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Book: Self Improvement 101 - 02

2. “HOW CAN I GROW IN MY CAREER?”

“Be better tomorrow than you are today.”

you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.

HOW GROWTH HELPS YOU LEAD UP

destination disease - they have “arrived” by obtaining a specific position or getting to a certain level in an organization.

desired place, they stop striving to grow or improve. What a waste of potential!

nothing wrong with the desire to progress in your career, but never try to “arrive.”

journey to be open-ended.

my life began changing when I stopped setting goals for where I wanted to be and started setting the course for who I wanted to be

the key to personal development is being more growth oriented than goal oriented.

if you keep learning, you will be better tomorrow than you are today, and that can do so many things for you.

THE BETTER YOU ARE, THE MORE PEOPLE LISTEN

Because you respect most and can learn best from the person with great competence and experience.

Competence is a key to credibility, and credibility is the key to influencing others.

If people respect you, they will listen to you.

President Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

By focusing on growth, you become wiser each day.

THE BETTER YOU ARE, THE GREATER YOUR VALUE TODAY

The more the tree has grown and has created strong roots that can sustain it, the more it can produce. The more it can produce, the greater its value.

it’s said that a tree keeps growing as long as it is living. I would love to live in such a way that the same could be said for me—“he kept growing until the day he died.”

Elbert Hubbard: “If what you did yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.”

If you look back at past accomplishments, and they don’t look small to you now, then you haven’t grown very much since you completed them

If you look back at a job you did years ago, and you don’t think you could do it better now, then you’re not improving in that area of your life.

If you are not continually growing, then it is probably damaging your leadership ability.

Warren Bennis and Bert Nanus, authors of Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, said, “It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.” If you’re not moving forward as a learner, then you are moving backward as a leader.

THE BETTER YOU ARE, THE GREATER YOUR POTENTIAL FOR TOMORROW

Who are the hardest people to teach? The people who have never tried to learn. Getting them to accept a new idea is like trying to transplant a tomato plant into concrete.

The more you learn and grow, the greater your capacity to keep learning. And that makes your potential greater and your value for tomorrow higher.

Indian reformer Mahatma Gandhi said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” That is how great our potential is. All we have to do is keep fighting to learn more, grow more, become more.

Every time before he left one of those meetings, his boss asked, “Did you learn something from this?” and he would ask him to explain.

he discovered that many of his successes could be traced back to practices he adopted as a result of those talks. It made a huge positive impact on him because it kept making him better.

If you want to influence the people who are ahead of you in the organization—and keep influencing them—then you need to keep getting better.

An investment in your growth is an investment in your ability, your adaptability, and your pro-motability. No matter how much it costs you to keep growing and learning, the cost of doing nothing is greater.

HOW TO BECOME BETTER TOMORROW

Ben Franklin said, “By improving yourself, the world is made better. Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. Forget your mistakes, but remember what they taught you.”

So how do you become better tomorrow? By becoming better today. The secret of your success can be found in your daily agenda.

1. LEARN YOUR CRAFT TODAY

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty-five years ago. The second best time is today.”

Looking back and lamenting will not help you move forward.

Longfellow said, “The purpose of that apple tree is to grow a little new wood each year. That is what I plan to do.”

Longfellow’s poems:

Not enjoyment and not sorrow Is our destined end or way; But to act that each tomorrow Find us further than today.

You may not be where you’re supposed to be. You may not be what you want to be. You don’t have to be what you used to be. And you don’t have to ever arrive. You just need to learn to be the best you can be right now.

As Napoleon Hill said, “You can’t change where you started, but you can change the direction you are going. It’s not what you are going to do, but it’s what you are doing now that counts.”

2. TALK YOUR CRAFT TODAY

Once you reach a degree of proficiency in your craft, then one of the best things you can do for yourself is talk your craft with others on the same and higher levels than you.

Talking to peers is wonderful, but if you don’t also make an effort to strategically talk your craft with those ahead of you in experience and skill, then you’re really missing learning opportunities.

To schedule a learning lunch with someone I admire, at least six times a year.

My goal is to learn enough about them and their “sweet spot” to ask the right questions. If I do that, then I can learn from their strengths.

But that’s not my ultimate goal. My goal is to learn what I can transfer from their strength zones to mine. That’s where my growth will come from—not from what they’re doing. I have to apply what I learn to my situation.

The secret to a great interview is listening. It is the bridge between learning about them and learning about you. And that’s your objective.

3. PRACTICE YOUR CRAFT TODAY

William Osler, the physician who wrote The Principles and Practice of Medicine in 1892, once told a group of medical students:

“Banish the future. Live only for the hour and its allotted work. Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day; for surely our plain duty is, as Carlyle says, “Not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

The only way to improve is to practice your craft until you know it inside and out.

The more you practice your craft, the more you know. But as you do more, you will also discover more about what you ought to do differently.

At that point you have a decision to make: Will you do what you have always done, or will you try to do more of what you think you should do? The only way you improve is to get out of your comfort zone and try new things.

personally to grow - The only way to grow your organization is to grow the leaders who run it. By making yourself better, you make others better.

Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” And the time to start is today.”

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