Description
- Harrison, a legal expert, shares advice on dealing with family tragedies and career setbacks in a recent Q&A clip
- He emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for one's role in any situation, no matter how difficult
- Harrison urges viewers to ask themselves what they can do to be more responsible for their success and not blame others for their lack of advancement in the legal profession
- He concludes by stating that being responsible is the key to success and happiness in life.
Transcript
Transcript:
Okay, someone is experiencing problems because of what happened in their family. They didn't get the job, and the father was convicted of murder. Wow, this isn't very pleasant. No one would know what happened about this murder in her family.
So I'm going to give some stern advice.
One of the things that this person is doing, and I think it's okay, is you need to realize that bad things are going to happen to you. And bad things happen to these people, and they need help getting into their firm; they're also trying to get into a large or more prominent firm and get more experience working with other people.
One of the things that I think is very important is taking responsibility for what you can and then just realizing whatever you can do. So that means essentially terrible things will happen to you. You may not have gone to the best law school, you may have gotten fired, you may have had a family tragedy, you may have had all this sort of stuff happen to you, and then you may not have done as well as you could get in your first job, you may have been behind on your peers, and you may not have gotten the right job. But everyone has to take responsibility for what they can, and not taking responsibility hurts you. You'll be better if you take responsibility for your role and everything. What I don't like about this question is I'm very sympathetic to what happened to this person, but at the same time, what could you have done differently to get work when all this happened? What could you have done differently to do better in your first job? What could you have done differently, and what can you do now to put this behind you and take responsibility?
Lots of people have awful stuff happen here. And again, I'm not minimizing this, I think this stuff is horrible, and I think it's sad. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm pulling this. But I think that one of the things that a lot of people do, myself included, by the way, I want to be clear that the only reason I'm able to give this answer is that I've made the same mistakes.
But if you don't take responsibility for wherever you are and what's happened to you, then all you do is make other people responsible for your success or failure. Everyone has problems, but what can you take responsibility for? All these sorts of things are essential, and the more you take responsibility for everything you have responsibility for, the better you can do. That's what scares me a lot of times is people just don't take responsibility for the things that could help them.
And so that's what I recommend no matter what happens to you, and again, For all I know, there's a lot of stuff that I certainly should be responsible for. Still, you have to be responsible because if you make others responsible for your success, meaning my parents died, that's making them responsible for your success.
No, they're not responsible for your success. If you make a firm that didn't give you work because it was in the news responsible, that's not making you responsible for your success if you weren't at the same level as other people when you finally got a job, fine. Why not make it better? Work harder, figure it out. That's the job. Like all these things, you must ask yourself, what am I doing wrong? What do you do if you need to get better grades in law school? You study harder. If you need more interviews, you apply to more places. You're not getting any interviews. Is just something wrong with your resume?
For most people, it makes them more comfortable to blame others for their lack of success and advancement in the legal profession than it does for them to take responsibility. Wow. All you need to do is be responsible. Now, that may be hard advice to take, and I advise this all the time.
People are like, oh my God. Horrible. It's, I don't know, are you? But it's not like you have to be responsible. And so I suggest that everyone do whatever they can to take responsibility. I'm sorry to be so direct. For any type of lack of success and anything, the only way to get around it is to learn what you're doing, which is extremely important. The next piece of advice is to be responsible. I can tell you a million different ways you can be responsible, but anything that's not working for you, My advice, and this is the last thing I'll say today, is any problems that you're having say, what can I do to be more responsible? And that's it. The people who do well in the world have the most success, and are the happiest, are those who can be responsible. You're responsible for your performance at your job. You're responsible for your relationships. You're responsible for things that don't work out, and other people contribute to it, but you have to be responsible.
