I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
Stephen R. Covey
Success in career and in life is not something that happens to you. to you. It's something that happens to you by You. That is, it doesn't come from heaven, or from your boss, or from your partner. It doesn't depend exclusively on external forces and conditions.
Is “consequence of”, is the result of the decisions you make and the actions you take.
If you want to grow in your professional career, if you aspire to success in life, even beyond what you call success, you must know that you are the only one responsible for making that happen.
It would be great to be able to blame the economy or the country, politicians or our partners for our eventual failures, because then we wouldn't have to take responsibility... But life doesn't work that way. The reality is that everything that happens to you is the result of the actions and decisions you take and don't take. Two thousand years ago, the Greeks said: What affects you is not what happens to you, but how you interpret what happens to you.
Logically, the state and its decisions, your environment, and the economic situation surrounding you will affect you to a greater or lesser extent, complicating your plans and dreams to a greater or lesser extent. However, this conditioning is not decisive. No one takes away your freedom to choose how to respond to any situation you face. There is no wall that won't fall if I hit it in the right place long enough.
Ultimately, we are the result of our way of thinking and acting. And this, although difficult to digest and at times causing great inner resistance, grants us unlimited freedom and energy. It makes us aware of the tremendous power of transformation that every human being possesses simply by being human.
Different from animals, with free will, that is, with the power to act through reflection and choice, to decide how to respond to any circumstance they face in life. With the unique ability to imagine a future and pursue it.
It is that same unique and irreplaceable inner freedom that drives you to define existential goals that are worth the effort, not just the pain, but the joy, to achieve.
Therefore, if you want to be successful in your career, be careful what you think, decide how you act, and choose wisely who you surround yourself with and who you listen to. Your success will largely depend on the ideas you allow into your head.
Peter Senge said: “People believe they are free in the absence of external controls. But they are instead prisoners of a deeper and more insidious form of domination: they have only one way of looking at the world.”
Therefore, as the great psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl stated: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Eng. Raúl A. Perez Verzini
TPM Instructor No. 723 – JIPM
Master in Organizational Development and Behavior
