How to Future-Proof Your Career

If you are worried or just curious about how you may secure a bright future. Pay attention to these career success tips.

My job as CEO of Populis is to work with leaders to future-proof their personal and organisational success. But what does that really mean? How do you future-proof your career? The first step is to nail your personal vision of success so that there is absolute clarity for you in 'what success looks like'. Finding this clarity means you need to get to know yourself in great detail. When you know who you are and what success looks like for you, you are empowered to move forward with confidence. Clarity brings with it peace of mind and allows you to optimise your personal energy. The outcome is glorious in that you find perfection in every action, you can love your life. Happiness and opulence are by products of optimised personal energy.

Now, let us consider why people find themselves confused, get kicked around based on their environments and why do people fail? The main reason is that most folks simply do not ask themselves the following question:

‘What does success look like for me?’

When you have clarity in what you value, you appreciate that and put your efforts into living you life right. I want to you take a moment to ask yourself and visualise; what success looks like for you.

I can be sure it isn't doesn't involve working 24/7, coming home after a long day and still working rather than enjoying the company of your loved ones. Your vision is more likely to be one where your work enables you to love and live your life to the fullest, perhaps to travel, to do things that better humanity and society? For some it may simply be to be able to pay your bills. You will get what you see in your minds eye. If you do not take the time to do this exercise, then you will have to accept the left-overs that is dished out to you!

What does success look like for you?

In deciding what success looks like for you, it may help to ask yourself ‘who it is that you admire?’ Who has the lifestyle, the job or has the success that you wish to emulate? Who is your ideal role model? 

If you have asked the question ‘what do I do?’, the simple answer is you have to be prepared to work hard. Likely, harder than anyone else you know.

Many people will get a degree and go out into the world, if you are lucky, you will get a great job. Even this fortunate group will get to a stage where they will ask 'is this it?' and ‘what should I do with my life?’.

I personally recall going through roles in my 20s and 30s, achieving tremendous success, earning great money, but then asking myself – ‘is this really what my life was about?’ ‘Is this what I am meant to do?’ It took me a while, and several role and industry changes to come  to the realisation that the most important thing for me was discovering what I really wanted to do with my life. So I searched, and I found what that was. I found my purpose and that is to serve in elevating lives. My finding my purpose it allowed me to form this beautiful company Populis, where every minute is joyous, every minute even in the struggle I am enjoying what I'm doing. Whether that be work that I am doing to help leaders build great character or organisations to form great cultures.

Now, I want you to understand, there is a combination of factors that determine whether you're going to be successful or not. But at the very basis of it, is your character, which is defined by your DNA (what you inherit from your parents), your environment (the school you went to, the people you hang out with), your mind (whether it's a can-do, growth mindset or not and if you are letting fear take over because of your insecurities) but most of all, it's about your energy!

Do you have the energy to keep going, to really work hard and succeed in life? Do you have the vibrancy to keep going? Is your nature one of calm and focus, or is your nature about passion and drive and acceleration to keep doing more? Or are you simply of a nature that is dull and ignorant?

Don't worry. We have all of these mindsets’ in us having a constant fight for dominance. The smart ones regulate their mindset, they regulate their nature and they even practice rituals that alter their DNA!

Do you want to know what nature is present within you right now? Take my quiz to find out.

You've got the tools readily available at your fingertips, but the unfortunate truth is, most of you will do nothing with it and then you'll wonder, why aren't things going my way?

So I ask you to dive into what you’re reading today and make it yours. You have the ability to shape your future and in these teachings. I will share with you the secrets to abundance in life. A life full of energy, vitality and charisma.

What are the 3 things champions do to flourish in life?

1. Champions figure out what is in their nature and apply this to their professional discipline, or alternatively seek a career that allows their nature to thrive. Ask yourself what comes naturally to you? Do you like working with your hands? Do you enjoy analytical work? Are you a science person? What kind of work gives you great satisfaction? If you do not answer these questions, you will not be self-aware and the world will become a very lonely place.

When you do things that give you greater satisfaction, you can go all-in!  You can easily study more about it. You will actually apply the knowledge. But if you're doing things just out of trend or purely to make money without finding joy in the work, you will have a far more difficult time excelling and going above and beyond. So applied knowledge is power! Knowledge not applied is wasted.

I'm going to ask you to get the right coach to gain their experienced wisdom. I want you to think deeply into whether these people are genuine? Have they got the experience? Are you willing to pay for their time? Do not be cheap. Great knowledge should always be paid for, otherwise you are a thief. Always offer more than you take from your coaches. They will then naturally give you more.

2. Own your mindset! Become a growth mindset person, rather than a fixed mindset person. Be a can-do person. Because let me tell you this, your habitual trend of thought will determine your success. If you're always thinking about negative things, always thinking about failure, you will not succeed. It is as simple as that! Fear will immobilise you. You will become weak and timid and subsequently a more negative person as a result.

But if you occupy your mind with success, happiness, power, victory and morality, that is what will be yours. You will have it all! You will live a fulfilled and opulent life. This is, however, much easier said than done!

You can find a multitude of Mind Mastery techniques within the book Rise Warrior Rise, such as the ‘I can! I will! I must!’ technique. Do not be lazy with this. You must be persistent. Let your prayers be about success. Let your meditation be about success. Let your meditation be about how beautiful life is, and when you have developed this aura of positivity and gratefulness, people will be drawn to your company and enjoy being around you.

Mindsets are made. You must invest in your mindset daily.

I encourage you to take the mindset quiz, your mindset today is either working for you or against you and unlocking your potential is so easy. Take the mindset quiz here.

