Throughout recorded history personal worth was often measured by an individual’s willingness to take risks. Perhaps Englishman John Heywood best summed up risk taking when he wrote in 1546, “Not venture nought have.”

However there is an inherent difference between reckless risk and calculated risk. An old American proverb counsels against rashness: “Swift risks are often attended by precipitate falls.”

I realize today’s unpredictable job market is daunting. But if you’re wondering “what’s the perfect job for me?” one of the best ways to find it is to believe in yourself. Easier said then done, you say. Then, let my Top Ten List of Ways To Believe In Yourself be your guide:

1. Think of ways you can be your best.
2. Focus on your strengths not your weaknesses.
3. Remind yourself of who you are becoming.
4. Like Magellan, have faith in yourself and know it will happen.
5. Challenge yourself to be all you can be, more so than you’ve ever been.
6. Encourage yourself to keep going, keep building this new you.
7. Acknowledge your successes.
8. Be unconditionally constructive.
9. Allow yourself to achieve greatness.
10. Take a stand for the success you deserve.

As your belief in yourself expands, any problems and challenges you face will lose their sense of power. This is the key to knowing what’s the perfect job for me.

Wondering how to find your dream career? Achieving the desires of a lifetime often requires an unquenchable spirit, sweat, and energy well beyond what we think is possible or even reasonable. These prerequisites culminate in one overriding quality: undying commitment.

So how do we know when we are committed enough? Easy… whenever we achieve what we set out to do, as the individuals making up the melody for this five-part “symphony of temporary setbacks” so harmoniously demonstrate:

• Cyrus H.K. Curtis lost over $800,000 on the Saturday Evening Post before his initial investment even returned a measly $1 profit.
• Marathoner Joan Benoit underwent knee surgery only 17 days before the U.S. Olympic trials. Her determination enabled her to not only make the team, but also to capture the first-ever Olympic gold medal for her event.
• The great Fran Tarkenton was told he was too small to be a quarterback, too slow on his feet, and too weak to take the punishment. However, this young man from Georgia’s diehard efforts resulted in the longest running reign for a quarterback in NFL history.
• Michelangelo endured seven long years lying flat on his back on a scaffold to paint the Sistine Chapel.
• In 1902, the poetry editor of the Atlantic Monthly returned the work of a 28-year old poet with the following note: “Our magazine has no room for your vigorous verse.” Robert Frost persevered.

Let these above examples inspire you to know how to find your dream career. We may never write legendary poetry, win Olympic gold, invent a new product, or start a multimillion-dollar magazine. But whatever our dreams are, the willingness to commit until we conqueror will determine if our “symphony of setbacks” ends on a high or a low note.

COACHING TIP: Exchanging Setbacks For Success

The above article shows how some world famous individuals and organizations used their setbacks to fuel lasting success by internalizing the following three principles:

1. Achieving the desires of a lifetime requires an undying commitment well beyond what we think is possible or even reasonable.
2. We know when we are committed enough to our dreams, whenever we finally achieve what we set out to do.
3. Our willingness to commit until we conqueror determines if our life’s “symphony of setbacks” ends on a high or a low note.

During World War II, a military official summoned General George Patton in Sicily. As he praised Patton for his courage and bravery, the General interrupted: “Sir, I am not a brave man… The truth is, I am an utter craven coward. I have never been within in the sound of a gunshot or sight of battle in my whole life that I wasn’t so scared that I had sweat in the palms of my hands.”

Years later, when his autobiography was published it contained this significant statement from the general: “I learned very early in my life never to take counsel of my fears.”

Another military hero, Eddie Rickenbacker, once said, “Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”

As we move out of our comfort zones towards either accomplishing new things or approaching new levels of greatness, it’s normal to lack courage even if the goal we’re moving towards is positive. Like both these historical figures you too can avoid succumbing to the counsel of your fears by following these three courage enhancing tips. The effectiveness of career coaching comes when you implement these key points.

1. Consider the positive outcome you’re heading towards rather than any negative feelings you may be having at the moment. The other side of the hurdle is better than where you are now.
2. Put the energy you spend worrying or fearing about any challenge you might be facing into overcoming it in a positive way. The obstacle is one because of the energy you’re putting into it. Redirect that energy back to a positive place and you’ll be over the hurdle.
3. Do something unconventional. I’ve had clients who have procrastinated calling people. They tell me this on our weekly calls and I suggest they hang up with me on the spot to make the call they need to make before calling me back. They have no excuses then and are able to move forward.

