The Grind

"Any idiot can face a crisis – it's day to day living that wears you out." – Anton Checkov.

The above quote sums up one of the secrets of success – and one of the reasons for failure – in people's lives.

First, just because you can deal with a crisis does not mean you can deal with non-crisis issues.  You can rally your energies in the face of a crisis that's great – then again so can many of us, as adrenaline is a wonderful motivator.  In fact I find a surprising amount of people do well in a crisis (often better than they think).

However, dealing with crises is only part of life, and (hopefully) a small part of it.  Dealing with crises is important to survival, but crisis management rarely builds anything.

That's why the day to day living, the daily grind, is the thing you really have to cope with.

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Stereotype-Fu: Find the Positive

So when confronted with people stereotyping you on the job there are many ways to turn it to your advantage.  This is a necessary strategy to learn as:
A) People will use stereotypes – often with no malice.
B) You're a geek, fanboy, fangirl, otaku, tech-head, game fanatic, etc.  As of this writing people like us do get stereotyped.

One method you may use, when you realize an interviewer, client, or co-worker is accidentally stereotyping you is to dive straight into the stereotype – and find the positive in it.

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“How” is the only sure path to “can’t”

I talk to a lot of people who are very, very sure of what they can't do in their careers.

They can't be writers.  They can't be artists.  They can't be travel agents.  They have a giant list of can'ts.  It's often larger than their cans.

When I talk to such people, I also learned very quickly that the majority of them really have little or no awareness of the career they've given up on.  They hear something, read something, or make an assumption, and then kill off their career plans right there.

The only way for you to decide you can't do something is to know how it's actually done.

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