Someone Ive adopted as a mentor - and who has long public service experience - offered the following three specific pieces of advice earlier this week. Im passing them along because they certainly apply to life beyond politics: 1) Resilience: You wont win every race. You cant win on every policy issue. That much, you can bank on. So the question is: How do you respond to setbacks? Whats your appetite and ability to bounce back? Resilience - perhaps even more than talent - is what separates where people end up over the long-term. 2) Family: Public service - as with so many other professions and career paths - can be endlessly demanding and time-consuming. If you let it, this can have a corrosive impact on relationships, especially with your significant other, your kids, etc. The need, then, is to be very intentional about carving out time and making a commitment to the people most important to you. Strong relationships wont preserve themselves without real dedication and effort. 3) Purpose: As people move along in their careers, and the prospect of rising presents itself, theres a risk of growing distant from ones original sense of purpose. As this mentor said, in politics people become more interested in the acquisition of power than in what impact they would like to make were they to actually achieve increased responsibility. The response must be to find ways to keep that original purity of purpose fresh, and to not forget why youre doing what youre doing. Good advice from one whos been there. The hard work we all face is following it.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 17:22:29 +0000
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