Other ways to build a strong foundation of personal courage include bringing more positive influences into your life.

Look for mentors and role models who are experiencing greatness in their own lives. You’ll also benefit from the effectiveness of career coaching.

Read inspirational books and post motivational quotes around you.

Seek out co-workers who aren’t afraid to think outside of the box and look for ways to work more with them.

If your work environment is negative, schedule a time to discuss the situation with your manager. Don’t be afraid of difficult conversations. You might be pleasantly surprised with the results. (It can’t hurt to brush up on your conversation skills first, though). If the results are unsatisfactory, consider looking for a new position in a place where greatness is valued and cultivated and everyone dares themselves and those around them to new levels of achievement.

That’s what courage is all about.

Achievers are resolute in their goals and absolutely driven by determination. So how can we measure when we are determined enough? Easy. When we achieve what we set out to do, regardless of the obstacles, like these deeply determined individuals:

• Dr. Seuss’ first children’s book was rejected by 23 different publishers before the 24th publisher sold six million copies.
• During it’s first year of business, the Coca-Cola company sold only 400 Cokes.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
• Avalanches, dehydration, hypothermia and mental and physical fatigue caused by a lack of oxygen at 29,000 stood between James Whitaker, the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and the top of the world’s highest mountain.

You may never, become a famous athlete, invent a new product, author a best selling book or look down from the world’s highest, mountain peak-but whatever your dreams are, your willingness to “keep on keeping on” will determine your measure of success.

Whether the objective is find their dream job or love their jobs more, most people misinterpret faith as simply believing that something totally unforeseen will miraculously happen to them to improve their lives based upon misplaced “hope” in the future. Even worse, some individuals use faith as a disengaging excuse to procrastinate by internalizing a mentality such as “I hope that things work out for me,” or “Things will get better for me tomorrow.”

However these philosophies relegate the empowering attributes of hope and faith into nothing more than dumb luck. Unlike the above external definition, I believe faith is internal and rather than materializing somewhere down the road, faith starts fully grounded in the present. In other words, you have the power to control your life in your current circumstances and what you do or create today, ultimately, impacts your destiny.

To better help you distinguish the inherent differences between internal and external based faith, let’s take a look at two real life examples. America’s first commercial jet service began with a Boeing 707 flight in 1958. The next month according to National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” a passenger on a soon to be obsolete propeller-driven DC-6 airliner struck up a conversation with another passenger who happened to be a Boeing engineer.

The curious traveler asked the engineer about the new jet aircraft and the engineer spoke convincingly about the rigorous testing Boeing had completed on the cutting-edge model. He went on to explain about Boeing’s extensive experience in designing jet engines. All went well until the passenger asked the most critical question, “Have you flown on the new 707 jet?” The engineer’s testimony grounded in external faith crashed and burned when he replied, “I think I’ll wait until it’s been in service awhile.”

Although the Boeing engineer believed a great deal in his company and in the aerodynamic principles of jet flight, until he stepped foot and actually flew on the Boeing 707 his faith lacked credibility.

In the late 19th century, Susan B. Anthony, a delegate to the Sons of Temperance Meeting in Albany, NY was denied to right to speak from the platform because of her gender. Immediately putting her faith into action, Anthony organized a group of like-minded advocates to form the Women’s State Temperance Society of New York, an organization dedicated to the pursuit of securing a Constitutional Amendment establishing a woman’s right to vote.

Although her campaign to include women in the 15th Amendment failed miserably and she would never get to cast a vote herself, Anthony’s dream was finally realized just before her death in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Unlike the Boeing engineer, Susan B. Anthony had the courage to act on her faith from the get go rather than waiting on coincidence or someone else to get the ball rolling.

If you knew the exact time when life as you know it would be over, what would you do differently? More specifically, if you had only one year left and had to continue working for a living, what would you change about your daily routine right now? For one thing, you would probably stop procrastinating, so here are a few useful tips I’ve learned serving clients of my career coaching company:

1. Create tomorrow, don’t maintain yesterday.

Abandon anything that doesn’t support what’s most important to you. For example, when my clients come to me for help in landing their dream job, they are making a statement to themselves that the dream job process is one of the most important aspects of their lives and should be treated as such.

2. See your challenges as opportunities.

Often when we procrastinate it’s because any challenge or obstacle in our path causes us to freeze up and say, “Not today.” Viewing what’s presented to you as an opportunity is a gift that will enable you to learn, grow, evolve and create the amount of change necessary to stop procrastinating.

