TIP 88
INVEST IN YOURSELF
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Let’s face it, what is your best asset? You.
I am always amazed at people who are reluctant to invest in themselves. You not only deserve but also require ongoing training and development to be your best. As a rule of thumb, it is a good idea to invest 5 to 10 percent of your income in further training and coaching. Statistics have proven that those with higher and more specialized training make more money. But money aside, you owe it to yourself to be the best you can be. Every three months, 25 percent of what we know about computers is already obsolete because technology is changing that fast. This means that in one year, if you aren’t keeping up-to-date, your knowledge base is obsolete, and someone else is already doing it faster and better. Scary thought, but not if you make the commitment to continually grow and develop.
Curiosity is irresistible. Curious people are fresh and eager to learn, regardless of their age. They are constantly interested in learning new things and improving themselves and their skills. If you aren’t learning and growing, you might as well be dead. The only proof of life is growth. Now that one can easily access a wealth of information on the Internet, it’s not necessary to know everything. You just have to know how to find it. The emphasis for the future will not be the knowledge you have, but your ability to quickly adapt and continually learn. The quick and the curious will rule the day. The rest will be out-of-date in a hurry.
So how do you become curious? The place to start is to realize that you don’t know everything. In fact, knowing everything would make you pretty dull. Curious people understand that the more they know about a subject, the more there is to know. This keeps them humble and open-minded, which makes them infinitely more attractive than those folks who think they know it all. Once you realize that you don’t know it all and can’t know it all, it is easier to walk around with an open mind willing to learn and absorb new things. Ever notice how the know-it-alls don’t have room to hear new information? They are spending all their energy on being right about what they do know rather than relaxing and seeing what else there is to learn.
Curiosity comes from an internal desire to constantly grow and develop as a human being. I personally believe that this is our purpose in life, or at least one purpose. It is only natural that I would want to seek ways to grow and develop for the rest of my life. I’ll never arrive because it is an ongoing process. You can only get better. All of my coaching clients are curious; they want to improve themselves and their lives, and they are willing to try new ideas and new ways of doing things. If you don’t have the success you desire and you are doing everything you know to do, you must be missing something. It takes a fairly extraordinary person to recognize this and then get the advice and support he or she needs to make whatever changes are necessary to be successful. For some peculiar reason, there are people who aren’t interested in being the absolute best they can be. Many people aren’t coachable because they think they already know everything.
Let me give you Rob as an example. He was a devastatingly handsome, arrogant know-it-all. When you talked to Rob, you somehow got the impression that he was looking down at you. He worked in a prestigious investment bank on Wall Street and couldn’t seem to understand why his boss wasn’t giving him the recognition he was due. He felt that she was an idiot. He complained that he spent one whole weekend working like crazy to produce a report for her, and then on Monday she marked it up with all sorts of changes (completely unnecessary in his mind) and asked him to do it again. He made some rude remark under his breath and huffed out of her office, the report clutched in his hand. Every morning he would show up late for the staff meeting—after all, they never discussed anything worth hearing, and besides, he worked late all the time.
I wasn’t terribly surprised when Rob was fired, but he was. He couldn’t believe it. This was the second Wall Street firm that had fired him after a year. It was a huge blow to his ego. He finally admitted that if he was going to succeed, he needed to find out what he was doing wrong. In that moment, Rob made the critical shift from thinking he had all the answers to realizing that he didn’t and that he needed to get some help. After listening to his story, I referred Rob to a coach who served on several boards of different companies and had been in the business world for over 30 years. Rob was a difficult client, but to his credit, he was willing to listen to the coaching and changed his style. After a few months, he found a new job at another firm and got a fresh start. This time he approached the job with a willingness to learn as much as he could from his boss and his colleagues, even if he didn’t think they were always right. A year later, he is still employed, and his prospects at the company look very good. Rob is not as frustrated, and he is a whole lot more fun to be around.
Another way to open your mind and become humble is to study something that you know absolutely nothing about. Take poetry or physics or study the tango. It doesn’t matter what—pick anything of interest to you. Become a student again and start from the very beginning. Surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you are. Keep your mind constantly growing and stretching.
Training, once considered a luxury, is a matter of survival today. Still haven’t figured out how to use your computer? Stop struggling with the manual and invest in a class or even a private tutor. Want to work in the international division at work? Ask your company to pay for language classes at night. Almost all companies have a fund for coaching, training, and development. If they don’t, ask anyway. Take advantage of every company-sponsored training program you can, and if you want to take a course that isn’t in the standard offerings, ask your boss. I’ve encouraged my clients to take thousands of dollars’ worth of classes all on the company, including everything from private tutoring for business, to public relations, learning Spanish, and classes on financial accounting at the local colleges. All they needed to do was make a case for how the course would improve and develop them as managers or employees. Since most big companies require that managers oversee the training and development of their employees, make it easy for your manager and bring a course schedule along with a convincing argument. If you are self-employed, you may need even more classes, as you will probably find yourself doing a little bit of everything from bookkeeping to sales. Lack management skills? Need to brush up on computer skills? Take a class. Don’t be left behind. There is nothing successful about incompetence. Take the time to master your field and then keep on learning.