What made you successful at work?

I could make a very long list of what has made me successful in my work.  Here's the short list:

Work ethic: My father and mother taught me to work.  There were always chores to be done in the house and in the yard.  I started finding employment at as early as age eight when I started picking cherries for Bishop Burt Skinner.  At eleven I began delivering news papers.  At age 14 I worked at a hydroponics farm in which my grandpa Wood had part interest.  At 15 I got a dishwashing job at the Riverside Country Club.  Later I went to work for Marie Calender's Pies.  So all through my youth I worked and earned what I needed/wanted.  It is worth noting that I enjoyed digging in the garden.  I never really liked to weed, but then, who does.

Study of my profession:  My first real profession was in Sales.  When I returned home from my mission I took a job selling Beef Stick and cheese for Vernon Baugh, who owned a Hickory Farms story in the University Mall.  I would go to the Utah State Fair where he had three booths set up to sell his products.  He would move me from booth to booth, but no matter which booth he put me in, that booth had the highest sales for the day.  I was good at because I had enthusiasm.  I was excited to invite people to taste our product and the tasting led to sales.  It was fun and easy.
   Across the way from one of the booths was a Living Scriptures booth.  One of the managers there saw what I was doing and wanted me to come work for them.  I took a sample tape home (the first tape in the Church History series that we used to play when you were little).  My dad liked the tapes and bought the set.  I went to work for living Scriptures where I made my first real money.  My boss, Brent Smith, was a professional salesman and had volumes of motivational and educational tapes on selling.  I listened to some of these because he required it, and other because I wanted to.  I was learning sales from the best of the best: Zig Ziggler, Tom Hopkins...  I started reading every book on sales and selling until I started getting bored by books where I knew more than the author.  All the time I was putting into practice the things I learned.  Key principles that I learned in sales have been also central to succeeding in education.  The more fundamental deals with learning people's needs and meeting those needs.  In sales this means discovering the shopper's needs and presenting the fulfillment of those needs in the products offered.  In education it means that behavioral problems in the classroom happen when the student's needs are not being met.  When the needs are discovered and understood, and the learning is presented in a way that meets those needs, then the behavior problems solve themselves.
   In education I continue to study what I do.  The in-service training, or the ongoing training, is far more important that the pre-service training.  Teaching gets easier and more effective the more one studies and applies.  The major problem with the American Education system is that we do not provide time for teachers to adequately apply what is learned in professional development sessions.  So the learning is lost through lack of immediate application.

Doing what I enjoy doing, and enjoying what I do.  In life we cannot always chose what we are going to do in employment.  It is beyond fundamental to learn to enjoy what we do or to get out of it.  And there is a way with any work that provides service to find joy in that work.  I have to admit that I find little joy in providing service to those who could and should served themselves.  That kind of work can feel demeaning.  But when we can do for others what they can't do for themselves, we gains a sense of personal satisfaction.  The money is good, too, but the personal satisfaction is why we work. When I worked for the Park Lane Nursing Home I was serving people who could not serve themselves; so, thought it was in society's eyes, menial labor, it was enjoyable.

Silencing fear and seeking out challenge:  In every profession there are levels of promotion.  When it comes to seeking those promotions we will run up against our own inadequacy, or our feelings of inadequacy.  There is so much to be learned from new challenges.  When I decided to try to become a principal I had no idea how I would actually break into that profession.  Neither did I have a clue as to how breaking into that profession usually happens.  I was out of my depth, and there has never been a time in my life when I felt more intimidated and more fearful of my own failure.  I had to choke back those fears and more forward.  The reward was learning at a level I could not have imagined.  I was able to break into the profession when Western Plains was left in the lurch by a principal they thought they had hired.  And I learn so much though the mistakes I made.  It makes me wish that I had the health to pursue the principalship again because of what I know now that I learned through hard knocks then.  So, learning from failure is a large part of this issue.  If we fear failure we will not seek challenges, we won't learn and develop, and we won't progress in our profession.  If we see failure as a learning opportunity, as a building block, then we will seek out challenges because failure is a natural part of growth.  We learn from it.  We can often learn more from it than in any other way.  However, I will say that through study we can learn from the mistakes of others, which is a lot more fun than learning from our own.

