You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything. If you know your rock and roll, you know that line comes from a John Mellencamp song – one of my favorites. And it’s true. You, me, all of us, need to stand for something if we’re going to create the life and career success we want and deserve. Your personal values are what you stand for.
I’ve shared my personal values with members of my career mentoring site: common sense, simplicity, optimism, human potential, hard work, the power of 1. These values are the foundation on which I have built my life and career. They guide my decision making. I turn to them when I need help figuring out what to do. They have served me well.
In April of 1988, I was facing a major life and career decision – stay in a good, secure, albeit somewhat unsatisfying job with a top-notch corporation, or strike out on my own as an independent career success coach, speaker and consultant. I looked to my values. Optimism, human potential and hard work jumped out at me. I am an optimist. I believe in human potential, including mine. I have always been a hard worker.
Reflecting on my values – especially these three – made the decision easy. An optimist, someone who believes in human potential, and a hard worker would take the chance and start a small business – which is what I did. I became The Common Sense Guy over 28 years ago and have never looked back. My values guided me through the decision-making process.
Here’s another example. As I began my work as a career success coach, I found that many of my clients were overwhelmed by the complexity of creating the life and career success they wanted. They were looking for simple answers to complex questions. I created my 4 C’s of Success Model to help provide these answers. By studying successful people, I was able to create a simple, straightforward, common sense model that showed my career success coach clients how to create life and career success…
- Clarify your purpose and direction in life and your career.
- Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
- Build unshakable self-confidence.
- Get competent in four important areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication, and relationship building.
I’ve used this simple model to help hundreds of people create the life and career success they want and deserve. My personal value of common sense helped me figure out a simple, but comprehensive model of life and career success. I use this model in my work as a career success coach.
I am a career success coach in large part because of my commitment to my personal value of the power of 1. I believe that one person can change the world. That’s why I work so hard to help the people in my life see that they can become a life and career success. I always provide my career success coach clients with more than I have to. I give away a lot of my books. In this way, people have a reminder of the things we’ve talked about to which they can refer over and over again.
Successful people clarify their purpose and direction in life. Your personal values are an important part of your personal clarity of purpose and direction. Your values help you make decisions in ambiguous situations. Once you’ve clarified your personal values, you need to live them. Using your values to guide your decision making is a great way to live them on a day-to-day basis. Your values will help you stand for something – so you don’t fall for anything. Just ask John Mellencamp.
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