Believe

Believe

The Monday Morning Message word for this week is believe. If you want to achieve your career goals, you must believe in yourself and your capabilities. For a moment, take a step back and revisit your job interview and the hiring process. You were hired because your skills, experience and values aligned with the company better than the other candidates. You now must live up to those expectations.

Believing in yourself and your capabilities is not enough. You must also have a commitment and belief in the company’s mission and goals. Successful leaders all have one thing in common, and this is especially true in non-profits; the leaders believe in the mission. Having a belief and being mission driven affords you the opportunity to make decisions based on what is best for the organization. Too often, leaders believe in themselves more than the mission, and this leads to an ego-centric environment.

Believing in your capabilities and believing you are the person for the job is what your company is looking for and expecting of you. But be careful, the belief you have in yourself can quickly turn you into an egomaniac. To be successful and to reach the top you must have somewhat of an ego. I argue that Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and others like them

, all have egos. What separates them from narcissists? They believe in the company’s mission, make decisions on the best interest of the company and others, and focus on how the outcome of their decision affects the company.

Lastly, I caution you on having a false belief in yourself and your skills. Yes, I want you to believe in yourself and capabilities, but you must have these three key elements to make belief possible:

1. Har

d work. Success only comes with hard work which is the foundation to accomplishing your career goals and dreams.

2. Failure. Your best learning, your best moment of true understanding requires failure, and is part of the success process and takes place at the edge of your comfort zone.

3. Having a desire to never stop learning. If you think you know everything, how can you learn new trends that will give you the competitive edge, motivate your team or know when to cut your losses?

Put in the hard work, be willing to fail and never stop learning because I believe in you, so believe in yourself, what your capable of and go achieve your career goals and dreams.