Making your mind your friend - disarm your self-sabotages
Self-sabotages take the form of your inner dialogue with yourself. How you see things – the stories you create in your mind - determine your experience of life. External events or circumstances are only triggers for your feelings.
If, for example, you go to a job interview but don’t get the job you could say to yourself two very different things:
- Unhelpful thinking- “I’m not skilled/educated/young/old enough. This is terrible that I failed.” Result: you feel bad, stop job searching for a week or longer and miss a great opportunity.
- Helpful thinking- “They thought someone else was more suited for the position. This may be a good thing… there is probably a better opportunity out there waiting for me.” Result: you feel okay, continue job searching and get a position to which you are better suited.
You can see how the same external event or trigger can create two very different results. Whether you feel good or bad stems from how your mind interprets situations. Your mind is very powerful. It will either sabotage your career efforts or allow you to create the career and life path you most deeply desire.
So what can you do about it? Pay attention to your thinking. Get to know and recognize your patterns. Say to yourself “Oh, that’s just my “doubter” working over-time” or “That’s just my inner critic giving me a hard time.” Don’t worry about it, just step back, observe yourself and then look for an alternative view that is more helpful. To be able to laugh at yourself and your self-sabotages is incredibly empowering… and a lot more enjoyable than getting stuck in them!
While we may not be fully responsible for the programming we received as children, we are, as adults, the only ones who can be responsible for correcting it.
For career success improve your mind as much as possible but don’t wait for perfection. Swing into action as soon as you can and learn from your mistakes and your victories along the way. EVERYONE makes mistakes as they try out different jobs – that is all part of the learning process.
Calibrating confidence
It is called The Dunning-Kruger Effect named after the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger. In a 1999 paper, the researchers also found that once people improve their skills, they do a better job at judging what they do and don't know.
So when you think you've got a new skill down pat? Make sure you figure out what else you still have to learn. And when you've been doing something forever and are still doubting your confidence? Try to remember not to sell yourself short.
ACMA creates successful career paths through detailed individual assessment, research and job market analysis, combined with expert personalised coaching.
Note: A Career Development Association of Australia research paper found that when professional career guidance occurred that the participant was 2.67 times more likely to secure a job.
All program services can be delivered via our interactive online cloud-based career management "Career Talk" system and/or "one-on-one" in our Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne, Cairns or Auckland offices.
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