Finding A New Job Archives - Page 5 of 8

Being Resilient – You Are Not Alone!

Remember You are Not Alone! In the final post in this short series on being resilient I wanted to look at how we can call on those we know to support us because we do not have to deal with things on our own.

In times of crisis, you can believe that you have to go it alone, but look around at your family, friends and Personal Learning Network and you will probably find that you can put together a support team and lean on them as needed. You might have a mentor, coach or role model who can help guide you through the situation. Or, you can learn all you can and come up with an action plan for dealing with whatever situation has arisen.

Whenever something challenging happens to us, we can feel as if we are the only person in the world that it has ever happened to. The truth is, it has probably happened to many other people as well and they too have had to learn about being resilient. Examples include being made redundant, divorce, the loss of a loved one, a fire destroying our home, and so on. Fortunately, there are trained professionals who have experience dealing with these issues.

There are also ordinary people who have faced the same issues and come out the other side having learned a lot of valuable lessons about being resilient along the way. You might be able to connect with them in person via local support groups, or meet up with them online and share experiences.

For example, it can be really tough to be diagnosed with a serious illness, such as cancer. Going online to learn as much as you can about your condition and treatment options is often one of the best ways to get a good outcome. Reading successful treatment stories can give you a positive outlook, which can lead to a better outcome.

If one of your family members becomes ill, you might suddenly be thrust into the role of a caregiver, a gatekeeper who learns about all of the aspects of the condition, and a cheerleader as you try to put a brave face on things for the sake of your sick loved one. All of this can lead to stress and caregiver burnout if you don’t pace yourself and take steps to ensure you get the support you need.

Being resilient does not mean going it alone. It means knowing what you need, asking for it, and doing your best no matter what the situation, through the smart choices you make. Over time, even the toughest situations will become easier because you have developed resilience.

Final Thoughts

Many people think how fortunate some people are because they appear so resilient, and make it seem so easy to cope with even the worst times. They look as though they are always in charge, and have their act together no matter what life throws at them.

The truth is that the road to being resilient is about developing a set of skills and a mental attitude. They are skills you can develop if you are willing to put in the effort to work on your preparedness in the face of tough situations. Only by dealing with challenges can you rise to them, and become a more resilient person able to succeed in life no matter what the odds.

How We Can Be More Resilient

Having looked in my last post at the sort of situations that can require us to be more resilient I know want to look at some of the factors that can contribute to resilience. If you already possess them, that’s great. If you don’t, then it might be time to work on them. I know as someone who is currently looking for a new role as a Learning and Development Professional they are areas that I am very focused on.

Close Family and Community

Studies have shown that one of the primary factors in developing resilience is having caring and supportive relationships within the family, and outside of it as well. Solid role models you can rely on will help. So too will having a network of people you trust who will offer encouragement, constructive feedback and opinions without trying to smother you.

This kind of support gives you the self-confidence to bounce back when times get tough. It can also take you out of yourself as you care for others in return, being the strong one when circumstances present themselves and need to be dealt with calmly and practically.

Goal-Oriented

Resilient people set goals for themselves, then take steps to achieve them. They follow through. They also tend to be good communicators who say what they mean and mean what they say.

They are practical, but also see the potential in situations and people. They don’t have tunnel vision, but rather, an image of what they wish their future to be like. That image drives them towards success and prevents setbacks from making them give up completely.

They accept that change is a part of living, and that even if one door closes, another will open. They aren’t afraid to make the most of opportunities that arise. Even if the make a wrong decision or “fail”, they learn from their mistakes and move on, usually stronger than before.

A resilient person knows the difference between things they can change and things they can’t, and applies their energy accordingly. They don’t stick their head in the sand, but face their problems head on. They don’t keep trying the same ineffective strategy over and over again hoping they will eventually get a different result.

Emotionally Aware

Resilient people also tend to be emotionally aware. They are able to manage strong feelings and impulses without being overwhelmed by them. They often possess high emotional intelligence as well, understanding the thoughts, feelings and difficulties others are going through. They go out of their way to help people, confident in their own ability to give assistance to others in some way. They don’t just give a fish; they teach people how to fish so that they too can be resilient.

