1. Change your attitude. – Keeping a positive attitude is essential in determining success regardless of industry or level of position. Often, individuals will get hired on at a new job and start with a very positive attitude. Then, as time goes on, or they encounter difficulties in the workplace, they allow their attitudes to become negative, complacent, or jaded. This type of change in a person’s viewpoint can greatly affect their job satisfaction, performance at work, and even opportunities for future promotion or success. We sometimes forget that attitude is often 10% circumstance and 90% what we choose it to be. We will never be able to completely control what happens to us- there will be hard days at work, there will be bosses who frustrate or disrespect us, and sometimes we will not enjoy every part of our job duties- but regardless of whatever circumstances you face, you can always choose to keep a positive attitude. Doing so will put you at a mental advantage so that when tough situations arise you will be able to navigate them much more effectively than someone who allows the situation to control their attitude.
2. Define your Goals– Benjamin Franklin is widely known for stating “A failure to plan, is a plan to fail”. When considering the future of your professional life it is so important to have clearly defined, attainable, and meaningful goals. I have run into many people who when I asked about their career goals they sheepishly admit that they don’t really have any or haven’t thought that far ahead. In my own experience I have made it a point to clearly define my career goals with my employers from day one. In my interview at my current company I told them that while I was being interviewed for a technician job, my goal was to move into an engineering position as soon as possible. I was very straightforward that I did not want to be a technician for very long, and that in order for me to take that position I would need to know that I at least had a real opportunity of moving into their engineering team once I finished my education. They agreed, and because I had clearly identified my target goals with them from the beginning, my bosses have been able to treat my time as a technician as a training opportunity to help me prepare for an eventual engineering position. Instead of only being given technician responsibilities, I have continually been given chances to widen my range of knowledge and push my abilities in preparation for eventually moving up. If they didn’t know that this was part of my aspirations, they wouldn’t feel the need to help me prepare for any else but being a technician, and I know for a fact I would not be given such opportunities. In my own experience I have learned that by not only having a clearly defined goal for yourself, but also by communicating that goal to your employers, you can set yourself up for great success, because at the end of the day we can’t expect to get something we don’t ask for, or even know that we want.
3. Know your worth/ Show your worth– People often ask for too much pay, or too little. They don’t accurately represent, or sometimes even know, their value as an employee. When you ask for too much money it sends a message to your employers that you are very focused on money- and not in a positive way. Greedy proposals are often blatantly disregarded or used as a reason to hire someone else. Companies have a lot of reasons for paying employees what they are worth, but they do not like to overpay someone who does not deserve it. In short, a wage must be justifiable. When people ask for too little, the company may agree to pay them, but their view of that employee and their expectations of that employee are immediately less because of how little the employee values themselves. They not only miss out on an opportunity to make more money, but they damage their reputation by not showing how much they are worth. There is a story of a man who made handcrafted canoes built with the upmost care and quality. He first tried to sell them for a bargain price that allowed him to make a minimal profit and sold nothing. In frustration he asked a friend what he was doing wrong, and the friend replied that he wasn’t charging enough. In other words, he was undervaluing his product. This man then turned around and started asking a premium price for his canoes. This new revaluation of his canoes saw immediate success and he started selling his product faster than he could make it. His canoes are now considered one of the best money can buy and are often fought over at collector galas and auctions. I personally love this story, because it teaches the importance of first knowing your value, and then learning how to show it as well. What he did was send a message to his buyers that if the creator of these canoes values his work so much, then they should too. You can send this message to your employers by coming prepared with a knowledge of what you are worth. Obviously, to be successful at this, your value must be believable- a production worker cannot expect that a fair wage for them would be the same as an executive’s. But what they can do is look up average wages for workers in their same position. Then, they can think about if they have any special skills or education that set them apart from the average and that might make them more valuable to the company. From there they can think about what they would be worth generally and come to a decision about what they value themselves as, and what they feel is fair to ask the company to value them at. At the end of the day knowing/showing your value comes down to two major things. The first is knowing that you are worth something, and that it is not greedy to do the research to know what you are worth. The second is that a fair wage is a justifiable wage- if the only thing you can justify your asking wage with is the fact that you really want that much money then you probably should be asking for less.
Your Journey to Success 