3. Use resources wisely.

Resources come in such forms as energy, money and time. Instead of procrastinating, always question how you can best use your resources for each minute of the day.

4. Take action today for what you want tomorrow.

Taking action today is about actively embracing the concepts of discipline, motivation and pursuing. When we procrastinate, we simply aren’t remaining focused or in pursuit of what we truly want. When you decide to take action, your steps should be specific, achievable, realistic and timely, but “careful planning” is no excuse to procrastinate.

In my career coaching company I constantly express the importance of taking action today. In the present moment, you are tangibly demonstrating that you have faith in your future because you are proactively making decisions to align your current status in life with what you want to achieve in the long run. John Dryden once said, “They can conquer who believe they can.” And we should add, who are willing to act on their faith today rather than putting it off until tomorrow.

1. Sheila Holzworth climbed to Mount Rainer’s icy summit in 1981, surmounting the obstacle of blindness.

2. Paralyzed from the waist down at the age of four and a child of Nazi concentration camp survivors, Ithzhak Perlman went on to become a world renown concert violinist.

3. Perhaps the most brilliant scientist of all time, Albert Einstein was characterized as a slow learner, retarded and written off as uneducable during his adolescent years.

Any one of these individuals could have given up and few would have blamed them. Yet each found new abilities, different techniques and a revitalized desire to pursue their dreams. Now what was your excuse, for not pursing the career of your dreams, again?

The areas we continue to excuse are the areas that will return to haunt us over and over again. No matter what your employment status, especially if you’re considering a career change now, practicing “excusiology” is a dead end way of life.

John Wooden was one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, leading his UCLA Bruins to record-breaking number of NCAA basketball championships and earning the respect of players and spectators alike. One of Wooden’s most memorable motivating statements admonished players to take responsibility for their actions. Wooden repeatedly taught, “Nobody is a real loser-until they start blaming somebody else.”

To start considering a career change now, answer these questions. Have you fallen into the habit of making excuses or blaming others for your lot in life? In what areas of your life or career path can you take more control? How will you begin taking responsibility for developing a winning attitude and lifestyle?

Instead of focusing on your environment, your family and friends, your coworkers, superiors or what’s wrong with company policy, try focusing on yourself. Improve what you do, instead of waiting for those around you to do the same. Be creative, look at how you can become a change leader towards improving your own negative viewpoints and behaviors. Here’s three sure-fire ways to cure even the worse case of excusiology:

1. If circumstances in your personal life or your job are negative, ask yourself how you can contribute to making your situation more positive?
2. If you’re searching for your dream career, identify one behavior or attitude that you can change to make yourself more positive and begin changing this week.
3. For those of you striving to love your job more, choose one action you can take to make your work environment more positive and take that action this week.

There’s absolutely no excuse for not trying.

At 97 pounds dripping wet, he was a sickly and skinny high school loner. He was ridiculed, picked and ostracized. Thick glasses, arch supports and a shoulder brace further stunted his self-image and hope for the future.

The constant rejection and his own self-deprecating lifestyle prompted him to drop out of high school. After that, his life became even more directionless and empty.

His life finally took a right turn when he attended a health lecture and made a conscious decision that his future would not be a repeat performance of the past. He junked his junk food diet, began exercising two hours a day and gradually changed his physical appearance, self-image and attitude about life.

As a result, this one-time, frail, self-conscious teenager opened his own health club in California. His passion for improving his own status eventually led him door to door, promoting and selling his new exercise business through which he became committed to changing the lifestyles of everyone in Oakland, California and beyond.

That man is Jack LaLanne who would forever become known around the world as “Mr. Exercise.” Mr. Exercise would probably be the first to tell you that exercising greatness is directly attributable to one’s conscious decision not to let the future be a repeat performance of the past and that almost anyone journey’s to personal fulfillment can be broken down into four life transforming processes:

1. Set your goal.
2. Create a series of steps that get gradually more and more specific until you finally have a single step you can complete now, today, right at this moment.
3. Realize that any resistance to change is a normal subconscious effort to keep you safe.
4. Finally, make a leap of faith and begin.

A client of mine who was making a career coaching transitions in Chicago was inspired by Jack LaLanne and his story. She realized that taking action on a daily basis will help you create new habits and build energy to face the barriers that occur in any successful journey. You’ll learn to develop new resources and recognize new ways around any obstacle to achieve your heart’s desire.

Once you do, you will allow your entire universe to support you in ways you never knew existed. Just like Mr. Exercise, you will begin to generate a wave of positive energy that cannot be stopped.

