If Hard Work Doesn't Guarantee Success, What Does? By Liz Ryan.

For decades we heard that hard work was the number-one factor in a person's success or failure, in business or in any other arena.
We worked hard in school and were rewarded with good grades and approval from the grown-ups, so we brought our hard-work mindset into the workplace.
Hard work is important. I subscribe to the old adage that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Still, I learned long ago that hard work is not the key to success -- not by itself. I hope you got that memo, also!
Many people have gotten the memo by working incredibly hard for a company that turned around and laid them off.
They invested enormous time, energy, heart and brain cells in a job that they thought would take their career in all the right places.
Then their job disappeared or they ruined their health from overwork and have little to show for it. Millions of people are in the same boat.
That's okay! We learn from our experiences, positive and negative. Any snake that bites you once won't get you a second time.
Once you've given heart and soul to a job that disappeared out from under you, you know something important. You're going to be more wary next time, and more protective of yourself. Who could blame you for that?
Mother Nature is the best teacher!
Hard work is not enough. Look how many people around you work hard and invest in professional development and make sacrifices to succeed at work -- and how frustrated they become when their efforts don't bear fruit.
They are overlooked for opportunities or their hours are cut, even though a few months earlier the boss may have said "I could see you being a manager here."
It's exhausting just reading the signals that fly through the air at work sometimes. It's too hard, and I don't want you to spend your precious mojo that way. You have bigger fish to fry than worrying about what boss thinks about you this week.
You can't depend on other people to take your career forward. You have to power your forward motion by yourself. Your success in business or in any endeavor relies on these three things:

• Your passion for your mission
• Your ability to take complete responsibility for everything that happens to you -- and to learn from it, and
• Your sensitivity to changes in your environment and in your own heart.

Hard work as a key to success doesn't even make our Top Three list, because if somebody has to tell you to work hard, then something about your mission or your commitment to it is already off-kilter.
No one has to tell us to work hard when we're working toward our mission, and when our work is aligned with who we are. It isn't even work when we love what we do. It's art!
Any job can have your creative spark in it, and you can bring your heart energy to any job, as well as your great ideas. The job description is important.
The important thing is your connection to the work, and the the energy in your workplace.
If the people you work with get you, then they deserve you. If they don't get you, they don't deserve you. It's that simple!
You deserve a job that brings out the best in you, not just a job that pays your bills. I don't want you to work in a place that crushes your spirit.
Your spirit is a huge part of you. If you can't be yourself at work, they couldn't pay you enough to make that trade-off worthwhile.
I don't say that to make you feel bad about your current job but rather to inspire you to look higher, because you deserve more than just a paycheck. You have gifts that you use at work and maybe other gifts that no one gets to see.
What kind of work would let you use more of your gifts and bring more of yourself to your job? What kind of work would celebrate the parts of you that make you who you are, instead of stifling them?
Any artificial barrier that we once believed existed between our work and our 'real' life was only a facade. The notion that work is prim and formal while home life is warm and breezy is just part of the same tired Godzilla structure that still powers many organizations.
It's made up. We don't have to do business in the old-fashioned, crusty, dusty way. We can be human at work now. We deserve to be ourselves at work, and our customers and shareholders deserve to encounter us at our mojofied best!
There is nothing inherent in work or business that makes it formal, stiff and grey. Work can be lively and stimulating. It must be! Human power organized around a mission is the strongest force on earth.
We can bring ourselves completely to work and make art every day in any job, but to do that we have to give up blaming other people or the world for our difficulties.
"I'm too old" or "I have the wrong education" or "My last boss was a jerk" act like very short-term band-aids for our bruised egos.
Most of us have experienced getting angry and lashing out when we are frustrated at work or on a job search -- but we know that when we blame other people and phantom enemies for our difficulties, we aren't operating at our highest altitude.
Once we start looking at the question "What do I want in my life and my career?" and stop blaming people and circumstances for our challenges, we can get the altitude we need to see the landscape and our path clearly.
From altitude you can see, for instance, how your nasty former boss Doris turned out to be a great teacher. Doris helped you find your voice. You had never spoken up for yourself before you worked for Doris.
She could be difficult sometimes. A couple of times Doris started to go off on you about something she was unhappy with at work, and you gently stopped her. You spoke your truth and Doris backed up.
She brought out confidence and truth-telling in you that had been dormant before. Doris was a great mentor, as difficult as her lessons were to receive.
From an altitude we can see the obstacles to our success, down on the ground.
We can see that the barriers we have created won't be hard to knock down, tunnel under or sail over. It will take a little courage, but you are courageous -- look at the barriers you've surmounted in your life already!
If you haven't thought about your career and your life from altitude before, now is a great time to do it. Pick a time when you can think without distractions and bring a pen and a journal.
Think about your life so far and your goals for the rest of your life. Think about yourself at work on a project that supports your mission and fits into your life. The exercise is fun - and challenging!
Write about what you want from your life -- what you want to leave behind you here on our planet. What do you want to accomplish, experience and contribute while you are alive?
If you could step into your perfect job or career situation tomorrow, what would that job be? Write about it. Write in as much detail as you can.
Reinvention is sometimes scary. Many people in reinvention say "I'll stick with what I know" even when it's obvious that the ground has shifted and their path lies elsewhere.
Change can make us anxious. One way we push the anxiety away is to put up barriers and say "Look at the barrier! I can't make a change -- it's impossible!"
Your success relies on your ability to say "I know what I want, I'm going to keep trying things and keep learning to pursue my mission, and I take responsibility for everything that has happened to me up to this point."
You can't make anything -- other people's opinions of you, your own fears, your financial situation or your education or your age -- bigger than you are.
You can't give your power away to shadowy bogeymen like Age Discrimination or Bad Recruiters -- not if you want to take control of your life and career.
Rather than tick off the reasons you don't have the life you want, you can go and get it!
When you take control of your life and career, you'll say "This spot where I stand right now is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Everything that has happened so far was supposed to go just the way it did. I'm in charge of my life and I am on my path."
When you take responsibility for every decision you've ever made, for your present work and life situation and for every challenge and obstacle in your way, you're going to see right away how liberating an act it is.
You'll say "Yes!" to things you'd always said "No!" to before.
You'll see that taking any step for the first time is only scary for a second, like your first jump or dive off the high dive.
The instant your feet leave the diving board, you're aloft in thin air and the fear is gone. In any case, it's too late! You're diving, or belly-flopping, from the high dive and you're in the moment. Then you're in the water swimming and saying "I want to do that again!"
Real life works the same way.
It's only new ground once. When you try everything that might teach you anything, change your views or your habits in every imaginable way and open yourself up to new influences, your career will move forward.
Your learning will accelerate and broaden. Your mind will wander more expansively than it is does now. You'll think about your own possibilities differently.
First you'll think differently, and then you'll take steps. "Hard work" in the sense of throwing your shoulder to the wheel because somebody told you to has little place in business success today.
Hard work pushing somebody else's agenda doesn't get you brownie points, job security or even credibility as a businessperson these days.
Committed, step-by-step movement toward your own mission on the other hand won't feel like work and will speed you down your path.
You can succeed in business or anything you want to pursue. You can have the career and life you want. No one stands between you and your vision but if you want to drive your life and career, you have to grab the wheel.

KINGSMITH.