“Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” Will Rogers
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Don’t let a slow day get you down. Get up the next day and keep working.” Bud Bilanich Tweet 38 in Success Tweets.
Ever notice how a lot of the same life and career success advice keeps popping up in different words? Some people say these are universal laws. I say it is common sense. Take the three quotes above. They are great career advice. Forget about yesterday, well learn from it, and move on with your life today. That’s true common sense. What’s past is past. You can’t change it, but you can move forward in the new day.
As a career success coach, I’m always looking for ways to get my common sense message about life and career success across to my coaching clients and people who read this blog. That’s why I was struck by a passage in Tracy Chevalier’s book, Remarkable Creatures. If you don’t know Tracy Chevalier, you should. For my money she is one of the best novelists writing today. Her first book, Girl With a Pearl Earring, was made into a movie starring Scarlett Johansson.
In Remarkable Creatures, she tells the story of two women fossil hunters in early 19th-century England. Her protagonists are a middle-aged spinster and a young girl. Both are committed fossil hunters. Here is how Elizabeth Philpot, the spinster, describes committed fossil hunters…
“Hunters spend hour after hour, day after day, out in all weather, our faces sunburnt, our hair tangled by the wind, our eyes in a permanent squint, our nails ragged and our fingertips torn, our hands chapped. Our boots are trimmed with mud and stained with seawater. Our clothes are filthy by the end of the day. Often we find nothing, but we are patient and hardworking and not put off by coming back empty handed… Those serious about fossils know their search is never over. There will always be more specimens to discover and study, for, as with people, each fossil is unique. There can never be too many.”
I love this passage. It describes – in wonderful prose – my thoughts and beliefs on the importance of knowing your purpose in life and committing to taking personal responsibility for living it. “Often we find nothing, but we are patient and hardworking and not put off by coming back empty handed.” That’s exactly what I’m talking about when I tell my career success coaching clients, “Stuff happens. The stuff that happens, good or bad, isn’t what’s important. What is important is how you react to it.”
Follow this career advice. Be patient and hardworking. Don’t be put off by a day in which you come back empty handed. Choose to believe that your hard work will pay off in the end. Commit to taking personal responsibility for living your life’s purpose – whether it be fossil hunting, selling, building things, or helping others.
People who commit to taking personal responsibility for creating the successful lives and careers they deserve know that their personal quest is never over – there will always be more to do, more to accomplish.
Speaking through a spinster fossil hunter, Tracy Chevalier says, “There will always be more specimens to discover and study, for, as with people, each fossil is unique. There can never be too many.” Indeed; there will always be more to do, more to accomplish. Start each day anew. Remember what Will Rogers said, “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”
The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people are clear on their purpose and direction in life. They commit to taking personal responsibility for living their life purpose. If you want to achieve career success, you need to do the same. Clarify what you want from your life and career. Then commit to doing whatever it takes to get it. Follow the career advice in Tweet 38 in Success Tweets. “Don’t let a slow day get you down. If you come back empty handed in your quest for success, get up the next day and keep working.” Set high goals. 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 career success get you down. Get up the next day with optimism in your heart and keep working toward the mighty purpose you’ve set for yourself. Take it one day at a time and you will succeed.
That’s my career advice for today prompted by Will Rogers and Ralph Waldo Emerson, two great American philosophers. What do you think? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment. As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.
Bud
PS: If you haven’t already done so, I suggest that you check out my career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained. The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less. The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail. Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy. You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.
PPS: Have you seen my membership site, My Corporate Climb? It’s devoted to helping people just like you create career success inside large corporations. You can find out about it by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.
Speak Your Mind