As a biological engineering major, my possible summer internships options were pretty slim.  Every company I contacted wanted me to have some experience in the field before they would even consider interviewing me.  Sadly my four years of lifeguarding wasn’t impressive to them, so I faced a lot of rejection whenever I applied.  “How am I supposed to have experience as a freshman?” I would often ask my roommates.  They too had impressive resumes built on years of dedicated work in the food service industry, so they offered little help.    My assigned college counselor offered me more and more engineering firms to contact, and I applied to all of them only to hear the same response time after time.  “Try again when you are a junior or senior” became a popular expression around my dorm room. 

Then I made one of the best decisions a college freshman can make.   I applied for internships outside of my major and a whole new world of opportunity opened up!  There are lots of opportunities to students willing to try something new and different.  I looked at sales internships, investment companies, entrepreneurship opportunities, and many others.  I ended up getting a challenging job where I would run my own business for the summer.  After completing the summer, I found that my skills I had gained during the summer were priceless.  I now had engineering firms seeking me out and contacting me for jobs!  They saw my engineering knowledge combined with the sales skills I had learned from my internship, to be highly sought after and worthy of their time.

So to all underclassmen who have a lack of experience, but are ambitious enough to search for an internship look outside of your major this summer.  There are great jobs, even careers that have been started by students who took a chance and tried something different.  But beyond all else, you only get four summers in college (or five if you are on the hard partying course plan) please make the most of them.  It is never too early to start get ahead in life.

Go get a pen right now and list your top 5 priorities.

Confident top producers all take action immediately with everything they do and guess what their clients do?  They want to do business with them.  When someone has unconditional confidence it attracts others to them.  People can see it in their eyes.  Your clients do not want to do business with a whipped puppy; they want a champion pure breed that is going to bring home the gold!  You might be asking yourself, “How am I supposed to do this?  I’m not naturally like that!” 

Now that you have a list of things that are your priorities, let’s figure out how to change our life from a “should do” mindset to a “must do” mindset.  As fast as you can list the things that you know you should really do, but maybe you just haven’t gotten around to it lately (ex. prospecting).  Next write down all the things that you know you must do no matter what– things that you do all the time (ex. pay bills).

Now look at both lists.  In your first list was it things such as lose weight, read more often, go to church?  Then in your second list was it buy groceries, change the oil in my car, pay taxes?  We naturally attach our priorities and things that we think we “must do” to things that cost us money and are in our budgets!  Yet the things we “should do” and don’t ever get around to actually doing them are things that require time!  We naturally hold the most value to time and money. 

Now ask yourself this, “If I were to move all of the things in my “should do” column over to my “must do” column and actually achieved everything on my list, would my confidence go up or down?”  Confidence tends to build on positive momentum.  Positive momentum comes from doing the things that you know you “should do” consistently.

Let’s now assign a dollar value to both lists.  First list how much you spend on the things you must do, next assign a dollar value to how much you think it is worth to achieve the things you “should do”. 

This next step is the most important look at your “should do” list and write down the reason you are not doing it!  Is it time or money?  Now eliminate the excuse, and find a way no matter what to do what you need to do to achieve everything you “should do”!  Look at the things you waste money on in your “must do” section that you don’t have to.

When my wife and I did this exercise for the first time we found that we had a long list of things we “should do”.  We discovered that she could eliminate one of her “must do’s”–most of her time during the week was dedicated to cleaning and maintaining our house.  She was not doing things she knew she “should do” because of it.  So we made a decision to get a house keeper.  Now we assign money in our family budget to some of her “should do” list, which then turned them into “must do’s” and priorities!  Since that day she has accomplished most of her “should do’s” and is now starting her own company.

Be mindful of your priorities.  How much is living the life of your dreams worth?