Top 10 Things I’ve Learned at Work
These ten simple truths about life
and business were extracted from years of working with people and ideas.
The other day my eight year old son
asked me: "What did you learn at work today?" He was, of course,
mimicking my daily question about what he learned at school. Even so, his
question got me thinking: "What HAVE I learned at work?" Not
just today, but every day.
So I sat back and thought about it
for a while and I came up with this list, which encapsulates the most valuable
things I've learned over the years working with everybody from programmers to
salespeople to top executives:
1.
You can do anything, but you can't do everything.
Life has an infinite number of
possibilities and your ability to achieve success is limited only by your
imagination. However, there are always trade-offs and sometimes moving in one
direction prevents you from moving in another.
2.
You can't argue somebody out of a belief.
Most people think their beliefs
result from objective fact. Actually, people organize and interpret facts
according to their beliefs. Therefore, the more facts that you marshal for your
argument, the less the other person is likely to change beliefs.
3.
Pressure creates resistance.
The natural human reaction to being
pushed is to push back. This is why the "hard sell" doesn't work
today and, indeed, has never worked. It's also why heavy-handed management
techniques always fail.
4.
All you can change are your thoughts and actions.
Most of the misery and
disappointment in life and in business emerges from the fruitless quest to 1)
make other people change and 2) change the course of outside events. All you
truly control is how you think, what you say, and what you do.
5.
You never know what other people are thinking.
Everyone in the world has three
faces. The first they present to the world at large, the second they share with
their friends and family, and the third they keep completely to themselves.
6.
You live up (or down) to your expectations.
I once met a guy who was dead broke,
on drugs, overweight, often drunk and who had drifted in and out of jail and
bad relationships. On his right shoulder was a tattoo he'd gotten when he was
16. It read "Born Loser."
7.
The "good old days" weren't all that good.
Many people wish they'd been born in
a simpler time, like the 1950s, the Victorian period, or the middle ages. What
utter foolishness! By any reasonable measure, we live in the best, the
healthiest, and the happiest time in all history.
8.
Great product ideas are a dime a dozen.
There are millions of great ideas
floating around that, if implemented, could make somebody millions of dollars.
But it's never the ideas that matter. It's the ability to implement one
idea and make it something real.
9.
Nobody has a monopoly on truth.
Politicians, priests, prophets, and
pundits all claim that they (and they alone) know the truth. While they may be
sincere, they are human beings and therefore their "truth" is a
product of a fallible human mind, and therefore incomplete.
10.
All you need is love.
The Beatles may have been seriously
pot-addled in the 1960s, but they definitely got this one right. When it comes
down to it, it's your ability to feel and express love that will bring you both
the greatest happiness and success.
Geoffrey James
writes the Sales Source
column on Inc.com,
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/top-10-things-ive-learned-at-work.html?cid=em01013week25e
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