In the past few months of being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I've been eager to find career advice in any and all places. I've always had a thing for picking a quote that speaks to me and using it as a mantra for a given period of time. Upon entering graduate school, I put a sticky note on my desk with the wise words of golfer Gary Player (whom I'd never heard of before):
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
I worked my tush off through grad school by that mantra, and it got me to the middle of my last semester when I was asked to start my thesis from scratch after turning in all 100 finished pages of it. I had worked so hard, but that wasn't a very "lucky" outcome. There was a lot of confusion and I remember seeing my sticky note and unceremoniously dropping it into the trash can. A few days later, when I'd gotten my bearings, it was replaced by my crisis communications mode mantra:
The greater the challenge, the greater the triumph.
Three weeks later, I turned in my second thesis. And a few weeks after that I walked across the stage to receive my well-earned degree...on time. And, admittedly, the triumph was great. What was presumably taken away from me by having to start from scratch was replaced by a much more valuable sense of self-worth and idea of what I was capable of as a student and, more importantly, as a person. The triumph after thesis two was much sweeter than what it would have otherwise been.
All of this to say that I have found certain pieces of advice and sayings that really speak to me - to say what I feel better than I could, and to embody goals, mindsets, and attitudes the same. So in my new position, I've been seeking out a new mantra - something to ready me for all the corporate world has to offer and something to remind me to work hard and keep my character.
A cute little saying I found was "A great time to relax is when you don't have time for it" but that was less than inspiring.
I saw Ashton Kutcher's speech from the Teen Choice Awards that shared three life lessons:
1) That opportunity looks a lot like hard work
2) That the way to be really sexy is to be really smart, thoughtful and generous
3) Build a life, don't just live one
I like those. Good things to live by but nothing quite spoke to me like a true mantra should.
And then our CEO posted a blog about the best career advice he's gotten over the years. It was a list of 12 different lessons including, "Be someone your colleagues want to work with," "Don't learn the tricks of the trade, learn the trade," and "Do what's required to get the job done - from the menial to the extraordinary."
I really liked to read through and see what this successful man found meaningful over the years. After seeking out so much career advice online it was fun to see what my own CEO thought was valuable. And there, in the middle of the list, was the mantra meant for me:
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
And suddently I look around - I'm in a job I want, at a company I sought out, with opportunities abound. Certainly seems like I'm pretty lucky again these days. And even in the times when it wasn't quite clear, I've seen now that continuing to work hard brings a lot of luck.
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