The key to building a successful and rewarding career is removing the F-words from your vocabulary, mindset, and actions. These four letter words may just be the obstruction to your new future. The decision is yours: "Fear, fail, fake, fine"—or "greet, grow, genuine, great." Decide which words will be part of your vocabulary and career-development strategy, and then make decisions accordingly.
Fear
Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Sometimes fear is good. If you are walking alone down a dark road at night, fear will keep you alert. However, in the workplace, fear is often less productive.
As you manage your career or seek a new job, fear can prevent you from making a networking connection or asking a high-profile colleague for help. It can affect an interview with a prospective recruiting manager or stop you from applying for a position that you would really like to have. Fear impedes success and breeds more fear. The more you fear, the worse the fear becomes.
Replace the word "fear" with "greet." Greet challenges rather than be afraid of them. After all, a challenge is really an opportunity to shine, grow, and demonstrate your abilities. If you hope for the best rather than fear the worst, you'll be far more successful.
Fail
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. (Sir Winston Churchill)
If you never fail, you aren't taking enough risks. Without risk, you don't grow or stretch yourself. Without growth, you stagnate. Failing, if you look at it from a different perspective, is really a step in succeeding. So replace the word "fail" with "grow."
Often, it is fear of failure that prevents action.
As you advance in your career, failing can be valuable. When you make it to the shortlist for a particular job but are not selected, take what you've learned from the experience and apply it to your next job opportunity. If you choose not to risk failure, you place growth at risk.
Highlighting your failures during a meeting or job interview can be just as powerful. Let a prospective manager know that you are motivated to take calculated risks and willing to fail if it means learning, growing professionally, and moving forward. Take an inventory of events that you classified as failures, and look for the growth that came from them.
Fake
The most exhausting thing you can be is inauthentic. (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
The most successful people in the world are comfortable in their own skin and willing to be themselves; yet many people feel that they need to create an image to be successful. When you give yourself permission to be yourself, you are energized, inspired, and confident. This makes you more attractive and interesting.
Replace the word "fake" with "genuine." Be real. Be yourself.
Fine
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
No one gets excited about things that are fine. Fine equals adequate, average, OK, acceptable. Do you want your career to be described with these words?
It is the old question of why do we educate our children to be fine, resolving weaknesses instead of maximising strengths? Improve your weaknesses but not at the expense of maximizing your strengths, and only if those weaknesses will get in the way of your success. When you apply your strengths to everything you do, you raise yourself far above "fine." You become great, excellent, exceptional, and extraordinary. That's how you want to be known.
When you stop being fine and focus on those things that differentiate you and make you interesting, people will use superlatives to describe you.
Replace the word "fine" with "great," and strive for greatness by leveraging strengths rather than improving weaknesses. Never settle for adequate.
