For your personal and professional development and to achieve what you want in life and your career, it is certainly necessary to work hard. However, you can follow certain methods and tactics that can help you change your life and improve your career. These life hacks can drive you faster towards achieving your objectives. One of the most valuable but yet unused sources of information is other people in your personal and work environment. If you can manage to learn from other people and take advantage of what they have to offer, this will certainly help you achieve more both in your life and career.

Knowing and understanding your self better, the continuous expansion of knowledge, learning from your experiences, the application of what you have learned from the different experiences, will allow you to become day by day better than the previous day.

However, to achieve continuous personal improvement both in your life and career, you need to be concerned and give more importance to the people you meet, talk and work with every day. Every person, with whom you come in contact with, has something to offer you, if you allocate the necessary time and if you decide to listen and to observe carefully.

7 ways you can learn from other people and change your career and life are:

1. Diversity of thinking

It is true that as people we like to meet and be together with people who think the same way as we think. But is this always the best way for the further development of our horizons?

Probably not, because being with people who share our own perspectives in terms of perception and interpretation of the world, just strengthens what we believe and how we act.

But watching and listening carefully to other people we meet in our professional and personal environment, we can learn about new ways of thinking, interpretation and action. Careful analysis and comparison may give us valuable new understanding that can help us improve beyond the frontiers of our current capabilities.

2. The value of careful observation

Expand your ability to observe people. The careful observation of behaviour and modes of action may offer valuable information.

Look at your colleagues at work, observe how they handle their relations with others, and try to understand what methods they use to get results. You can then learn from them while you apply the successful methods, which they are using.

At the same time observe those who fail or are not effective. This will allow you to understand better what mistakes you should not make or avoid saving valuable time and energy.

3. Try to make new contacts

You should try and meet new people either through your daily work or a project that you participate. Your goal should be to know as many people as possible, to be known by as many people as possible and to develop networks of relationships. And do not forget the most important is not whom you know but who knows you.

4. Ask for the support and opinion of others

The perception other people in your family, personal or professional environment have for you is very important. These people are a key source for your self-assessment. Without self-assessment you cannot improve your career or change your life.

So look for their thoughts in a way that is constructive and objective and do not get defensive. Your goal here is to adjust your behaviour, how you work, in order to improve your efficiency and to develop new modes of action.

If you apply this technique of finding out what others thing about you, you can also have a longitudinal assessment of your improvement in several areas.

5. Understand and appreciate the importance of networks

It is a fact that successful people develop strong networks of relationships. Remember that the good and strong networks of human relations are a difficult, time consuming, tedious and lengthy task. It requires hard work, resources, commitment and attention to human factors and sensitivities.

The successful relationship networks operate in both directions and provide invaluable services in many situations of personal and professional life.

6. Build relationships with colleagues and superiors

All of us in our work learn from our colleagues and our managers. It is a normal situation and thus it is necessary to strive to cultivate interpersonal relationships that will allow us to extract the maximum from the knowledge, experience and wisdom of the people with whom we work and co-operate daily.

It is of enormous importance for your personal growth and successful career, to learn as much as possible from the people you encounter in your lives. You must learn to learn from people. It is not an easy task to do. It is an art that can be mastered by patience, strategy and practice.

The search for new ways of thinking, understanding new concepts, the careful observation of behaviour, the self-assessment across the perception of others, the development of networks are offering you wealth from the people you encounter every day. It is up to you to recognize, use and appreciate it.

7. Use other people as a source of inspiration

The enthusiasm of people who have achieved their objectives, are very important for you to maintain your own enthusiasm at high levels. A big step for changing your live and improving your career is to manage and treat successful people not competitive but see them as examples and as sources of knowledge that will help your achieve your own goals and objectives. The biggest mistake is to think that nobody has to offer you anything and that you know everything. Those who have already achieved something they are done something better, so you should learn from them and try to improve your defects.

It is also a known fact that people who surround you in your personal or work environment can unconsciously or consciously drive you to failure. This can happen if you are dealing with people that think negatively. These people are not trying to achieve anything and they blame everything and everyone for their own failures. Such people can simply discourage you and psychologically can remove all your positive power.

On the contrary, if you are working with optimistic and people who think positive, people who always look on the positive side of life and encourage you, then your goals can be achieved more easily. These kinds of people, the positive thinkers, can help you change your life for the better and achieve both your personal and career goals.

As a final advice, try not to share your plans, goals and your dreams with the wrong people because you can end up very disappointed because of their cynicism and attitude. Share your objectives and goals with people who understand, care and support you. These people are either your close friends and family or other people who have similar goals with you. With these people you can exchange experiences and knowledge and support each other even in moments of weakness or difficulty.