Do You Have A Mentor As A Career Builder?

Finding a mentor doesn’t have to be difficult.  Mentors come in all shapes and sizes, and in all businesses.  Your mentor doesn’t have to be in the same business you’re in, they just need to be someone you can learn from that has been where you are.

Mentors shorten the learning curve for you.  They teach you what works and tell you what doesn’t.  As a career builder, mentors are exceptional!

Do you have a mentor as a career builder?

Qualities to look for in a mentor

•    At a place you want to be
•    Wants to teach and help
•    Will give you advice and feedback

Once you find a mentor, learn everything you can from them.  They have been where you are now and are at the place you want to get to.  They want to teach you and help you so you don’t make the same mistakes they made along the way.  The advice and feedback they give you can be invaluable to you as a career builder.

Mentors will change throughout your life depending on the level you are at.  Always pick someone that will expand your reality and help you grow.  One thing to keep in mind is that as long as you want to keep moving forward, you need a mentor to support you!

If you would like to increase the power of your intellect and actions, sign up today for my FREE Concept to Action Book Club where you will stay currant on what is relevant in the world today, and learn how to immediately apply key concepts through books that I review and give a report on.

I hope I have encouraged people in business to expand the way they make sense of human behavior.  Malcolm Gladwell 

Malcolm Gladwell has published three books in the past nine years, and they all have been best sellers. In all three books he sets out to demonstrate how there are predictable patterns associated with success and by understanding those patterns, you can control or influence them.  The Outliers is about the success of individuals, Blink is about the success of snap judgments, and The Tipping Point is about the success of ideas and messages.  I believe what makes Malcolm’s books best sellers is that, of course, he picks topics of great interest to people, but more importantly he lays out the points that he is trying to demonstrate through a variety of very compelling stories.  His books are interesting because of the concepts and because of the stories that he uses to support those concepts.  Here are some examples . . .

In The Outliers, he shows how the success of individuals results from the steady accumulation of often arbitrary advantages.  One of the examples he provides deals with hockey teams, where junior league teams are formed based on age groups.  Children within the same age group who are born earlier in the year have a great maturity advantage over those born late in the year.  As a result, the more physically mature players emerge as strong performers and that strong performance continues to be reinforced over time. 

In Blink, he shows how situations and relationships can be broken down into identifiable and predictable patterns.  By recognizing these patterns, you can make highly accurate predictions based on very limited information.  One example that he shares is about a professor at the University of Washington who can predict with 90 percent accuracy whether a couple will still be married 15 years later simply by observing a 15 minute conversation. 

In The Tipping Point, he shows how small things can make a big difference.  One of his examples is how a major epidemic of violent crime in New York City was reversed simply by increasing the focus of policemen on minor quality of life crimes, such as littering, graffiti, and sneaking on the subway without paying.

If you would like to read more about the themes in each of Malcolm’s three books as well as the themes that are common across his three books, please enter your first name and e-mail address in the box to your left to receive a copy of the Malcolm Gladwell Trilogy.

Malcolm’s book are a great demonstration of the power of storytelling, which is emerging as one of the most important communication skills of the future because stories tap into both our heads and our emotions. In future Blogs I will be talking more about storytelling and its power.

I want to share with you another great book that was just published that I think you will find interesting and very relevant  given what we are experiencing across society with a significant break down in integrity in business, politics, sports . . . . .  The book is Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken by best selling author and inspirational speaker Mike Robbins.  The book is about finding your authentic self first by understanding what makes being authentic so difficult and then learning how to overcome those barriers.  In his book, Mike teaches us simple yet powerful ways to be authentic in our relationships, our work, and our lives – thus leading to greater peace, passion, and fulfillment.  His five principles of authenticity will empower you, regardless of your current circumstances to be bold, to express yourself fully, and to live your life from a deep place of authenticity within you. 

For more information on Mike’s new book  and many exclusive bonus gifts from other best selling authors, coaches and  practitioners in the self-improvement field go to  http://www.BeYourselfBook.com.