3. Your energy determines the trajectory and satisfaction of your life. There are four states of energy within you. Physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy and Spiritual energy. And what you have to do is make sure each state of your energy is maximised to protect you against burnout. Spiritual energy is the key, it is what grows you. Spiritual energy intrinsically motivates you; this energy is the source to live your purpose. And when you find your purpose, nothing can stop you. You can find further guidance on how to find your purpose in the best book on personal development, Rise Warrior Rise.

Be that person that's intrinsically driven. You know that one that has so much drive, so much vitality and so much energy. I'm going to dive into this with more detail below, so that you know exactly how to achieve these things.

Ask yourself this question today. Are you tired? Are you sleepy? Because if this is the case, then you need to start investing in yourself. You need to start getting into the warrior mode that drives beautiful outcomes and life will take care of you.

Here are five traits and skills that you must dive headfirst into developing to become a high-performer in your professional and personal life and to be 

The number one must have trait is your confidence!

Success demands unshakeable self-belief in one’s self, for this will give you the drive to go and do things that most people fear to even think about. Remember, most people actually fail before they even take the first step.

So, confidence is what empowers you to make sure you don't just live a life of mediocrity, but actually try and put action into play. Put your knowledge into play and move forward, don’t wait for the perfect job to come to you.  You've got to get out there and try your best in everything you do. But most important of all is action. Whatever your job or degree is right now, put all of you into it.

This is one of the major secrets behind the success of champions, they give all of themselves with confidence, with vigour and with vitality, into what they're doing.

The number 2 must-have trait is agility.

Organisations are building agile companies.  Agile teams that are nimble and can move fast are responsible for bringing new technologies and products quicker than ever before. And what does that require? What it requires is companies to form T-shaped organisations where people have deep knowledge in a particular area whilst being able to work and conduct relations across disciplines. The future of work requires you to have deep specialisation in one or two areas and the ability to grasp information efficiently across multiple functions without necessarily being an expert in that area.

Become really good in one particular focal area, maybe two. But be prepared and comfortable to be working with multiple teams sharing success and sharing knowledge.

For example what great organizations such as Amazon are doing is they're creating small, focused teams. In their early days, they had a rule that each team should be small enough to eat a maximum of two pizzas as a team. This allows for them to move quickly without heavy hierarchal pressure. They are able to make decisions swiftly, implement, test, and go for it. And if something works well, they will roll it out worldwide.

Spotify is implementing rules such as no more than a hundred people per team. And what that’s doing for them, is again allowing them to move past hierarchy, pass the decision-making blockers to put out products in a timely and aggressive manner. But also allow for creativity and greater engagement of their teams. This pattern can be seen across many large tech. This has brought forth a much higher prevalence of internal promotion, therefore higher tenured employees.

Internally promoting allows employees to stay interested, because they're doing multiple projects. Whereas people like myself over the past 10-15 years have jumped from one company to another to be interested, to continue learning, to continue to grow, to earn great pay.

Now organisations are realizing, if you build agile teams, you will retain happier and more loyal employees. So develop the skillset of flexibility, develop the skill set of communication, develop the skillset of agility and confidence. Agility allows for you to fit into multiple diverse teams.

Number three is the must-have trait to keep your finger on the pulse and that is communication, or effective communication.

Master the Art of Communication and be an effective communicator!  This will allow you to present your views to multiple people, across multiple different formats. Listen attentively and comprehend so that you understand, absorb and learn to confidently be able to deliver your knowledge to others.

This will mean you will have to step out of your comfort zones, particularly for those who are introverted. The good news for introverts is, once you learn, practice, drill and rehearse the behaviours – they become the norm and this method will flow naturally for you.

Learn the art of persuasion, and the ability to deliver solid presentations not only digitally, but also in person. Learn, practice, drill, and rehearse!

Communicating internally to your stakeholders as well as externally to your shareholders, customers and community is the key to not only your success but the success of your organisation.

Number 4 must-have trait is that of your energy.

ENERGY to outwork everyone else and I talked about this in the previous section and I'm going to reinforce it. No longer jobs are about 9 to 5. Bosses will not slack what they ask of you. The more connected we get, the greater the monitoring.

Look at all these zoom calls now, people are more tired than ever because when they're in an office, they can switch on and off between meeting to meeting. It's different now, things are being monitored. People are actually looking at how long people have logged on.

So bosses, also ease up a bit. Take the time in the morning, an hour and a half to focus on yourself, whether that be through positive affirmations and self-talk, meditation, exercise and cold showers. When you do these activities, you're happier, you're more motivated and  you're more energetic because positivity doesn't suck energy out of you, negativity does! Positivity enables you, so be a champion and be a warrior! And look after your four states of energy: your physical energy, your mental energy, your emotional energy and most importantly your spiritual energy, the one that gives you meaning, purpose and drive to succeed.

Finally, number five which is so important to learn is self-regulation.

So what is self-regulation? Self-regulation is what gives you control over your mind, your emotions, your energy and this is important as it brings equanimity into your mind. This being, having a calm mental state irrespective of negative encounters or experiences. Enabling you to stop being kicked around by other people's views and opinions and keep a stable mind that allows you to go big in your professional and personal life, to propel and accelerate forward. People who focus on attaining this sense of calm don't burn out. They get the job done and their company brings pleasure as they don't react in an angry manner and are able to focus in and action decision.

This is what I stand for. This is my mission. I'm going to work hard in this particular discipline, but at the same time I'm going to be able to give the best of me. Concentrate on those five areas and you too will be assured of an unbelievable career. Get the right knowledge and apply it.

For more on self-leadership and success, read or listen to Rise Warrior Rise and sign-up to stay connected to ExcelerateYou, Populis and Rise Warrior Rise.