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Chapter One
Outstanding Success Strategy Number OneBecome a Heat-Seeking Missile
In this chapter:• Leaving the past behind,• Becoming a Heat-Seeking Missile and not aSearcher, Drifter, or one of the Forlorn, and• Locking onto a career target.
To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift.Franklin Roosevelt
"Yesterday" Is Just the Title of a Beatles Song
If you follow the directions in the operating manual that comes with your new coffeemaker or car, you can expect to have a predictable, relatively trouble-free experience. If you follow the directions in this career operating manual, on the other hand, it's unlikely your career will be as predictable and trouble free as your coffeemaker experience.
With a career, even if you do everything right and achieve Outstanding Success, there undoubtedly will be plenty of surprises and a few disappointments along the way. Moreover, even if you follow this book's advice to the letter, it's almost inevitable that you'll still make a few mistakes you'll have to recover from.
There's another way a career operating manual differs from other operating manuals. When we open the box of a new coffeemaker or take delivery on a new car, the first thing we do is sit down and read the operating manual. Careers don't work that way.
While it's possible you're reading this before you start out on a new career, it's more likely you're somewhere between early in your career to twenty to thirty years into it. You've made a lot of choices along the way—some good, some not so good. It's a little like driving your new car for fifty thousand miles before reading the owner's manual for the first time and learning you should have changed the oil every five thousand miles. Oops.
But wherever you are in your career and whatever choices you've made, there's an undeniable fact that holds for everyone: there's nothing we can do about the past. And it is with this absolute truth in mind that you should read the book's seven strategies.
For example, in this chapter, you will read about four distinctly different types of people:
• Heat-Seeking Missiles• Searchers• Drifters• The Forlorn
You must spend most of your career as a Heat-Seeking Missile if you hope to achieve Outstanding Success. Fine, but what if you're well into your career and have spent very little of it as a Heat-Seeking Missile? You get to slap your forehead once and maybe say to yourself, "I wish I'd known this earlier."That's it for the past. Put it behind you. "Yesterday" is just the title of a Beatles song. Don't rue past decisions. Don't beat yourself up or compare yourself with others. From this point on, you need to forget the past and accept that you are where you are, because it is only what you do from this point forward that will change your career trajectory.
But even if you're just starting out in your career and you follow every strategy to the letter, don't expect your journey to be an uninterrupted series of ups. Even if everything goes perfectly, you still have to deal with the most unpredictable element in your formula for career success and personal happiness—you.
It may take you years to discover what stirs your passions and makes you happy. Or you may be happy and successful for years and wake up one morning to suddenly find you need a change—maybe even a big change.
So your journey to Outstanding Success may have many bumps and potholes, a few downs along with the ups. We're talking reality here, not some fantasy career. In the real world, even people who achieve Outstanding Success occasionally go through some bad spells. And people who have had years or even decades of bad spells can turn things around and move toward achieving Outstanding Success.
So don't become discouraged if you haven't always made the best career decisions or if you don't seem to be headed in the direction of Outstanding Success. Today is soon enough to start following the seven strategies if for no other reason than you can't start any sooner. And the first thing to do if you're a Drifter, a Searcher, or one of the Forlorn is to become a Heat-Seeking Missile.
Heat-Seeking Missiles
Heat-Seeking Missiles have career targets imprinted in their minds, have mapped these targets and aspirations into concrete short and medium-term goals, and they manage their careers day to day in a way that leads to achieving these goals. They are locked onto a career target and are not influenced by organizational chaff that can throw them off course—short-term earnings, fancy job titles, big offices, training, management responsibilities, comfort, or security. If their job isn't contributing to increasing their career value and moving them toward their career objective, they change jobs.
George was twenty-eight when one of the country's top investment banks recruited him to build a computing and quantitative analysis group to support the company's two primary businesses—corporate finance and securities trading. He was an engineer without an MBA or a degree from any of the four Ivy League schools this investment bank recruited from, and he would not ordinarily have been able to land a job with this prestigious Wall Street firm. But this was just as quantitative analysis was becoming a dominant force in finance, so the bank's partners felt they needed someone with a much different background—one grounded in computing and math. It was a unique opportunity for George to become part of one of the most influential and wealthy firms in financial services.
George's work was intellectually interesting, and his colleagues smart, supportive, and friendly. Everyone considered George's performance to be outstanding, and his earnings doubled in the first two years. He was on his way.
But despite being happy with his work, company, success, colleagues, and earnings growth, George sensed he was drifting. His objective was to become a senior officer in a major company, and what he was doing wouldn't lead him in that direction. It would, in fact, just lead him to do more of what he was already doing. Although his work was interesting and lucrative, it was not consistent with his career objectives.
Excerpted from The Millionaire in the Mirror: How to Find Your Passion and Make a Fortune Doing It--Without Quitting Your Day Job by Gene Bedell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