This is a refreshing and timely book!

I just wanted to let you know that a new book has just been released that I think you would really find meaningful. The book is Solemate by Lauren Mackler and it is about finding your true self, in part, by understanding and letting go of those self-defeating patterns that we all have.  Lauren is a renowned coach and in her book she takes you through a step-by-step process that, until now, has only been available through her coaching programs and workshops.  I will be adding a summary of this book to the Concept to Action Book Club next month.

If you purchase her book and enter your order number using this link http://www.laurenmackler.com/solemate , you will receive access to some additional opportunities and free gifts that will further support your efforts to create a life of happiness and fulfillment as well provide you the tools to help others do the same.  This is definitely a great opportunity, and it is only being offered for a limited period of time!

Here is some additional information about Lauren’s book and a Hay House contest –

In Solemate, Lauren Mackler provides a groundbreaking road map for achieving mastery of your own life so you can experience a sense of wholeness and well-being whether you’re on your own or in a relationship. Solemate is about mastering the art of aloneness. But it’s not about being alone. It’s about becoming the person you were meant to be, treating yourself well, and shedding the old beliefs and behaviors that limit your ability to realize your greatest potential. Purchase Solemate to reclaim your innate wholeness and live the life to which you aspire. To help you with this process, Hay House is offering you a chance to win a trip to the I Can Do It! conference in Tampa, Florida and Lauren is offering you the chance to win a free one-hour coaching session. Visit http://www.laurenmackler.com/solemate to enter.  

The first book of the From Concept to Action Book Club is Resilience:  Discovering a New Strength at Times of Stress by Frederic Flach.  This book was selected because in the current economic environment it is beneficial to understand resilience and to be able to tap into it.  First of all, resilience is not tightly controlling our emotions so that during difficult times we don’t expose any weaknesses or vulnerabilities — that’s avoidance and denial.  Resilience is about recovery and restructuring.  Therefore, when you are going through a difficult time and you allow yourself to feel sadness, anger, fear it means that you are strong, not weak.  

We have all heard amazing stories of resiliency where people have not just recovered, but thrived following traumatic events.  Here is a wonderful demonstration of this — the story of a paraplegic mountain climber climbing El Capitan:  http://tinyurl.com/d6q528.  And, it is not uncommon for people to look back on highly stressful periods and see that their greatest moments of growth resulted from those periods.  However, for most of us, the greater the stress, the more difficult it can be to step back  and see the associated opportunities.  It is particularly difficult to step back if it feels like our safety and/or identity is at stake.  Here are a few things you can do to tap into your resiliency.  First, focus on what you can control — it may seem small and insignificant at first, but when you focus only on what you can control the scope of what you can control expands.  Second, consciously let go of what you can’t control, accept that it is what it is and you cannot change it — being stressed and worried only impacts you, it does not change the situation other than to make it worse.  Third, reframe the messages playing in your head from negative to positive.  Fourth, surround yourself with people who are supportive and creative.  

If you would like to learn more about resiliency and assess resiliency in you and your environment, please join the From Concept to Action Book Cluf for a free summary of Frederic Flach’s book and how to apply it in your daily life.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.   by Helen Keller

countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. Henry Giles

How often have you read a great nonfiction book and thought “wow” these concepts can make a big difference in my life, my work, my family and/or my community — then you put the book on a shelf and that is the end of it?

Concept to Action is a new book club that bridges the gap between being excited about a concept and actually putting that concept into action.  By joining the book club, each month you will receive a summary of a book that is relevant to what is currently going on in the business world and life in general.  The summary will explain the key concepts presented in the book and then include a few workbook pages that will enable you to immediately apply those  concepts.  You can use these action pages for yourself, or you can use them to facilitate the thinking of others individually or in a group setting.  The intent of the workbook pages is to help the concepts presented in the book to stay with you long after you have put the book on a shelf. And, if you do the workbook exercises daily for the thirty or so days in-between each book summary, you will create twelve new, powerful habits each year!

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice. Anton Chekhov