Resilient people have a positive outlook on life, not a negative one. They don’t see problems; they see challenges that can be overcome. They look forward to the future with confidence, secure in the knowledge that they have faced tough times before and will be able to do so again whenever they arise.

Studies show that those with a sense of humor also tend to be more resilient. They can find something amusing in even the toughest situations. The laughter removes stress and helps them soldier on.

Good Self-Care

Resilient people also practice good self-care. They don’t neglect themselves to the point where they are running on an empty fuel tank. They eat right, exercise, manage stress, and allow themselves some personal time and space.

They understand that if they don’t look after themselves first, they won’t be able to care for others. They want to be their best self and live their best life. They set themselves self-improvement tasks that they follow through with.

Able to Learn and Grow

Resilient people look for opportunities to learn and grow. They trust their instincts and visualize their actions as being a path to success. Many resilient people meditate, journal, keep a vision board, and tackle their to-do lists like pros.

They are good at time management and are dependable and responsible. This in turn means less stress and less difficulty because they are not causing themselves problems through, for example, procrastination and other bad habits.

In Control of One’s Life

Above all, a resilient person feels that they are in control of their life no matter what happens. They might not have a choice about what happens, but they do have a choice about how to react to it. They explore their choices in an effort to make smart decisions.

The modern world is full of stressful situations, both great and small. From being cut road on the road on our way to work, to the loss of a job or death of a loved one, events happen to us every day that we need to cope with. Freaking out will rarely help. Neither will burying your head in the sand and hoping it will go away.

Resilience is all about making an active decision and sticking to it. If someone cuts you off, you have two choices: get angry and perhaps make the situation worse, or decide it’s not worth getting upset about and not dwelling on it.

Similarly, the loss of a job can be devastating to some people, or a golden opportunity – depending on one’s perspective. If you were working long hours every day at the job and were never appreciated, being made redundant could be the best thing that ever happened to you. It can free you up for all new and even better opportunities. If you act like it’s a disaster and the end of the world, you will only be making a tough situation worse.

Similarly, we hate to see anyone we care about suffer, but you can either get upset, or get information about the situation and see what your options are. Your “Oh, no!” can become, “Yes, this is tough, but I am going to do my best to deal with this.”

In the next post in this short series I will take a look at how we can create a supportive network for ourselves and get the support we need.

The Little Engine That Could – Positive About Affirmations

One of the pieces of advice I always give people who are job searching is to focus on the positives. That’s advice I am taking myself as I undertake a search for a new Learning and Development role.

As I have been reflecting on my experience and skills one of things that I recalled was when I first encountered the concept of Positive Affirmations some years ago. It was the Lou Tice Investment in Excellence programme which I recall at the time I approached with a healthy degree of cynicism. However, whilst some of the claims that I have seen made for Positive Affirmations since then, have brought out that cynicism in me I must admit I do find them helpful in terms of focusing on my own skills and knowledge.

I am sure you have encountered those who try to convince you that by simply telling yourself something you can become it/achieve it. Whilst I don’t subscribe to that approach I do believe that using positive affirmations as part of our self-talk (which I have written about previously) can have a very positive impact on how we approach challenges such as finding a new job.

So I wanted to take a moment or two to re-visit what positive affirmations are all about and to share some thoughts about them.

What Are Affirmations?

Think of affirmations as words and sentences with the power to transform. By saying them out loud or to yourself, they have the power to affect both your conscious and subconscious mind in order to stimulate your emotions, encourage, and inspire. They are a form of positive self-talk, and also guided imagery to a certain extent. You picture your own success, and that all your efforts are working towards that better future.

Finding affirmations that work for you in all areas of your life can help you get “unstuck” and move forward with a renewed sense of energy and empowerment. We do not have to be a helpless victim of circumstance.

Instead of having a coach give you a pep talk before the interview, you will already be psyching yourself up to perform well through your personal affirmations.

Affirmations are just one of many tools for personal and professional success, but they can also be one of the most powerful if you find affirmations that resonate with you, and use them on a regular basis. There are many free affirmations available on the internet that you can use, or you can make up your own based on your own personal circumstances.

