By Ken McClinton on August 6, 2012
This can be a tough pill to swallow. You get that call after an interview that you were super excited about and thought you nailed, but the company tells you that they decided to hire someone else. If you’re lucky they may even tell you the reason why they decided to go in another direction, but you have probably already stopped listening at this point and just want to get off of the phone.
The way that you react to this news and what you do afterwards will ultimately determine whether your job search ends with you landing your dream job, or not getting a job at all. It is crucial for you to manage your emotions and learn all that you can from each experience throughout your job search, so that you can sharpen your skills and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Ask Questions
Although the person on the other end of the phone is going to want to deliver this bad news as fast as humanly possible, make it a point to extend the conversation and get as much information from them as you can. Ask questions about why they decided to go in another direction, what specific weaknesses they saw in your candidacy, and what you could do to improve for future interviews.
I have to warn you that if you take these answers personally it will cause you nothing but heartache and you won’t learn anything of use from them. The biggest mistake that you can make is to think that you didn’t get the job because of who you are, rather than what you did or how you did it.
If you are able to take note of these answers and be emotionally detached, you will gain a huge amount of valuable information that can help you land the next job that you interview for. Any weaknesses in your game can become strengths if you research them thoroughly and work on them enough.
Focus on the Process, Not the Result
Sometimes after a job interview a company may tell us that they really enjoyed meeting with us and we made a great impression on them, but they simply decided to hire someone else because they were more qualified. Even after we ask them what we could have done better they may still respond by saying that we were great but the other person just has more experience.
That is ok.
If your interview didn’t go well they wouldn’t blow smoke up your ass and tell you a number of times that it did. Sometimes things happen and the other person is more qualified, or someone’s relative was up for the job and it is simply out of your control. If you feel like you nailed the interview and the company goes out of their way to tell you that it went well, then you should feel proud of that. Too many times we focus on the result of not getting the job and that can be a huge mistake.
If you nailed your interviews and the company loved you, but decided to hire the CEO’s cousin instead, how could you blame yourself for that? If you focus on the result in this case you will decide that the interview wasn’t good enough and you will start changing all of the components that made you feel like you nailed it in the first place.
However, If you focus on the fact that you felt like you nailed it and that the company loved you, you will feel good about the way you conducted yourself in those interviews, and decide to repeat that process for future interviews.
If you have enough great interviews someone is going to hire you. Allowing yourself to become discouraged does nothing but shatter your confidence and sabotage your chances on future interviews.
What is in Your Control?
A great way to learn from your interviews without being discouraged by the results is to ask yourself, “What is in my control”? The answers that you gave, the questions that you asked, how you were dressed, and how well you prepared yourself, all fall under the category of the things that you can control. The actual result of whether you got the job or not falls under the category of things that you can’t control.
Focus on going into an interview as well prepared as humanly possible, arm yourself with research, well thought out questions, and ways that you think you could help improve the company, and let the rest take care of itself.
Like I said before, if you have enough great interviews someone is going to hire you. You can’t control the outcome, but by using these tips you will certainly control everything that you can about the process, and improve your odds exponentially 
By Ken McClinton on August 5, 2012
I know that today is Sunday and most of you are only half able to enjoy the day off because tomorrow morning starts another workweek. But it doesn’t have to be like that. How would you like to be able to enjoy your Sunday completely and then actually be excited for the workweek to start?
When we dread the workweek it is because we are focusing on all of the annoying things that we have to do like wake up early, catch up on emails, call back clients, and deal with any other headaches that we usually encounter at work.
But what if we had some things to look forward to?
Here are three surefire ways to get excited about the workweek.
Build Anticipation
One way that you can get excited about the workweek is to build anticipation for it. How do you do that? Let’s first think about how you would build anticipation for the weekend and then we can use that model to build it for the workweek.
When you are really excited for the weekend you are usually looking forward to the plans you have for that weekend, right? Well let’s think about your job and the things that you enjoy doing at work. If you choose to focus on the parts of your job that you actually enjoy, you will be excited for the workweek to start so you can do them!
Don’t have a part of your job that you enjoy? That’s ok; we can cheat by using the other two techniques to get ourselves excited for the workweek anyway!
Reward Yourself
Using rewards to make you look forward to the week is a personal favorite of mine. Even if you don’t want Monday to start, because you’re thinking about all of the work that you are going to have to do, having a good enough reward at the end of the day can be enough to get you through it.
Some of my favorite rewards include watching your favorite TV show, enjoying your favorite meal for dinner, treating yourself to your favorite dessert or having a glass or two of your favorite wine. I recommend spreading these out, otherwise the next day at work could be pretty rough 
Spreading them out will also give you something to look forward to at the end of each day of the week!
Make Plans
Too often we save all of the good stuff for the weekends. We plan most of our social dinners, nights out, trips to the movies and our other favorite activities for the weekends and completely neglect our weeknights. Now I’m not suggesting going out to a club until 4 AM on a weeknight, but make sure to include some fun activities into your workweek and see what a huge difference it makes.
