College Success Tip – Take Care Of Yourself Physically

You have probably heard of the “Freshman 15” – this is where you gain 15 pounds your freshman year from eating junk food, not working out and crashing one too many parties.  Everyone knows about it, but somehow most people are unable to avoid it.  There is a happy medium between having fun and taking care of yourself, so just like everything else, make sure that you have balance.

A couple easy rules to follow so that you can take good care of yourself:

• Workout at least 3 days a week (this could include running outside, going to the gym or playing an intramural sport)
• Eat healthy (its OK to cheat once in awhile, but educate yourself on proper eating habits so that you know the types of foods to avoid)
• Get into a routine (have a diet, workout regularly, go to bed and wake up at the same times)
• Don’t do drugs (they are a waste of money and brain cells)

If you are in good physical shape you will feel better about yourself, be more active, get more done and feel better mentally.  Your physical health will also have an impact on your classroom performance as well.

The Bottom Line:  It might be tempting to get into some poor habits with your new found freedom, but make sure you are staying balanced.  Getting out of shape is much easier than it is to get back in shape, so create a good routine that balances having fun and taking care of yourself.

College Success Tip – Have Great People Skills

Having great people skills simply means that you can communicate well with a variety of people, understand what they are saying to you and have them understand what you are saying to them.  Make it a goal of yours to get along and communicate with everyone that you interact with.  It will benefit you for the rest of your life to develop this skill.

People always want to help and work with people who they like and trust.  Someone’s likeability is much more important than the way he dresses or how smart he is.  Everyone just wants to be around “people like them” who they can relate to and have a conversation with.  Be likeable and you’ll be just fine.

The Bottom Line:  Regardless of what activities you are involved with in school and what career you get into after you gradate, you will be around people for the rest of your life.  The better your people skills are, the better relationships that you will be able to build with others.

College Success Tip – Turn In Work You Are Proud To Put Your Name On

Make sure that any assignment, project or exam you turn in is something you are always proud to put your name on it.  This doesn’t mean that you need to pull an all-nighter studying for a quiz that is 1% of your grade, but make sure you are always doing quality work you are proud of.

Just make sure to do the little things like following the instructions, checking for mistakes, turning in a clean copy and putting forth a strong effort.  Also make sure not to plagiarize and steal other peoples ideas.

The Bottom Line:  Never turn in work you are embarrassed to put your name on and know you didn’t give an appropriate amount of effort into completing.  That one poor assignment may stick in your professor’s head for the rest of the semester and could affect your grades on other assignments.

Searching for and Recognizing the Best Career Opportunity

As a young professional, there are two ways to do your career search – the easy way or the right way.  Most people choose the easy way and many of those people end up bouncing around from job to job because they keep making the wrong career decision and don’t follow the right process.  Those that do things the right way put themselves in a much better position and are able to find an opportunity that will take them to where they want to be professionally.  It is all about knowing what the process is and then committing yourself to following it – the extra time you spend up front could literally save you years of your time and make you millions of dollars over the course of your career.

So what is the correct process?  There are 7 things you must do if you want to give yourself the greatest chance for immediate and long-lasting success.  They are as follows:

- Build a Network:  Surround yourself with the right people who can help you reach your vision as quick as possible
- Find Something You Enjoy:  If you aren’t passionate about it, don’t do it
- Begin with the End in Mind:  You must visualize what your successful future career looks like so that you can ask yourself whether or not the opportunity you are interviewing for will get you there the as quickly as possible
- Fight through Adversity:  You need to persevere through the difficult time of your career search, which will almost certainly come up
- Demand Excellence:  You can either settle for OK over and over again, or take the time necessary to demand excellence once and be off and running towards your vision of success
- Know Yourself and Be Yourself:  You have to know what you want and be yourself throughout the process; those that try to be someone else and “impress others” end up in a career they don’t enjoy because they were so focused on being who they thought the company wanted, rather than being themselves
- Make it Just Like College:  The students that love college the most are the ones that choose the campus that feels like home, not the one that statistically looks good on paper; make your career search the same way and choose the organization that you feel gives you the best chance to learn, grow and reach your vision

For a much more detailed look at this process, as well as a step-by-step guide to finding a great professional opportunity, pick up a copy of my book The Course They Forgot to Offer – How to Make Big Money, Have Fun & Love Life as a Young Professional.

