How to be Positively Relentless in Your Career

Relentless (adj): State of mind that can you give you the strength to achieve, to survive, to overcome. Being positively relentless in your career is craving the end results so intensely that work becomes irrelevant in everything you do.

Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable- Tim Grover

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Here are some key ways you can be positively relentless in your career:

Be Uncomfortable

Being relentless in your career means constantly being uncomfortable. Force yourself to be in situations that will stretch you and force you to grow and learn, and truly embrace those opportunities. Channel the nervous energy you feel and reapply it to get to reach new heights. As the saying goes, great things never came from comfort zones!

Fearlessly Build Relationships

At work one day, my boss had sporadically scheduled a coffee chat for me and a senior level VP (her way of forcing me to get out of my comfort zone.) This VP was always so intimidating to me–she was the literally definition of a #girlboss and had the responsibility I dream to have one day. During the coffee chat, this VP went out of her way to help me identify various career options and the pros and cons of each, in immense detail. She connected me with two members from her team and gave me a project to start working on. A month later, she left the company and became an C-Suite, Executive level officer at an amazing company.

To this day, I’m so glad I was able to talk to her. Her perspective and advice guided my career and her thoughtfulness really resonated with me. We still stay in touch via LinkedIn, and I know that if the right opportunity came up, I would be able to reach out to her.

Although it might seem scary at the moment, building relationships can help you:

• Expand your knowledge on areas you are not familiar with 
• Learn from the successes and failures of others 
• Find jobs or new projects in the future 
• Get connected to other people you’re interested in meeting 
• Get support from other teams as needed
• Find potential mentors

Let Go of Excuses

Excuses prevent you from achieving your goals. They’re just a lie we tell ourselves to make us feel better about not doing what we need to do. Break out of that mindset and force yourself to combat challenges and quickly take action to get results.

Create Opportunities For Yourself

To be relentless in your career, you need to always be thinking about what else you can do. There’s always improvements that can be made–proactively find gaps and create opportunities for yourself!

The roles that I’ve had the most success in are ones in which I was able to successfully contribute to the team in an innovative manner without being asked to do so. Analyze your day to day tasks and identify areas that could use some extra attention. Talk to multiple teams and analyze different ways of doing things to see what works best. Put a new plan in place that optimizes processes better than before.

Always Put in 110% Effort

Stay focused, committed, and have the end result in mind. More than that, you should aim to do the best you can in every project you start. Be the person that does more…it’ll pay off and you’ll get much farther in life because of it!

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Never Say No to an Opportunity 

Opportunities are what set you apart from other people. They expand your knowledge and allow you to get exposure to more than one thing. Don’t limit yourself by saying no. Embrace the opportunity and see how you can apply what you learned to future tasks.

One of the best managers I’ve had asked me to keep a “running journal” of every single task or project I’ve worked on. By the end of the year, I had pages of projects that demonstrated my capabilities, work ethic, and ambition!

Don’t Settle For Less

If you’re not at a place you want to be, do something about it. You own your life, and you have the ultimate control over it. Be self-aware and analyze what you’re missing in reaching your goals and doing more. Hold yourself accountable, because ultimately, you’re the only one that can remove barriers that are holding you back.

Be Unapologetically Ambitious

Don’t let anyone stop you from getting where you want to be. Push yourself harder until you get where you need to be, and don’t stop until you do. Eliminate negative thoughts and continue to step out of your comfort zone and learn as much as you can!

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