A Special Kind of Courage
By: Brian Tracy

There are several different aspects of courage. Perhaps the most important is the courage to endure, to persist, to “hang in there” in the face of doubt, uncertainty and criticism from others.

Practice Patience in Adversity
This is called “courageous patience,” the willingness and the ability to “stay the course” in the face of uncertainty, doubt and often criticism from many quarters.

Stay the Course
In my experience, there is a critical time period between the launching of a new venture and the results that come from that venture. During this hiatus, this waiting period, many people lose their nerve. They cannot stand the suspense of not knowing, of possible failure. They break and run in battle, they quake and quit in business.

The True Leader
But the true leader is the person who can stand firm, who refuses to consider the possibility of failure. The turning points of many key moments in human history have been the resolution, or lack thereof, of one person. Courageous patience is the acid test of leadership.

To encourage others, to instill confidence in them, to help them to perform at their best requires first of all that you lead by example.

Allow Honest Mistakes
The second thing you can do to help alleviate the fears of failure and rejection in others is to encourage them to take calculated risks and allow honest mistakes.

Build People Up
Give the people who look up to you regular praise and approval. Celebrate good tries as well as success, large and small. Create a psychological climate where people feel safe from censure, blame or criticism of any kind. Then do things that make people feel terrific about themselves.

Become Unstoppable
Courage comes from acting courageously on a day-to-day basis. Your personal development goal should be to practice the behaviors of a totally fearless person until you become, in your own mind, unstoppable.

Action Exercises
Here are two ways for you to develop courageous patience.

First, prepare yourself in advance for the inevitable disappointments and setbacks you will experience on the way to your goal. Don’t be surprised when they occur.

Second, resolve in advance that you will bounce rather than break and continually encourage others to think and act the same way.

This article is so profound that I had to add it to the Coach1Online.com Blog Page. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did! Aura Ziv, Coach1Online.com Success Coach.

May 23, 2010

Select Your Company Carefully
By: Brian Tracy

Only the truly competent individual can be free of politics in an organization. When you’re really good at what you do, you can rise above politics. It’s the mediocrities at work who have to play games and every study shows that although they sometimes succeed in the short-term, they invariably fail when everyone figures them out.

Do What You Have To Do
Select your work carefully and if you don’t love what you’re doing enough to want to be the best at it, get out! Flee from the boring or unsatisfying job as you would from a burning building. Working at something you don’t care about is the very best way to waste your life. Remember, this life is not a rehearsal for something else.

Look for Pay for Performance
One key to getting onto the fast-track is for you to work for the right company and the right boss. The right company is one that respects its people and practices pay for performance. The right company is dynamic, growing, open to new ideas, and full of opportunities for people with ambition and initiative.

How to Make Progress
A woman spoke to me at a seminar recently and reminded me that she had asked me a question at a seminar about two years ago. She had told me that she was very ambitious and hard-working but that she wasn’t making any progress in the large company where she worked. She felt it was because most of the senior executives were men in their fifties and sixties and that women had a hard time getting into positions of responsibility. What could she do?

Change Jobs When Necessary
I told her quite frankly that there was nothing she could do. The senior executives and the company were not going to change. If she was really as capable as she said, I told her to find a job with a young, growing company that wouldn’t care whether she was a woman as long as she could do the job.

A Success Story
She told me that she had followed my advice, quit her job, much to the disapproval of her co-workers, and found a job with a small growing company – and it was exactly as I had said. She had been promoted twice in the last 14 months and was already earning 40% more than her best year with her previous company.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to assure that you are in the right position.

First, make sure that you really enjoy your work and that you do it well. You will never be successful at a job that you don’t like.

Second, be sure that there are lots of opportunities for you to grow, develop and advance in your company. Your future is too valuable to waste where there is no future.