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 Words of wisdom offer priceless career lessonsFrom CareerBuilder.com Editor's Note: CNN.com has a business partnership with CareerBuilder.com, which serves as the exclusive provider of job listings and services to CNN.com. George Bush has Karl Rove; the young Jedi have their Yoda. There's no doubt the right advisers can help you achieve your career goals, but even if you don't have Jack Welch on your speed dial, you can gain wisdom from the experience of others. In the book, "The Right Words at the Right Time," edited by Marlo Thomas, 375 luminaries share the advice they received that made them successful. Here are a few examples: Matalin on politics of confidenceMary Matalin served as assistant to President Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, the first White House official to hold that double title. Today, she is an author, speaker and fixture on the political talk-show circuit. But she came from relatively humble beginnings. Matalin grew up on the South Side of Chicago and began her career as a trainee at a steel mill. She recalls these words from her father that helped her achieve her dreams: "Only one thing separates successful and unsuccessful people. It isn't money or brains. It's confidence. And what creates confidence is three things: being prepared, having experience and never giving up." Justice on being 'a little deaf'"Sometimes it pays to be a little deaf." Ruth Bader Ginsburg's mother-in-law gave her this advice on her wedding day, but the Supreme Court justice says the idea behind the words reaches far beyond marriage. "I grew up in a time when there was much more anti-Semitism and gender discrimination in the United States than there is today," Ginsburg says. "I drew upon Mother's words when I was told I was not welcome in certain places because I am Jewish or that I could not do certain work because I am a woman. ... This advice helped me remain unruffled and able to prevail. "Every day at the Supreme Court my colleagues and I decide important issues. We sometimes divide sharply and have animated conversations about our opposing views. While I have abiding respect and affection for all of my colleagues, I sometimes find myself alone in chambers momentarily distressed or annoyed, thinking I'd like to strangle Justice So-and-So. Then I smile, thinking of Mother's words. "Anger, resentment, envy and self-pity are wasteful reactions that greatly drain one's time and sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors. Of course it is important to be a good listener -- but it also pays, sometimes, to be a little deaf." Nobel laureate on picking yourself upEstablishing and running a successful research lab has been a difficult task, admits Dr. Peter Doherty of St. Jude's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Doherty, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for medicine, says a well-known line from a Frank Sinatra song pretty much sums up his career and life's work: "Will you remember the famous men who have to fall to rise again/ So take a deep breath, pick yourself up, start all over again." Doherty writes, "You have to be willing to get up when you're knocked down. ... We scientists are rather accustomed to falling flat on our faces! If you don't fail, you aren't trying anything new." Amazon.com CEO on consequences of clevernessAmazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos always has been a big reader and a fiend for numbers. At 10, he was taking a long road trip with his grandparents in the back of their smoke-filled car. He heard an anti-smoking advertisement in which the announcer declared that every time a smoker took a puff, he was shortening his life by two minutes. Bezos began calculating how many cigarettes his grandmother smoked a day and how long she had been smoking. Then he poked his head between the two front seats, tapped his grandmother on the shoulder, and, explaining the math, proudly announced, "You've taken 16 years off of your life by smoking." His grandmother burst into tears, and his grandfather carefully pulled to the side of the road. "He got out of the car and asked me to follow," Bezos recalls. "We walked a few paces and after a minute my grandfather looked at me, put his hand on my shoulder and said: 'You'll learn one day that it's much harder to be kind than clever.' " "With both his words and the gentle way in which he delivered them, my grandfather taught me an essential lesson. It's something I've been working on ever since." © Copyright CareerBuilder.com 2005. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority
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