Cut the Mental Clutter: Believe in Your Executive Career Success
Cut the Mental Clutter: Believe in Your Executive Career Success
We all get bogged down by the daily demands of our jobs–so when busy executives need to add job search to their list of things to do, no wonder they can get frustrated or overwhelmed. I wanted to take a moment to remind you to celebrate the things that you do succeed in, knowing that your faith in yourself might be all it takes to actualize success.
Visualize Your Success
Even if on the face of it this sounds a bit corny, visualizing your own success can change your mindset. I’m not a believer in the idea that if you simply will something to happen, then you control the outcome. But I am a great believer in de-cluttering your mental cache of musts and have-tos, so that you have the bandwidth to create your success. From an executive job search perspective, this might take the form of identifying ways to delegate to free up a few minutes at the beginning or end of your day, so you can make that phone call to a connection who just might be the right one to help you. For others, going for a run or taking the dog on a long walk to nowhere, just to clear your head and give yourself a bit of a mental vacation, might be just the thing to recharge your mind.
Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative
One of the hardest mental hurdles to overcome is not letting the one rotten thing that happened in a day or week crowd out the dozens of other situations in which you saved the day, made someone else’s job easier, brightened someone’s morning with a kind word, and so on. We all seem to have a terrible tendency to let the one mishap of the week destroy our self-confidence, if not our self-image. Don’t let the ever-present devil perched on your shoulder tell you how to think about yourself. Remember the good that you do and the successes you create personally and professionally–make a written list and post it on your monitor if you have to.
Recognize Where You Fall Short–But Create Action Plans to Build Yourself Up
Nobody’s perfect, and sometimes you will fall short of your goals. Maybe you feel like you didn’t quite get through to a networking contact. Perhaps you didn’t apply for a choice position before the deadline. Maybe you let your executive job search go for a week or two while you handled some pressing issues that simply couldn’t wait. These things happen, but do not beat yourself up over them. Instead, try to do a 10-second gap analysis between what you did do and what you, with 20/20 hindsight, wish you had done. Maybe you need to refine your marketing message or elevator pitch, so that you come across with more power and precision when you next reach out to a connection about your executive job search. Perhaps you need to put all of your job search deadlines in a private calendar on your phone, complete with 24-hour reminders to keep you on task. It could be that you have to put some “give” in your schedule, because your career is demanding, and you can’t possibly be in two places at once every day of your week.
Conclusion: Allow Yourself Some Breathing Room
If you’ve read this far, you probably could use some time and space to regroup, get your calendar in order, and create a plan that you feel good about. The first item on your list should always be permission to forgive yourself if you’re not speeding through an executive job search. The remainder of your list should focus on the ways you can build yourself up by creating achievable, short-term action items. In this way, you’ll find that a number of small, achievable tasks that push you through your executive job search ultimately will propel you into the executive career satisfaction you need. Always know that you have a job search partner if you need one. Call me at 801-810-5627; I’m happy to be your sounding board.
