4 Cornerstones for Federal Achievement

“The only thrill worthwhile is the one that comes from making something out of yourself.” – William Feather

In order to succeed in business and in life, you have to be willing to change.  Without change, there can be no growth. In order to get what you’ve never had, you have to become someone you’ve never been.

Many of us see change as threatening. In the minds of some, it is the destroyer of what is familiar and comfortable rather than the creator of what is new and exciting.

Unfortunately, comfort is the enemy of excellence.

Motivational Speaker Nido Qubein says in his book, Stairway to Success: The Complete Blueprint for Personal and Professional Achievement, “For the timid, change is frightening, for the comfortable, change is threatening, but for the confident, change is opportunity.”

What will you do with your current opportunity?

In order to grow and achieve new heights in your career, you must make a commitment to change. Change leads to growth. Focus your attention on growing in areas that will add value to you personally and professionally.

In your career, ask what gives you the greatest return. What activity do you do in your work that outshines others? We all have areas of strength. Get excellent in those areas. Don’t let your comfort zone kill the excellence within your reach.

In five years you will be somewhere. Where you end up will be determined by what you do every day up till then. If you truly desire to get paid more and promoted faster you have to improve a little bit every day. It’s the decisions we make every day that either get is us a little closer to our goals or farther away.

New York Times Best-Selling Author Brendon Burchard, The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive says there are four cornerstones to achievement. If you truly want to succeed in your career, you need to develop these four attributes:

• Desire
• Direction
• Discipline
• Distraction Radar

Desire – You have to really want it. You should be enthusiastic about this new endeavor. It should make you feel alive. It might even keep you up at night. Your desire to develop greater KSAs (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) will lead to you becoming a better person in the process because the challenges you will encounter will stretch you as a person which will lead to your growth. When you become a better person in your own life, you automatically become a better person in your career.

Direction – Desire is one thing, but you need to harness it by learning to stretch your competency. You have to be willing to:

1. Take a class
2. Read a new biography
3. Attend that seminar
4. Listen to that webinar
5. Ask for help
6. Seek out mentors

In order to have federal success, you have to be willing to learn how other people have done something, model it and mimic the strategies they followed. Be a student of life. Look at the road that others have travelled and carve out your own way. Continue to read and expose yourself to new ideas. Never stop learning.

Discipline – Success is within your reach if you are willing to be more consistent than you have ever been in your life. You will need to set up repeated habits and be willing to do them each and every day. Ask yourself, “What discipline could I setup in my life that I’m going to do consistently to get me where I want to be in my career?” The achievement of anything in life comes only to those who are disciplined. Don’t think of discipline in a negative way.

Think of discipline as the joyous pursuit of your dreams.

Distraction Radar – Inevitably, you will be distracted from your goals. There are emails, phone calls, social media, television and the list goes on. The world will toss in front of you its agenda; you have to be savvy enough to not let this distraction get in your way. Your distraction radar must sound when you see these things trying to sap away your time and energy.

Tomorrow morning, ask yourself:

• What do I desire today?
• What direction am I going to take today?
• What area will I be disciplined in today?
• What distractions will I not succumb to today?

Meiko Patton is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.