Put Your Career Into Warp Drive

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We are all so petty, thinking we have to fight and scrabble for every little victory, its pathetic.  The reality is the diversity of style and approach that we so rile against when we are petty, is THE human characteristic that will save humanity.  Hate, fear, prejudice, suspicion, revenge, are all outmoded emotions that perpetuate small thinking.  Its this small thinking that keeps you small.  Anyone who ever built a truly satisfying life was not small.  They wasted no energy on pettiness and focused all their energy and wringing every last drop of joy and satisfaction out of life.

I work at Microsoft.  Over the years it has become a company of conceited, small minded people.  This is an unfair generalization, there are some amazing people that work at the company but over the years small mindedness has been rewarded delivering enough people to power who are small thinkers it holds big thinkers back.  What does this small thinking look like?

• Killing ideas that are different than yours.  Embrace these ideas, learn from them, plug your ideas into them, become part of the circle of excellence that surrounds these great ideas.
• Bit flipping, determining someone is not good enough to add value.  This is never true, it only means you do not understand how to help them yet, learn how to help them, it will pay off.
• Hating / disliking people, anyone.  Hate closes you off from learning about yourself and others in ways that empower you to greatness.  Everyone deserves your love and compassion on some level, give it to them.
• Competing for promotions and raises, failing to recognize there is more than enough credit to go around.  Bottom line, a rising tide rises all boats and stepping on someone else in the boat to get higher only risks capsizing the boat.

How can you think big?

Invest in happiness. Invest everyday in the happiness of the people around you. Do this by truly understanding their hopes and dreams, focusing on how you can help them. Don’t worry about yourself, you do enough anyway, your success will take care of itself.  By investing in happiness you build a “zone of excellence” around you. The size of this zone determines your value to everything you do.  Your zone provides tools that enable you to accomplish anything. Help people succeed, introduce them to people, encourage them to go for their dreams, help them overcome obstacles. But what about those haters, the people who will take advantage of you and never give back? First off these are few and far between, usually you just don’t understand these people yet. For those few who who are evil, see James Altucher’s post on dealing with crappy people, then just keep helping them like you would anyone else, just avoid giving them the power to hurt you.

Stop judging and putting people down for the little things in their personality you “hate”. The reality is if you hate something in someone else it is likely because it reminds you of you.  Either that or you are threatened by it, regardless seeing people this way limits your ability to incorporate them into your vision, your plan. We are all such caricatures of ourselves its really kind of funny. I strut around work in my cowboy boots thinking I am some rebellious, impossible to manage guy determined to go his own way. Its all an act. I am as insecure as the rest of them. If you take a step back and think about it though we are all like the Sunday cartoons, funny in our color but with something very valuable to say. Learn to love the differences that make us tick. This is what makes life grand, a homogeneous life on the other hand is quite bland.

Learn to adapt. And I do not mean begrudgingly accepting change when it becomes clear it is unavoidable.  I mean learn to love change, embrace it, pursue it, harness it to your will. It has long been proven its not survival of the strongest but the ability to adapt to rapid dramatic changes that determines the survival of the species. The only constant you can be sure of is change, every day things are going to change.

Finally, and this is most important, eradicate Can’t from your vocabulary.  You have to recognize can’t is just another word for wont.  If you do not want to that is fine just stop saying I can’t do it, it can’t be done, you can’t do that…  All this does is become a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring it does not get done.  Great thinkers only ask how might this work.

This is the path that puts your career in warp drive, it takes some time to spin up the warp drive flywheel.  This is the long hard road to success but success earned on this path knows no bounds.  Many are tempted to take the short, direct route, taking credit for others work, showcasing others mistakes, pointing out risks in others plans, stepping on them.  Success earned on this path is short lived and unsatisfying.  When you spend years on the high road building your success on the success of others you build a flywheel of success that will move you ahead at warp speed.  Your flywheel will have so much momentum you cannot be stopped.  Build your flywheel and all the spoils of the world, love, happiness, peace, will be yours.

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Sorry, to get all high and mighty today, I just watched someone get torn down and I had to post on it…  I hope you could hear through all the righteousness!