Young Professional Success Tip – Have Balance

Balancing your life and career sounds easy, but will more than likely be difficult for you if you have set big goals for yourself.  You will be focused on building your career, learning as much as possible, having a social life, spending time with family and all of the other things that are important to you.  A few of the many things that will be pulling you in different directions:

• Career
• Family
• Social Life
• Faith
• Community Involvement
• Volunteer Work
• Plus sleeping and eating!

Chances are good that you have a strong desire to be successful at everything you are involved with, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.  So how do you balance all of these items and spend the appropriate time on each?  Here are a few suggestions you can easily do right now:

• Prioritize what is most important to YOU
• Develop a manageable routine that allows you to do it all without being stretched too thin
• Build in time each week to relax your body and mind
• Give yourself time during the year to rest and recharge the batteries – weekend road trips with minimal sleep don’t count!
• Don’t be scared to turn your work email off on the PDA during nights and weekends

Everyone is going to want a piece of you and of your most valuable asset:  your time.  Co-workers, charitable organizations, kids, friends, family, a significant other, people you are mentoring and many others will all want to be around you.  You must give each of those parties the time they need and deserve, but not anything above or below that.  You simply cannot give the same amount of time, or access, to each person.  Know what amount of time you need to spend with certain people and doing certain things, then build a balanced calendar that allows you to appropriately balance it all.  This won’t be easy and is a constant work in progress – the important thing is that you do your best and focus on having balance.

Young Professional Success Tip – Have Mentors

Having a mentor and making sure it is the right person may very well be the most important thing you do for your development as a young professional.  A mentor is the following:

- Someone who you feel is successful personally and professional
- Someone who can share their experiences to make you successful faster and easier by learning from everything they have been through
- Someone who will take the time to help teach and guide you

Why should you have a mentor?

- They have already been through what you are going through and can give you guidance that will save you years worth of mistakes
- Give you specific qualities to emulate
- Make you a better person and professional
- Tell you specifically how to handle situations you have never faced before (such as salary negotiation, career transition, starting a business)

The bottom line is that you can not become successful on your own – your success will be closely tied to the people you choose to surround yourself with and the relationships you have with each of them.  One of the quickest and easiest ways to become successful as a young professional is by simply finding people that have been there, done that and are still doing it (thanks, James Malinchak).  In other words, have mentors that are still experiencing a great deal of success in the area that you want to be mentored in (such as running a business).

Young Professional Success Tip – Shut Up and Listen

You learn more from listening than you do from talking.

One of the biggest mistakes young professionals make is that they think they know more than they actually do.  The truth is, you may know more now than you did 10 years ago…  but you know nothing now compared to what you will know in another 10 years.  It is important as a young professional to have a strong awareness of what you know and what you don’t know; then you can concentrate on learning the skills necessary to become successful in whatever you desire.  

Note that people love to talk; become a great listener and ask great questions.  By doing this, you will receive a ton of great information from people, rather than showing them how much you know or what you think about a particular subject.  The more you listen, the more you learn…  and the more you learn, the more knowledgeable you will be come.  Knowledge equals power, so learn as much as you can!

Remember that you aren’t learning anything new when you are talking, so shut up and become a great listener!

Young Professional Success Tip – Build Positive Relationships

A very quick and easy way to significantly shorten your road to success is by simply aligning yourself with successful people and building positive relationships with them.  Getting where you want to be is much easier if you are surrounded by successful people who know your vision of success and want to see you achieve it!  

Who are the people you want to align yourself with and build relationships with?

• Leaders in your company
• Leaders at other companies in your industry
• People that your respect
• People that you want to be like

How do you meet these people?  Simply ask them out to lunch or to grab a cup of coffee.  99% of the time successful people will gladly set aside 15 minutes or more to meet with you and provide guidance – all you need to do is ASK!  Most people are either too nervous or too lazy to simply ask someone they respect out to lunch.  Once you have access to this person, prepare a list of questions for him or her – find out what he would do differently if he was your age again.  Ask him what the most important characteristic is for success, share your vision with him, and find out information that you feel will be beneficial to your future success.

