Successful People Focus on What They Are Becoming

Confidence is one of the 4 Cs that make up my Career Success GPS System.  The other three Cs are clarity, commitment and competence.  In yesterday’s post I mentioned that I have a new book that will be out shortly.  It’s called Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice Delivered in 140 Characters or Less.  This book is part of my work as a career success coach.  It’s just another way of explaining my thoughts on what it takes to become a career success.  Today, I’d like to share a tweet from the confidence section of Success Tweets.

Focus on what you are becoming. This helps you believe in yourself and builds your confidence. Confidence is important to your success.

I love the idea of “becoming.”  It’s really a positive concept.  And it’s similar to a couple of the ideas in The Optimist Creed.  The sixth point of The Optimist Creed says, “Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.”  The ninth point says, “Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.” 

The tweet and the points in The Optimist Creed reinforce one of my career success coach points – success is a journey, not a destination.  Keep moving forward in your life and you’ll succeed.

I’m going to be 60 this year and I keep learning, growing and moving forward.  To celebrate, I will be releasing three new books.  I am becoming a better career success coach because of my writing – and my blogging and podcasting.  But I’m nothing compared to Peter Drucker.  He wrote 39 books in his long and distinguished life and career – two thirds of them were written after he was 65 years old.

“Becoming” is not a function of age.  It’s a function of your willingness to look ahead and see the opportunities life presents you.  When you focus on what you are becoming, you will also be building you self confidence.

It’s been almost 40 years since I first heard of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.  If you’re not familiar with it, Dr. Maslow suggests that as human beings, we all have a series of needs that we strive to satisfy.  He arranged these needs in a pyramid.  According to his theory, safety is the first and most basic human need.  It is at the bottom of the pyramid.  We all strive to remain safe in an uncertain world – we all want to live another day.  Security is next.  Once we are reasonably sure that we will survive this moment and this day, our needs move to developing a sense of security, one in which we feel that our lives and quality of our lives will remain constant.  Affiliation is next.  Once we feel safe and secure, we search for meaningful relationships in our lives.  Recognition is next.  Once we feel safe, secure and valued by others, we crave recognition—in the form of praise, promotions, more money.

Self actualization is at the top of the pyramid.  Dr. Maslow says that after our safety, security, affiliation and recognition needs are satisfied, we turn our attention to what he calls “self actualization,” a state of being all that we can become.  Dr. Maslow suggests that we human beings can never be completely self actualized because as soon as we reach one goal, we realize that there is always something more that we can accomplish. 

That’s why I like the idea of “becoming” so much.  We all can always become something more, there will always be more to do, more to accomplish, a way to become more remarkable.

The common sense point here is simple.  Build your self confidence by focusing on what you are becoming.  Career success is a journey, not a destination.  Treat it that way.  Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career.  Set high goals; then do whatever it takes to meet or exceed them.  React positively to the setbacks, problems and negative people and events in your life.  Keep at it.  Don’t let a day when you come back empty handed in your quest for building a remarkable life and career get you down.  Get up the next day with optimism in your heart, focused on what you are becoming and keep working.

That’s my take on the importance of focusing on what you are becoming.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

PS: If you would like a copy of The Optimist Creed to frame and hang in your office, go to https://budbilanich.com/optimist and enter your name and email address.

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