A Successful Career Starts At Home

Enhance Your Home Life for a Better Future.

Success.com agrees, one of the most important things in life is attitude, and a good attitude starts in the home. Have an attitude of gratitude: The aphorism has a pithy nature to it, but that makes it no less true. A GUDEJob we believe that this involves Gratitude, Understanding, Determination, and Enthusiasm. You can’t be grateful if you’ve got an ungrateful attitude. In this acronym, your attitude is the most important item. In life, this is true as well; especially leaving the home in the morning, or coming back at night, or just plain spending time with the family.

When you leave the house in the morning, you could be about to walk into a straight-up collision. It could be a real wreck. You don’t know, and there’s no way for you to predict the future, so what your attitude is before you leave the house is absolutely essential.

If your attitude is: “Well, things better go my way, or I’m going to cross my arms, stick out my lip, and pout!” Guess what? Prepare that bottom lip. Nothing’s going to go your way 100% of the time, that’s life.

However, if your attitude is “I’ll take what life throws at me and make the best of it,” then you can crash your car and jump out happy you’re alive. You can come home to a teenage meltdown and not lose your peace of mind. You can live through a weekend at the in-laws’ and not drop-kick anything.

But this attitude doesn’t start when you’re in the middle of a wreck, or the teenage meltdown, or launching the in-laws’ nasty meatloaf into the stratosphere with a well-placed kick. It starts when you wake up. Are you going to wake up angry, or ready to tackle the day?

How to Enhance Your Home Life

These are some good tips for enhancing your home life such that you don’t stagnate or tread water, you actively grow, and your attitude is ever-positive. Attitude is most important at work, but it begins in the home.

1. Remember the Bigger Picture

• You don’t control where you were born.

• You can’t determine where you’re going.

• You’re here for a reason.

• Everything you have is a gift, even life itself.

• Every day is a gift, and a chance to do something worthwhile.

• Exhaustion makes you prone to mistakes and irritability. Remember this above all else, as even the best people get worn down by life. Have an informed attitude at home, leaving home, and coming home.

2. Take Care of What You Have

• A Messy House is a Messy Mind. Not in all cases; but often the two are related.

• Take care of yourself. That means taking time to wake up, have breakfast, and get your head straight. Loved ones are often instrumental in this leaving home and coming home.

• Make your bed in the morning—71% of bed-makers consider themselves happy.

3. Remember Those in Your Household

• Treat those you live with well—what’s more important; your spouse (or friends), or your job? If you’ve got something good to come home to, you’ll want to come home.

• Your career is a means to support your home life, not the other way around. Don’t forget that.

4. If You Don’t Have a Spouse/Roommates/Kids, Get a pet

• People with pets are more successful in life.

• Sharing love and having responsibility is integral to a good career; a pet helps you with both and can’t judge you even if your attitude still needs some work.

• Pets give you a reason to come home if you don’t already have a family/friends.

• With a pet, the more you put in, the more you get out—just like with a career, or a family.

The Takeaway—How To Grow

Having a solid career means having a solid home life, and the best way for both is through the attitude you bring to the table. They say you can’t teach attitude. Employers take that into account, so practice at home. A good attitude goes a long way toward a good career, because it gives you the ability to “roll with the punches,” to take what life gives you and translate it into success. Your family is a gift, if you have one; many who don’t understand this intrinsically.

It is also noteworthy that in a Forbes article on the 25 biggest regrets people have, the #1 regret was working so much at the expense of family. Most people who are classic work-a-holics are frequently trying to escape their home life and replace it with their work life. Work-a-holics might be good workers or even great workers, but they can never achieve the level of success that a balanced home-work life will bring.

That is why having a good understanding about the pulls of a career, an ability to let things go, and a willingness to set boundaries for the good of the family, are all recipes for lifelong success. You are ultimately responsible for the decisions that you make to carve out your own definition of success. And you taking time to read this article is a step in the right direction.

Having responsibility and remembering that which is truly important at home and at work are likewise fundamental to ensuring career success. A good home life will specify your career choices a number of ways from necessary income for the maintenance of existing responsibilities to the time you spend between home and the office. If you want to grow in either realm, you need the right attitude.

Look at your significant other as a blessing even if he or she is having a bad day. Do the same with the kids and that darned cat who likes leaving feline chocolates in the hallway. The homeless man has none of those things to look forward to, much less get angry at. Count your blessings today.