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If you want to achieve lasting success, Nicole Attias says that only by changing your reactions to situations will you be able to influence changes. Essentially, you need to keep changing if you want to grow

How can you advance in your career or business if you have very little control over yourself?

A great part of success is derived from confidence, persistence and learning from past experiences. How do you react when others push your buttons or rub you the wrong way?

While you cannot control others, you can control your reactions to the situations that leave a bad taste in your mouth. This is one challenging task, but it can be accomplished with practice. We all have different personality types, tolerance levels and skill-sets. What we do or don't do with them is our own choice. Success can be accomplished at any stage of your business. But how can you make it last?

If you want to achieve lasting success, consider the following:

Developing basic people skills
The corporate world teaches us to be tough, strong and thick-skinned. Whatever happened to humanness? What ever happened to basic social skills?

You can be an amazing IT professional or web designer, but if you lack the necessary people skills, how will you advance in your career? Integrating knowledge and communication skills is necessary. There is no other way out, unless you want to stay exactly where you are.

In order to develop people skills in the workplace, speak to others the way you would speak to your acquaintances. Have fun in your day. Small talk with your customers. Make others feel important.

Becoming more self aware   
You could be an amazing person with amazing talents, but for some reason when Bob pushes you the wrong way and you're caught off guard, all of your composure is gone out the window. Ever wonder why Bob has this especially negative effect on you? Perhaps Bob, who is your boss, is very picky and unreasonable and you simply never learned to confront him. Perhaps you've known Bob for ages and don't even realise that he's so controlling.

Jane or John could be a joy to deal with. They respect your ideas and they are willing to see things the same way you do, even if they disagree. Perhaps they are more open-minded than Bob, and you feel more at ease around them.

The key to dealing with Bob is being aware of his personality and realizing how you react to him. Bob keeps pushing your buttons because he knows he can. He knows what kind of reaction to expect.

Do you have a short-fuse and lash out, or do you withdraw when provoked? Both responses are ineffective because they don't solve a thing, and next time you see Bob, a new situation arises.

Understanding patterns of behaviour  
The key to success is awareness of what is and what isn't working. In business it’s easy to be tough, strong and ego-driven.

Remove the emotion and humanness from the situation and do what needs to be done, right? Wrong. This can only take you so far. You will eventually crash because nothing is natural.

Recognise that how you behave in all situations effects lasting outcomes. Can you honestly pretend that certain things don't bother you about Mary or Tom if they do?