How To Make More Money In Your Career, Part 2

9. Learn to speak in public! Its most people’s greatest fear… many would rather die than speak… but if you v can’t confidently, competently and coolly express yourself how will you ever get your ideas across or sell yourself. Confident speaking is a skill you can learn… not a talent you are borne with… so why not learn how to do it.

10. A day without laughter is a day without wine. You’ve probably met people who haven’t laughed for years and if they did, particularly at work, their backsides would fall off! Yet people say that laughter is mental jogging and you know (even if you don’t do it) that jogging is good for your body so mental jogging must be great for your mind— you know the old saying “use it or lose it”.

11. Learn something every day. So that your mind is being fed new information, ideas and inspiration and like any good machine will function faultlessly if its being used and made to work. Frankly I reckon that there are a helluva lot of people who haven’t learnt anything since the day they left school or University except for when the boss has paid for them to learn something (and even then they’ve probably begrudged the time). There’s a statistic somewhere that says that people who invest $1000 a year or more on their own personal development will end up earning 20% more than those who don’t. Seems like a great investment to me so that’s why you should do it. Oh, there’s another reason… like fruit if you’re ripe you’re rotten; if you’re green you’re growing!

12. Help somebody every day. Zig Ziglar, the American motivational speaker said, “Help enough people get what they want and you’ll get what you want” and, even if it doesn’t, you will still get incredibly good feelings whenever you help somebody who appreciates it. Its also the hardest to achieve— you’ll often have to drive around at midnight trying to find a little old lady to force across the road so you can go to bed!

13. Every day try to tell the people you love that you love them. The Twin Towers attack and the Bali Bombings changed things didn’t it? How many of those who perished had gone off to work angry with a partner or having had an argument with one of their kids and hadn’t had the chance to tell them that they love them. Sometimes too it’s not a matter of “telling” but rather that of “showing”— after all often what you do is far more important than what you say.

14. Put in the hard work. That’s right, you get to be good by doing the hard work of getting good. If you want to be good at singing you do the hard work and put in the hard work to practise your singing. The same goes with wood work or writing or athletics… or almost anything. Success will come but you gotta do the hard work. So just do it!

15. Set some “SMART” goals. Most people aim at nothing and hit it with amazing accuracy. And it’s amazing how soon you can achieve what you want to achieve if you set yourself some SMART goals. Put simply, dreams become goals when you make them Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound. Sixty percent of success comes from setting your goals simply because proper planning prevents pretty poor performance. You’ll remember that I suggested that you set 2-3 business goals and 2-3 personal goals and now is a great time to be setting them. Guarantee yourself a great career… set your smart goals now!