Some of the things you can do include grabbing lunch with a friend, going to happy hour after work, going on a date, catching a movie, going to the driving range, taking an exercise class or even something as simple as making dinner with your girlfriend or boyfriend. The possibilities are endless, and when you start to schedule enough of these plans, the workweek will fly by just as quickly as the weekend.
Your Mission
Your mission for this week, should you choose to accept it, is to pick one thing that you enjoy doing at work to focus on, give yourself two rewards on two separate nights and make one plan this week. Sound easy enough?
Let me know how it goes in the comments section or on Twitter or Facebook!
By Ken McClinton on August 4, 2012
Seeing how it is the weekend and I know that you all have to start your fun festivities in a little bit, I will make this one short and sweet.
I know what you guys are thinking…
Why the hell would I want to be productive on the weekend?
The truth is that staying productive can actually make your weekend much more enjoyable, and also make the start of the week suck much less. When we use our weekends to be completely unproductive and shut our minds off, we are making it that much harder to turn them back on when Monday starts. Wouldn’t it be easier if you just kept your mind running (at a lower capacity of course) during the weekend and simply increased it a little when Monday rolled around? Yes.
So here are three fun and quick ways to have a more productive weekend.
Break a Sweat
I am not telling you to go out and run a marathon this weekend. Breaking a sweat can literally be anything that makes you sweat. Go for a walk or run, play pick-up basketball with some friends, golf, dance, have sex. Get creative and have fun with it. As long as you are breaking a sweat you are keeping those productivity cells alive.
Read Something
Now this doesn’t mean to go read Facebook statuses until your hangover is cured. Read something productive that will sharpen your mind and make you think a little bit. Some of the things you can read include a personal development book, an industry magazine, news articles, or maybe even go read your favorite blog that you SUBSCRIBE to
Watch TV
Ok I may have suckered you into this one a little bit with the title. By TV I don’t mean watch the Jersey Shore or Keeping Up With The Kardashians. But it can be fun if you have a few minutes to go on YouTube and watch a TEDtalk that you haven’t seen yet, or watch videos on a new skill that you want to learn. Watching a video seriously takes no effort and it can really provide you with a ton of value in a short amount of time. You can even do this while you’re still in bed!
Now that you have these tips, you have the rare opportunity to keep those productivity cells alive in your body this weekend and make your Mondays suck much less!
Do one of these things right now and then post what you did in the comments section so I can give you a gold star
Make sure you check back tomorrow for my article about how to bring your weekend excitement into your workweek.
Enjoy your Saturday! 
By Ken McClinton on August 3, 2012
The famous quote by Jim Rohn states that “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. While I understand that Jim Rohn meant this to be a quote that would encourage you to surround yourself with successful, motivated people who can help you achieve your goals; I believe it can also be used as an excuse for someone who hasn’t reached the level of success they are striving for.
As a life coach I am in the business of busting limiting beliefs and this quote can definitely be interpreted as a limiting belief, depending on how you look at it. For those of you who don’t know what a limiting belief is, it is basically a belief that you have about yourself or the world that can prevent you from achieving specific goals or results. By that saying you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with it can be very tempting to blame your failures or lack of success on the people around you, instead of taking responsibility for your own results.
Now let’s take a look at some of the holes in this argument and get into them one by one.
The People Around You Will Influence You
Of course the people around you are going to have some influence over you, but only as much as you allow them to. Like we talk about all the time on this site, you control how you react to your environment. Whether you decide to take to heart everything that the people around you say or you decide to listen and use the information that you think is useful, it is your decision, not their words that will influence you.
Does this mean that it wouldn’t help if the people that you surround yourself with were supportive of you? Of course it would help. But even if the people around you don’t understand why you have chosen the path you are on, it will only affect you if you aren’t sure about why you chose your path in the first place. If you are committed to making something work and you know why it is important to you, then it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks as long as you believe in it.
You Don’t Have to Do What They Do
You have your own brain and you can make your own decisions. If the people around you want to go out to a bar on a night that you have to work late, even if they try to persuade you to come out, you are the one who makes the decision of whether to work or go out. If you know you need to get something done, then choose to work on it and get it done. If you think it can wait and you want a night out, then choose to go out. Sometimes taking a step back and letting loose can be the best thing to get your creativity flowing again anyway.
Would it help you become more successful if your friends spent their time looking for networking events instead of bars or nightclubs? Maybe. But if you and all of your friends went to a networking event, who is to say that you would leave the security blanket they would provide you with to go talk to other people? You can make an excuse for almost anything, but at the end of the day it is you who controls your decisions and your success, not anyone else.
Social Media/Technology
With the increased popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook, especially when it comes to business, it is so easy to get in touch with just about anyone in an instant. This means that you no longer need to spend your time physically surrounded by successful, motivated people, because you can get in touch with them on a daily basis through twitter or any other social media site.
On a daily basis I communicate with a number of amazing coaches and bloggers that inspire me and make me want to continue to improve myself. We even share strategies and new resources to help each other become more effective at what we do. So even though only one of my close friends is a coach, I still have as many resources available to me as someone who surrounds themselves with coaches all the time.
