How to create your own value professionally — and personally

I know it's difficult to grow beyond the eight-hour work day, but during the day, put yourself in position to reach, stretch, challenge, and grow.

With few exceptions, we earn the position and its reward through performance.

One of the inequities of life is that some reap reward without influencing the result, while others who influence and generate the result fail to be recognized or rewarded for the achievement.

Show up, be on time, and be present. Being present means you are aware and you are on point. Don't mail in the day.

Business is an uncertain proposition. Maintain self-reliance — if we become dependent upon the benevolence of a company, and give up our right of self-reliance, we will exist at the whim and caprice of personalities and market forces beyond our span of influence.

The path of learning opens the door to success for those who seek, find or make a way forward.

Will you hedge against uncertainty by making yourself more valuable, not by possession but by the quality of your person and the value you create for yourself and others?

Business doesn't run on charity. Humans are emotional creatures — we can become mercurial and inconsistent; we let our ego get in the way of responsible judgment at times.

Show up, be physically and mentally present, put yourself in positon to grow. Grow your value, build your skill set, create your platform, face your fears, grow your skills, and learn to take care of yourself.

Economic factors and elements beyond a business's span of influence can dictate direction and course of action. In a recession, the first people to go are the weak performers. We can achieve lifetime employability as we become valuable to others by creating our own value.

Life will evolve with or without our participation. Each step forward, each opportunity sought, will expose us to varying gradients of risk and uncertainty.

To seek what life has to offer is to take the risks inherent in the search. Our days are subject to the laws of nature. The decisions we make today determine how we will use our time, our days, our lives, tomorrow.

Make a choice to become an indispensable gift to your customer, co-workers and company. The bias of "find a way or make a way" is baked into your DNA. It will be with you when you join your employer or meet and marry your spouse.

You will notice people have a disposition to either say yes or no. Trying to turn a no bias into a yes bias reminds me of the lesson in the metaphor — if you try to teach a pig to sing, all you do is waste your time and annoy the pig.
Bill Wooditch, author of "Always Forward! Discover the 7 Secrets of Sales Success," is the founder, CEO and president of The Wooditch Group, a privately held risk management and insurance services firm. He is also the founder of Think Next, Act Now!, a learning forum that trains tomorrow's entrepreneurs today. Think Next, Act Now! provides the strategy and techniques to inspire and motivate personal and corporate growth. Wooditch earned his bachelor's degree in psychology at Purdue University and his master's in public administration at Penn State.