Three things that you Must Do and Three things that you must Avoid to achieve Professional Success.

Three things that you should concentrate on doing consciously are:

1. Create Good Impression – 1^st time, Everytime.

If you must have noticed carefully, people whom we like to spend time are the people who have impressed us. It is very important for you to put in lot of efforts so that you are able to create good impression on the people you meet in your lives.

To be able to successfully create a good impression you should work on your

- Appearance: neat contemporary look works most of the time. Be sure not to be too much fashionable or out of sync with your surrounding.

- Body language: you should know that your body language tells others about you many things even before they have spoken to you. Get a good book on body language to learn and practice positive body language so that you appear to be calm, confident & assertive.

- Verbal communication: Focus on using right grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary to express yourself in best possible way. For managers this is the most important tool for success.

- Also ensure that you respect people for whatever they are without allowing superiority or inferiority complex from entering your mind.

2. Networking with Quality people.

There is an old saying ‘People are known by the company they keep’. It is important that you should know lot of good respectable people, and it is even more important that they know you too.

They say that usually person’s status & wealth will be average of 5 closest people in their life at any given moment. It may or may not be 100% true, but we can never escape the influence that other people have on our thoughts, actions & beliefs. Therefore it is very imperative for you to build a network of extremely talented, positive, hardworking & successful people around you. This will ensure that you too get into same league sooner than latter.

3. Do your job well

Your job will comprise of many tasks, small & big, interesting & mundane, innovative & repetitive. Ensure that you give 100% to each & every task that you undertake.

Remember that you will be respected depending on your overall output or result. If some part of your work is done half heartedly, it will bear negative impact on your final outcome.

So many students along with their parents & guardians ask which field has better prospects. What should students do to have better career and future?

My answer is, let individual decide what he or she wants to do. But make sure that he or she does it well. A tailor can become a big Readymade brand like Allen Solly if he stitches well. A barber can open a chain like that of Jawed Habib, who is now an international hair stylist getting paid thousands for single sitting. A cook could be Sanjeev Kapoor – celebrity and household name in cooking. The list can go on, but you should remember just one thing – Whatever you do, just do it well.

Now let us move on to three things that you must avoid doing under all circumstances:

1. Thinking that I am worth more than what I am getting paid

Instead you can practice thinking – what can I do to become worth more than what I am getting paid. The onus of deciding the worth lies on employers or customers.

The thought of being underpaid only leads to frustration and bad decisions which leads to drop in performance hampering our career growth.

Instead, if you start focusing on improving your results and deliver more than your past and your peers, you will get a sense of achievement. Sooner or later you will get recognized and rewarded. Remember success can be delayed, but never denied if your efforts are in right direction.

2. Job & career hopping

Grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. This basic psychology drives so many people to change jobs and sometimes even careers every now & then.

Remember, if you keep walking in one direction even with moderate speed, you will reach much farther than if you walk fast or run but keep changing your direction periodically. There will be hardships in every job, in every field, in every organization. You may fail at times in your attempts to meet the expectations. But success comes by learning from failures, not by avoiding them altogether. There is no success story that has not seen failures ever in their lives. Cricketer Yuvraj went through patch of failures before he turned to spirituality that helped him become calm, focused and positive and ultimately win the Title of ‘Player of the tournament’ in the word cup.

3. Dishonesty.

Dishonesty seems to be flavor of our times. Just look at the widespread corruption and size of scams that we keep seeing in news everyday. Friends, dishonesty can definitely give you short term gains like a quick sale of product to less knowledgeable customer at higher price or better and high paying job by submitting fraudulent documents. People sometimes earn Crores by bribing government officers for contracts that they are not eligible for. But one fine day, a gentleman like Anna hazare, gentleman like T.N.Seshan, gentle lady like Kiran Bedi stands up and shiver runs down the spine of the dishonest ones. What is the use of amassing wealth that you yourself cannot be proud of at the end of your life? Will it really help you have good bonding with your family members and friends, or have a happy and healthy life, or may be secure a special place in heaven with all good amenities by bribing God? I just want you think about it before being or allowing others to be dishonest.

Try your best to be impressive, build a good network of people around you and try your best to do your job well. At the same time please avoid the thought of being underpaid in any job, avoid job & career hoping and very importantly, stay honest.