COACHING TIP: Exercising Greatness

By participating in this week’s “inspirational workout” you can follow in the footsteps of one revolutionary individual who exercised greatness by:

1. Setting your goal.
2. Creating a series of action steps that get gradually more and more specific until you finally have a single step you can complete right now.
3. Realizing that any resistance to change is a normal subconscious effort to keep you safe.
4. Finally, making a leap of faith and beginning to complete your action plan.

Have you wondered what separates you from those who are more successful in life? We all have different talents and experiences that contribute to the portrait of who we are. Beyond talent, however, the primary key that separates the successful from those who have not yet achieved their dreams is the willingness to take action. If you dream about being a world famous author but never touch a keyboard or put pen to paper, it will never happen. That long distance vision of being a published author is only a starting point; you must then backtrack and create the steps that will get you there.

This is true regardless what your dream may be. You must develop an image in your mind of your dream goal and then look at the steps you can build to get there. Successful people understand the power of action. They examine what they need to do, plan a series of logical steps to get there, take action and stay in action until they reach their dream.

What does this mean to you? First, you must be willing to act. Once you are willing, bring this willingness into movement by doing something. Develop an outline starting with where you are now and what your dream goal is. Plug in all the steps it would take to get there that you can imagine, in the order you think they need to be.

For the person who wants to be a published writer, as a career transition services specialist, I recommend something like this:

I. Form an idea for a book.

Develop characters and plot idea.
Do research, contact resources.
Set aside time to write each day.
Write at least one page a day.

II. Finish rough draft of first chapter.

Continue writing.

III. Finish first draft.

Revise, edit and rewrite.

IV. Polish and finish final draft.

Find agent or editor who is interested in publishing.

V. See book published.

Having concrete steps you can see and take action on will create a wave of energy within you, empowering you forward to success. Like a small movement of the earth deep beneath the sea that ripples the water gently at first until it results in a giant wave cascading on the beach, a small action on your part can show similar movement within a relatively short time. Remember, momentum generates energy. Energy cultivates action. And action, over time, will always produce results.

In my career transition services I find that most people aren’t more successful due to fear. Like a deer mesmerized by oncoming headlights, it stands still, afraid that any movement will be wrong when, in reality, motion is the only thing that can save it. Similarly, most people stay in a place they don’t particularly like doing work that does not challenge or inspire them simply because they don’t know what they want and are afraid to take action and make movement in their life. They are scared of change and what might happen if they take the wrong action. Realize that you are standing in the headlights of life and the only wrong action is to take no action at all. In the end, any action you take will generate energy and take you from a place of stillness into movement. Action will give you information, insight and wisdom to build your future upon.

So set that goal, create a series of steps that get gradually more and more specific until finally you have a single step you can do now, today, right at this moment. Now, make a leap of faith and begin. Once you do, you will allow the universe to support you in ways you never knew existed because you are making a statement to the world that you are ready (unconsciously) and it will respond favorably by offering you opportunities and gifts for you to respond to. You will begin to generate a wave of energy that won’t be stopped.

Taking action on a daily basis will create new habits and build energy to face the barriers that occur in any journey. You’ll develop new resources and recognize new ways around those barriers to achieve your heart’s desire. Realize that your resistance is a normal subconscious effort to keep you safe.

Does this mean you must quit your current job and take a leap of faith into the unknown void without a security net? No. You can take action toward your dream while still working your current job. But you must use any free time available to build the life you want. This is how countless others achieved their dreams. Harrison Ford, a successful actor with many film credits to his name, worked as a carpenter for years while trying out for film roles. Carpentry paid the bills until his dreams as an actor came to fruition. Tom Clancy, a best-selling author of techno-thrillers such as The Hunt for Red October & Patriot Games toiled away as an insurance salesman who wrote his first novel during his free time. It was rejected by 22 publishers before a small publisher that previously handled only technical military materials took a chance and published their first work of fiction.

When you take action, recognize that every rejection simply puts you one step closer to success. A rejection means you have eliminated one more avenue that didn’t recognize or need your services. This allows you to now be more closely focused on the remaining list of those who will want your skills. You will see results from your actions by staying committed to your goal. Commitment plus action eventually achieves results. This is my main focus with clients in my career transition services.

Begin a thirty-day small-action step today. Commit to it fully and see the benefits. The ultimate goal is to act on your passions to achieve your dreams. And your day-to-day goals will be easy to achieve once you recognize that fear has only as much power over you as you allow it. Les Brown said, “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.”