What was your path to "success"?

[Indenturedebtor]

Please share with me what you do and how you got your position?

For my part I'm not happy with my "station" at this point but I'm slowly moving up the foodchain.

BA Psychology - Car Sales 3 years - Advertising Sales 4 months - Selling Surveillance to Businesses from Home and at Tradeshows

My most recent job I got by pitching the CEO of the company some advertising at a tradeshow and he made me a better offer. So far I really like it, and let me tell you the commute is great! If it works out with this company we can get rid of one of our cars!

So please do share. I haven't gone far with my career yet so not much to report. Yes I had waiting tables jobs and all that but it didn't really help me improve my income or prospects long term.

[tama]

1. I'm adopting loserism as life philosophy n/t

[BeFree]

14. Ever hear this saying?

The last shall be first.

&&&&&&&

The only way I have succeeded was to keep at it. Don't let the little things stop you and work around the big one's.

And remember that being right just 51% of the time means you are above the fold.

[glowing]

2. What is success? Is success the job that brings you income? Or is success

defined by the things that make you happy and other's around you happy.. For me a job is is the thing I have to do to get those green things.. the success is providing a happy, creative, loving home and place in my community.. Of course, I wish the job would bring me more of those green things, so I could spend more of my time doing the things I define as success.

[Indenturedebtor]

3. Yeah that last sentence

That last sentence is what I've decided to pursue for the meantime. I've been lucky recently to score an at home job so I save 2 hours a day on commuting :D

If someone could please tell me how they've managed to avoid working too that would be great!

[tama]

5. Marry a workaholic

And as for loserism and place in society, as they said on Simpsons: dunno why, but people just love to hear self shaming loser stories, again and again... :)

[TooBigaTent]

4. Education, Education, Education. I have always worked in the non-profit sector

so I am not sure how applicable my experience is. Project manager (with Masters) for cancer research studies. I'll never get rich (duh! unless you get a doctorate) but with my educator wife, we are comfortable enough even if our vacations and other "luxuries" are limited. True, we will have to work until we die, but I have always expected that.

I do think it is harder to "succeed" in business, at least to succeed to the level that most want. The main thing is to be contented (or maybe a little happy) with where you are. We all make compromises and you need to decide for yourself what is important to you.

Andt remember that education thing. For everyone except those exceptionally talented in specific fields (art, sports, etc.), it is even more important than it used to be.

[glowing]

13. yes, education is important.... but I'm not so sure a business student

is going to be all that works in mid-management is going to necessarily have the tools to survive.. if a true economic depression does set in.. Not unless, they've learned how to do the other things too.

[Speck Tater]

6. What are your goals?

Wealth?
Or something better, like happiness and a feeling of well being and satisfaction?

There are wealthy people who are happy and wealthy people who are miserable.
Where are poor people who are happy and poor people who are miserable.

You should start by finding out what makes you happy; what brings you satisfaction. You've probably bought into the myth that money, in and of itself, is the key to happiness. If so, you may spend half your life climbing the "ladder of success", chasing more and more money (still believing that happiness is just one more dollar further than where you are right now) only to end up bitter and miserable.

Friends are always asking me why I am so happy all of the time. After all, they all make more money than I do. They all drive newer cars, and have bigger houses. They all have more "successful" careers. What they also have that I don't have is job stress, car payments, mortgage payments, high insurance and property tax bills, and a lot less time to pursue their real interests.

I did the whole trip, master degree in engineering, worked my way up to VP of research and development, and hated my life more with every raise and every promotion. Finally I wised up, quit my job, moved to the country, bought a cheap house on a good piece of land, and paid it off over the next 25 years. Now I work when I feel like it; sometimes as much as three or four days a month doing web development and server programming for a couple small local companies. The rest of the time I read, write, work in my garden, enjoy time with friends and relatives, visit with my grandchildren, etc. etc.

Technically, my earnings are well below the so-called poverty level, but I think of my self as very rich indeed.

[TooBigaTent]

8. Congrats on a life well-done. The comments/criticism from friends and family

are things that people who choose your path have to put up with.

I won't wish you luck because you have made your own. Way to go.

[cloudbase]

7. Mostly hard work

and a desire to do my job just a bit better than the next guy. A knack for science, math and engineering didn't hurt, either. Lots of preparation, and a bit of luck from time to time. A supportive family, both while growing up and the one I've formed with my wife. Surround yourself with smart and ambitious people. Be willing to take risks (the calculated kind, not the stupid ones.) Don't be afraid of failure, there's lots to learn from it. Don't accept mediocrity in yourself or others.

That worked for me, YMMV.

[Burma Jones]

9. Okey Dokey - BA in Theatre

spent a year in a band and also earning money by singing at A Renaissance Fair and tending bar and shucking oysters at a restaurant, so next....

worked at a DC area Consulting firm for three years. Did contract work for the Dept of Energy, the Army and the CIA. I learned a lot at this place as well as drank a lot.

Quit that outfit and worked for three years at a pre-internet on-line information provider owned by Dun and Bradstreet who pulled the plug on this business, this is also the time I turned down a job offer from some guy named Steve Case for his goofy sounding outfit all the way in Virginia called America On Line.....D'OH.......so next

I sold Cable TV door to door for three months - lost about 40 pounds.....so next

Got a job with another DC area consulting firm on a contract for the Dept of Transportation performing analyses on Transit systems applying for their annual grants. Fought with my boss over bigotry and had one of the guys I supervised kill someone in the building, so I quit that job and tried to make money in Theatre.....that was about two years of directing, light design, voice work, temp work, courier work, general hustling for whatever cash I could scrape up - no insurance, no security. This is when my wife introduced me to her parents, you can imagine how thrilled they were with me.......so next

I got a job with another DC consulting firm. They paid my tuition for my MS in Computing and in the nearly six years I was there, my salary more than tripled. This firm, since bought by another larger firm, is where I was working when I got married and had my first two children.

I was recruited by a contractor to IBM in Somers NY while at the same time my wife was eager to move to New York to be closer to her family, so we moved to New York and I worked under contract to IBM for a year. In August 2001, my contract, along with all the others in that part of IBM were ended and I was out of a job, but I figured it wouldn't be for very long...then September 2001 came around, and the New York job market dried up considerable and at the same time, The Gartner Group laid off hundreds of Analysts, so I was in a lousy market. I was unemployed for a little over a year and a half. In the meantime I enrolled in a PhD program in Computing at Pace University. so next

In 2003 we decided to sell our place and go back to the DC area. I was working again for a DC area consulting firm within weeks. I am still with this firm.

So, I graduated 25 years ago, had all sorts of random work, basically heard how I had no focus for years and years, now I earn well into six figures, working at home. My In Laws now approve.........

[Zensea]

10. sheer cussedness

and stubbornness.
Didn't give up even when I was beaten down & I got beaten down pretty hard at one point.
That and fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

[uppityperson]

11. Aim low, desire little, work hard, enjoy what I earn money for, where I live, who I spend time with.

[elehhhhna]

12. sales.

Didn't finish college (lol,barely started) so after a short stint as a bank clerk I went to a Headhunter and decided I could do their job, forced them to hire me, and have been self-sufficient since.

Grew it into a 6 figure income in staffing sales (Legal temps), a VP title, expense account, other perks.

Kept the husband home w/2 babies for 5 years, traveled for pleasure a lot, lived beneath our means auto & housewise, ALWAYS (very important!), stayed home for 5 years after the hubs went back to his career, and now have a breezy little outside marketing/sales job that pays less w/ no stress, easy commute, owners who I forwarned about my migraines and (so far) no direct reports to train or manage. Whew. No complaints.