You will continue to build new and stronger relationships as your career grows – these relationships will collectively make your road to success much easier because you have now built a network of supporters who want to see you succeed and will help you in any way that they can.

How to Have Successful Relationships as a Young Professional

As a young professional, you deal with many different types of relationships.  You have relationships with your faith, your family, your friends, significant others, co-workers and mentors.  Rather than focusing on any of them specifically, we are going to look at the characteristics you need to be successful in every relationship that you have.  Also understand that relationships have a huge impact on the person that you are and the people that you will become.  Part of having a well balanced lifestyle is your ability to have quality relationships.  This article details the five things that are critical in building and maintaining great relationships.

Be Loyal and Dependable

Always be loyal to those in your life who have taken the time to help you become a better person.  You have had people in your life that have gone out of their ways to teach you, mentor you, give you gifts, support you and have been there for you during difficult times.  Remember those acts of kindness, return those favors and be loyal to those people.  Also be dependable.  Be the person who your friends know they can go to during a difficult time.  When you tell someone that you are going to do something, always follow through on that promise and make sure your word is as good as gold.

Be Respectful

Have respect for each and every person that you encounter in life.  Respect successful business owners for their leadership and entrepreneurial skills.  Respect volunteers in the community for their selflessness and ability to take time out of their lives to help others.  Treat everyone in your life with a great deal of respect, whether it is your boss or the person taking your order at the drive-thru window.  Be respectful of everyone, whether there is a crowd of people around or nobody is looking.  Be the one person who asks the check out lady at the grocery store how her day is going during her 8-hour shift.  These little acts of respect to everyone around you add up over time and help you become a person who others will respect.

Positive People Only

Unfortunately you do not get to pick and choose every single person with whom you interact with daily.  You do, however, choose the people with which you will spend the most amount of time.  Make sure that your best relationships are with people who have a positive attitude and outlook on life.  Also make sure that these positive people you surround yourself with will have a positive impact on your life and help you become the person that you want to become.

Ask yourself if the people in your life will be able to help you in your journey towards success.  Also determine if these people align with your vision of success.  If they do, continue to build relationships with them.  If they don’t, then you must determine if an adjustment can be made in your relationship with them, or if they no longer should be a large part of your life.  Remember that your relationships with family, friends, mentors, co-workers and others are a large part of who you are.  You are reading this because you want to be successful – make sure that the people in your life are going to positively impact your journey towards success.

Communicate Constantly

Make sure that you are in constant communication with everyone in your life.  This refers to both frequency and openness of communication.  Frequency is important; don’t let time slip by in between calls to loved ones, friends and mentors.  Stay in constant communication with them because life is too short to let time slip by.  With current technology, there is no excuse for not communicating on a regular basis with the important people in your life.  Send a text message, make a phone call on your way home from the office, shoot over an email or put up a wall post on Facebook.  Any of these are better than going weeks or months without talking to the important people in your life.

The other important part of communicating is having open and honest dialogue with everyone in your life.  Being honest about your feelings will make you feel better and lead to less confusion or arguments over time.  Tell people how you feel, what your goals and dreams are and what will make you happy in life.  Know how they feel, know what their goals and dreams are and understand their perspectives on things.  Have conversations and be completely honest with everyone in your life, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much easier and more enjoyable your life can become.

Learn From Every Relationship

Relationships can take on all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors.  Some are great, others are not.  Some will continue on forever, others will end badly.  In those great relationships that will go on forever, make sure to learn why they are so great.  Understand what makes you happy, why they are so valuable and figure out how you can have more just like them.  When bad relationships come to an end, do not view them as failures.  Be fortunate that you had the relationship regardless of how badly it ended, and take from it lessons that you can carry with you.  Learn why the relationship didn’t work and let it make you a better person who has a clearer idea of what types of relationships will make you happy.  Whether a relationship is great, terrible, wonderful or awful, learn from it and let it grow you into a better person.

A Final Word

Relationships have a huge impact on every aspect of your life.  The biggest question to ask yourself in any relationship you have is whether or not it is helping you achieve your vision of success or hurting your progress towards your goals and dreams.  Make sure that you surround yourself with people who will positively impact your life, make you a better person and support you as you work towards everything you want to accomplish in life.