It's not about the money: Success is never about money.  It is always about serving others, solving their problems, helping them grow and develop, providing things that they cannot provide on their own.  This is the key.  Mother Earth provides more than sufficient for our needs.  There will, on the average, always be "enough and to spare."  So seek the profession where you feel fulfillment.  You will naturally study a profession you enjoy and in which you find fulfillment.  The drudge job will never produce that kind of drive to succeed.  If you hate your work, evaluate how you can change.  Do you need to seek promotion.  Should you step down to a more fulfilling position?  For me this was a key thing.  I sought the principalship because I believed that we could not survive in education without that level of income, and there was some truth in that.  That crisis came at the end of my third year.  The Chemo was draining my energy, except when I was in front of a classroom of students.  Teaching energizes me.  Sitting behind an administrative desk puts me to sleep.  I have no energy for that.  Going back to classroom teaching saved my life professionally.  So, now I look at what I can do to be a better English teacher and how to make the profession better for other teachers.  I love having former students visit me and tell me how grateful they are that I pushed them to do things that they didn't want to do.  In just two years teaching at Wheaton this has already happened several times.  The feeling is life giving.  Jesus spoke of ten lepers and one returning to give thanks.  I think that I get less than 10% return ratio, but those who do return and say think you give meaning to my life that no salary or pay check can equal. I can't say that teaching has provided "sufficient for my needs."  It hasn't.  Were it not for the kindness of your Uncle Sam I would be broken financially.  Those in teaching who are making a "living" are either single and have no familial obligations, or have a spouse who also works full time.  This is a major sin of our times: we no longer provide sufficient for the needs of the laborer.  This has killed many a good teacher--driven them to seek employment elsewhere.  Perhaps we could have done better if we had eaten beans and rice.  Thank Mom and I sometime that we fed you better.  We wanted you to have a moderate childhood.  Things would have worked out had it not been for the cancer.  We were on the path to financial freedom when that hit.  In this sense, it is about the money.  Chose a profession that will provide the basic necessities--and a little more that you can invest, and use to bless others through charitable donation.  If your job/profession does not provide sufficient for your needs, you will always feel the weight of that terrible yolk.  You will feel your work is drudgery.  You will not have the time or the energy to improve yourself in your profession because you will always be working over time in an attempt to keep your nose above water.  In that condition the tiniest wave will swamp your boat.  A large wave could destroy you.  Keep your living simple so that you can easily meet your daily needs; then make sure through budgeting that you are meeting those needs with something to spare.  When you are young it is easy to think that you will just work harder or work more to make up the difference.  Trust me, when you get older you will lose that ability.  Eventually your health will pay a terrible price.  So, simplify what you can and what you should.  That doesn't mean eating beans and rice all the time (just at the end of the month before the next pay check arrives).  Don't overwork yourself to the point that you don't have time or energy to study and improve yourself.
   Never forget why we work.  The job is for the support of the family.  Find a job that understand that the job is there to support the family.  Some companies understand this, and some do not.  The wealth of the world is collecting at the top of an economic "great and spacious building" like a pyramid with a golden cap stone.  As those near the top scramble for a position in the top, the economic realities at the bottom of the pyramid are going to become less and less "sufficient" for anyone's needs.  More and more, humanity will find ways to survive the poverty (by more stringent means than just eating beans and rice).  Protect yourselves and your children from this as much as you can, through education and constant improvement, work ethic, learning to enjoy what you do (or finding something to do that you enjoy), keeping needs simple, and using your surplus to build protection for yourselves and to bless the lives of the less fortunate. Life is good, and Mother Earth is still providing "enough and to spare."  I believe that she always will until and unless the Lord asked her to hold back her blessings until we repent.