No More Excuses
The bottom line is that you have no excuses. If you are not yet where you want to be, look in the mirror, not at the people around you.
If you want to make more connections and gain more resources then take the time to research your field. Follow the authorities in your industry on Twitter, check out their blogs and email them any questions you have.
There are more than enough resources out there for you to be able to surround yourself with whomever you want and continue to succeed.
Believe in what you are doing, own your decisions and be proactive. If you do these three things there will be no reason why you can’t accomplish anything you want, regardless of your environment!
By Ken McClinton on August 2, 2012
There are two questions that I get a lot about this blog.
The first is why did I start a blog like this for young professionals?
The second is how did I come up with the name “Eyes on the Rise”?
The two go hand in hand, but let’s tackle these one at a time.
Why I Started It
I started Eyes on the Rise for a number of reasons, but the most important reason is that a few months ago I was completely miserable. Not only did the marketing business that I started in college fail after two years of hard work, but I was also working at a job that I hated. I wasn’t taking care of myself physically, and emotionally I was feely pretty damn lousy for no reason that I could think of. Luckily I did not want to accept the misery that I was stuck in and I was determined to find a way out of it.
I Google searched things like getting happier, finding meaning and a number of other things that I thought would be relevant, and Google took me to a book by Tony Robbins called Awaken the Giant Within. I started reading the book and it made a lot of sense to me.
I remember one part in particular where it said to imagine your problem as a physical object and try to move it. I closed my eyes and pictured a giant black anvil next to me and in my mind I tried to move it just an inch. I couldn’t. I kept opening my eyes, closing them, and trying again. Then something crazy happened when I closed my eyes one last time. The anvil had transformed into a baseball-sized ball and it was in my hand. I simply pictured myself throwing it away and watching it bounce until it was out of sight.
When I opened my eyes I felt a lot better and I had absolutely no idea how it worked. The more I read the more I began to realize that the “problem” and bad feelings that I created were in my head and that I controlled them. I then began to think about how many other people do the same thing on a daily basis and I wanted to figure out how I could use my personal experience to help. Just as I was getting out of my funk I started taking the “Live Off Your Passion eCourse“(affiliate link, I will get paid a percentage if you sign up for the course) by Scott Dinsmore, which helped me realize that my passion was to help others to take control of their lives and I decided to become a life coach. (More about this in my post about How I Escaped My Job and Found Meaning in My Career)
When I decided to become a life coach I threw myself into it fully. To date I have read too many books to count, attended a number of seminars and received three different certifications in technologies that allow me to help people to control their realities by controlling their thoughts and emotions. Some of the techniques I that learned were pretty remarkable and others were very simple but just as effective.
Which brings me to the title of the blog…
Why Eyes on the Rise?
One of the things that I learned in my training was how our physiology can have a HUGE impact on our emotions. We talked about how people who are feeling depressed are constantly looking down, slumped over and you can pretty much recognize how they are feeling just by looking at them.
When they find their way out of the depression they usually say something like “things are looking up”. I never realized it until one of my training seminars, but when someone says, “things are looking up”, they mean that literally. They are no longer looking down or slumped over, they are now looking up and standing up straight. If you don’t believe it try to imagine someone who is really excited and check if they are slumped over and looking down, doesn’t really fit does it?
I liked the idea that something as simple as looking up could really make a big difference in how someone was feeling in an instant. Is it the most effective and longest lasting way to help someone to feel better? No it’s not. But it’s a start and for some people that is a huge leap forward. The strategies that I learned now allow me to help people go from feeling bad to feeling good, and go from feeling good to feeling great and beyond!
When the time came for me to name this blog I played around with a lot of different titles and names that I thought would sound good and could rank on Google. Then I read something on Corbett Barr’s “Start A Blog That Matters” course about how a blog name should reflect something that has had a huge impact on you or that conveys a major belief of yours. When I began to think about the simple concept of looking up to feel better and combined it with my personal belief of improving a little bit everyday, I finally came up with the name “Eyes on the Rise”. It reminds us to keep looking up, feeling good, and to stay focused on the goal of improving a little bit each day.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So now that you know the full story behind Eyes on the Rise, where do we go from here?
I will be here providing you with the most valuable content that I possibly can, every day, for free! Access to my blog posts and strategies are absolutely 100% free to you and I would be honored if you would share them with others who you think might benefit from them too! Sharing can be as simple as a tweet, like, or you could even email an article to someone that you ‘d like to share it with.
You don’t have to be a young professional to benefit from these strategies, I write to young professionals because I am one myself, and my writing style reflects that. The truth is that these strategies are meant for anyone who wants to live a better life.
I am working on launching an online coaching program to help empower you to become wildly successful in any area that you choose, which I will have more details on soon!
For now you can SUBSCRIBE by email below and receive my blog posts for free in your inbox. There will be AT LEAST one life strategy in each post that you will be able to apply to your life and gain instant value from! I would not waste your time with fluff posts.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, I know that your time is your most valuable asset and I am truly honored that you would spend some of it here
