a successful career, the universe will make it undoubtedly possible for you to be at the level of success you have visualized.

Be limitless, fearless, and unstoppable. The only limits in life are the ones you make in your mind

— Dr. P. Madhurima Reddy

Dr. P. Madhurima Reddy