There are better ways to define success.

Driving out to Boulder from Denver gives me a healthy span of time to get in some deep thinking. As I started on my recent trip out, I was pondering the news that a client, who had just endured a progression of interviews with a company—seven to be exact—did not get the job offer he was aiming for, and instead, the company offered him another opportunity. I heard the disappointment in his voice. When he said that he had failed (in no way did he fail), I wondered: What is success? Are there other ways to define success? 

The serendipity of the TED Radio Hour playing softly in the background was astonishing.The subject: Success. Success has become synonymous with financial wealth, influence and status. Is there another way to define success—one that welcomes a broader range of accomplishment? In the hour-long segment, TED speakers shared their ideas for what makes us successful. I’m sharing what I learned from Tony Robbins, a motivational speaker, Angela Duckworth, assistant professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania and recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant, Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap, Mike Rowe, co-creator and host of Dirty Jobs, and Alain De Botton, author. I will try to link these ideas to your job search as best I can.

Creating a meaningful life

Tony Robbins is an intense, passionate person. His TED talk on this subject is inspiring and I won’t be able to do it justice so I encourage you to listen to it but here’s what I learned from him on the subject of success. I’ll start out by saying, he finds the word shallow and that success has never been on his values list. Robbins believes:

It is not about success at all. Rather, it’s about creating a meaningful life. What makes you light up? What makes you feel alive? Excited?

A strongly held belief of mine and part of my coaching philosophy is: Hire for Attitude. Train for Skills. What I mean by this is that you can’t teach passion, motivation or drive and without these emotions you will simply trudge along in your life. 

We all have a powerful invisible force of internal drive—that emotion or inner passion. Do you know what yours is? What excites you? What motivates you? What kind of work will engage you?

With that said, the question you need to ask of yourself about your job search: Can you/are you communicating your hunger; your internal drive in interviews?

Robbins also believes strongly, that:

Your past does not equal your future. And that out of the worst, most severe injustice, some good or, ideally, greatness can come. We can't control events. We can't control people. But we can control what life means to us. And the most successful people on Earth are the people who've learned to take control of that.

If you failed to achieve something, do you know why? What decisions have you made that have affected your life? Decisions that had you made differently, would have changed the course of your life? (These are heavy a questions.) It's important to learn from your past so you can learn how to control what life means to you going forward.

True grit

Angela Duckworth started her career teaching seventh graders at a rough school in New York. She was convinced that every students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough. After many years of teaching, she came to the conclusion that what was need in education is a better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective. She started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super-challenging settings.

And in every study her question was—who is successful here and why? The answer: grit.

Grit is the disposition to pursue very long-term goals with passion and perseverance. There is a stamina quality of grit. Grit is sticking with things over the long-term and then working very hard at it.

In Duckworth’s words: Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

How do you describe yourself? Are you a hard worker? Do you finish whatever you begin? Does a setback/failure to achieve something discourage you? Do you give up after a disappointment? Are you diligent? Are you persistent?

And, the question for you is this:  How much effort are you putting in to your job search?

Find out your grit score. And if you’ve never read “True Grit” by Charles Portis…it’s a must. 

Smile

 

According to research conducted by Ron Gutman,“…when you smile, you don't only appear to be more likable and courteous, but you actually appear to be more competent.” Sounds a little silly. I understand when interviewing you want to appear as a serious candidate but, happy and more inclusive body language in interviews—face-to-face, video/Skype and phone—sends a better message to the interviewer. 

Here are a few simple body language tips that can help you send the “right” message.

• Smile
• Have good eye contact
• Minimize movement that distracts
• Be inclusive in your actions
• Be comfortable in your space—don’t fidget, squirm
• Don’t fold/cross your arms or hold on to your bag
• Be open with your emotions

 

Bring your passion with you

You probably know Mike Rowe’s TV show, “Dirty Jobs." Viewing the show for the first or second time, you might think it’s about all the awful, stinky jobs no one wants. It is but it's not. “Dirty Jobs” challenges the idea of why certain jobs—clean jobs, are seen as successful ones, and dirty jobs—well, not so much. Throughout the series Rowe is showing us what it means be passionate in your work, how teamwork actually works and the real definition of determination.

I purposely wrote, “…passionate in your work,” because here’s what Rowe says:

You don't follow your passion. You always bring it with you, but you never follow it.

Most of your life you’ve been given advice that says something like, find your passion. It’s what you’ve been taught to pursue to find success. What I’ve learned is that “what is your passion” is not the question you should be asking yourself. Instead, ask: 

• Are you engaged (or happy if you prefer,) in your work? Or for most of you starting your career, will the career path you are pursuing make you happy? If you are, that’s great. 
• Do you bring your passion to what you are doing? If you do, that’s even better. 

But, if you’re not engaged and happy, then likely you are in a state of inertia. Snap out of it.

The other important lesson from “Dirty Jobs” is this. There are people in jobs we don’t view as successful because it’s not how we have been taught to evaluate success. The psychiatrist turned septic tank cleaner and entrepreneur is doing literally a dirty job. He's happy because he does it well. He is his own boss. And he's a millionaire.

Status Anxiety

Everyone starts out in life wanting to be a success, and we all have an idea of what successful means. I hope at this point you understand that what success really means is just doing something well. According to De Botton, that simple desire to be a success; it actually creates a lots of anxiety.

We live in an age when our lives are regularly punctuated by career crises, by moments when what we thought we knew about our lives, about our careers comes into contact with a threatening sort of reality. One of the reasons why we might be suffering is that we are surrounded by snobs.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. There is often a real disconnect between what you do/what your major is and who you are. When you look down on the information technology major and college grad, who starts out working on the factory floor; that is snobbery.

The idea that each of us can go out and achieve anything we want is causing much of this status anxiety. De Botton says, and I think there is a lot to learn from this: 

We should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

This brings me back to my client. For him, success has been defined by others and the job he did not get is what he thinks he is suppose to want. However, the job the employer did offer him, I can promise, is the one he will bring his passion to and where he will be very successful. Why? Because the latter gives him the opportunity to utilize and develop his skills and talents working on projects he enjoys and finds meaningful and is in a company where he knows he fits in well. I hope he takes the job offer and doesn't look back.

(As always I apologize for spacing issues. BlogSpot--not great software.)