Formula for Incredible Career Success = C²G²

If you can remember C²G², you can remember the four elements that will elevate your career from pretty good to incredible.

My theory of life goes like this: we all know the right things to do, but on a day-to-day basis, we forget them. For example, when it's 8:45 a.m. and an unimportant emergency strikes, you begin the process of forgetting what is actually important.

So I look for simple devices to remind me. My personal favorite, which guides my own career, is C²G².

My formula starts with compassion. It means to help others, proactively.

Yes, your goals are important. Yes, you have to stand up for yourself. But you also have to stand up for others.

Without compassion, you won't be any good at selling.

Without compassion, you won't be any good at serving your clients.

Without compassion, you won't be able to maintain satisfying and strong relationships with others.

I'm not going to lie; you can be successful without compassion. I'm just not sure you can be happy without it.

Next comes clarity. This is what separates people who mean well from people who do well.

When you have clarity, you understand your priorities as well as your principles. You have the ability to not only say what you want, but also to communicate how you help others,

Clarity is getting the right balance between who you are communicating with right now (your audience), what you are trying to get them to understand (your message), and how you are sharing this information (the medium).

Fit them all together well, and you will be clear and focused.

By this time, you have probably heard about Carol Dweck's superb book, Mindset, is which she explains that people with a growth mindset tend to outperform those with a fixed mindset. That is, if you think your abilities are fixed, you won't do as well as people who believe that with enough effort, they can expand their capabilities.

Dweck's work is so powerful because it demonstrates that one fundamental shift in mindset can change the path of your career and life. This shift is easy to understand, easy to communicate and - for many people - relatively easy to accomplish, once they understand the potential benefits.

You might also want to check out University of Pennsylvania Associate Professor Angela Duckworth on NPR's TED Talk program. Duckworth studies grit, which she defines as "the tendency to sustain interest in—and effort toward—very long-term goals."

Duckworth's research has demonstrated that grit predicts success in a number of endeavors. For clarity's sake, I have eliminated Duckworth's scholarly references from the following text from her site:

Grit predicts surviving the arduous first summer of training at West Point and reaching the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee, retention in the U.S. Special Forces, retention and performance among novice teachers and sales agents, and graduation from Chicago public high schools, over and beyond domain-relevant talent measures such as IQ, SAT or standardized achievement test scores, and physical fitness.

Listening to Duckworth speak, a light bulb lit up in my head. What if you could use a growth mindset to become more gritty? Would that be a killer career strategy?

There's reason to believe this is true. I found this passage in Duckworth's research statement:

It is now well-established that traits change across the life course (Roberts & Mroczek, 2008). So, while there is enough stability to traits to sensibly describe one individual as grittier than another, it is also true that children and adults change their habitual patterns of interacting with the world as they accumulate additional life experience.

In other words, your level of grit is not fixed. She explains further:

Individuals who believe that frustration and confusion mean they should quit what they are doing may be taught that these emotions are common during the learning process. Likewise, individuals who believe that mistakes are to be avoided at all costs may be taught that the most effective form of practice (deliberate practice – see research by Anders Ericsson) entails tackling challenges beyond one’s current skill level.

Growth + Grit = Long term success

Growth + Grit is already a powerful recipe for a stellar career, but when you build these on top of a foundation of compassion and clarity, you have a "change the world" equation.

I don't have the research to prove it, but my gut says that the people who radically change our world for the better combine all four of these traits. They build schools, attack poverty, and lead companies with a sense of purpose.

The most exciting part of these four traits is that they all are within your grasp. You can decide to adopt them. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, a genius or of "average" intelligence. If you set your mind to embrace this formula, you will change what you are capable of accomplishing. More importantly, you will change what others are capable of accomplishing.

Bruce Kasanoff is both a ghostwriter and coach.