Affirmations can help you transform your life for a number of reasons. They can play many different roles, including:

Motivating
Focusing your mind and efforts on the goal
Tapping into the power of your subconscious
Countering negative self-talk with positive self-talk
Pushing out self-doubt and self-criticism with “can do” messages
Enhancing your self-esteem

If you struggle with a lack of confidence, affirmations can put you on a whole new path to success. Remember the Little Engine that Could? His affirmation was, “I think I can, I think I can.”

Can You Be Too Perfect?

Having looked at fear of failure and success I want to now look at how being a perfectionist can stop you from achieving what you want.

Let’s start by understanding what perfectionism is not. Perfectionism is not the admirable quality of holding yourself to high standards. Rather, perfectionism is the fusion of high standards with your self-worth. A less-than-perfect performance damages a perfectionist’s self-worth in their opinion. The possibility that their performance will not be flawless is debilitating to them, and they can become paralyzed by the idea of doing something.

A perfectionist believes that they can never be good enough. They consider any mistake they make to be an indication of their value as a person and therefore no mistake is permissible. They seek to avoid shame and judgment by being perfect.

Successful professionals are typically not perfectionists, although they may be people who hold themselves and others to high standards. The hesitation and over-analysis that is common to perfectionists does not help them to advance in a profession.

What Perfectionism Looks Like

Perfectionists are often chronic procrastinators. They spend so much time preparing for a task that they never get to the task. The anxiety surrounding their fear of making a mistake is disempowering, so they often feel unable to proceed with their work.

Perfectionists may be aware that their perfectionism is a disadvantage to them, but they consider it the price they have to pay to be successful. Perfectionists hold others to high standards, too, and can be very critical of them. But even though they are quick to criticize, they have a hard time accepting criticism, which can stop them from moving on with their work.

Perfectionism is a big de-motivator. Perfectionists can be reluctant to try new things because they are afraid that they won’t be able to live up to their own standards when they do it. And, if they do try something new, they will often abandon it quickly. The mistakes that anyone is bound to make when learning a skill are so painful to perfectionists that they will quit before they gain mastery. As a consequence, they never enjoy practicing the skill, be it speaking a language, playing an instrument, or participating in a sport.

Because perfectionists are so risk-averse, they rarely are able to innovate or be creative. They have all-or-nothing thinking, and won’t do anything if they can’t devote themselves to it totally. They are often hiding the fact that they are imposters.

How to Overcome Perfectionism

Many of the ways of overcoming perfectionism have to do with recognizing that it is a hindrance, not a help, in achieving your goals. If your goal is to do an excellent job in a presentation for work, being obsessed with every little detail stands in your way rather than helping you.

If you are overwrought over things that are out of your control, you aren’t completing things that are in your control. If you are focused on past errors, you aren’t working on tasks that can actually move you toward your goals. So step back, look at the big picture, and put perfectionism in its place.

Another approach to overcoming perfectionism is to heal the parts of you that causes it. Perfectionists are weak on self-acceptance and self-compassion. To overcome perfectionism, learn to love yourself in all your imperfect glory. Honor the work that you do, even if it is less than perfect.

Honour your commitment to high standards, but don’t let your failure to meet them make you feel unworthy. Treat mistakes as lessons you can learn from. Let go of the personal hurt you feel over them. Be analytical about them, freeing yourself from the impact they have over your feelings of self-worth. Enjoy your successes and victories. Celebrate them. Let your successes, not your errors, define you to yourself.

Are You Scared Of Failure?

Fear of failure is an irrational fear that you will not succeed that has so much power over you that it can stop you from moving forward to achieve your goals. Since it paralyzes you from taking action to achieve your goals, it pretty much guarantees that you won’t meet them. So anyone who has a goal to meet or a dream to make come true needs to conquer any fear of failure that may be burdening them.

Inevitably if you are looking for a new job having been made redundant the question “what happens if I don’t find a new job?” is going to surface. So in this quite long post I want to look at what fear of failure looks like but also how to overcome that fear.

What Fear of Failure Looks Like

Fear of failure can stem from negative associations with failure that go back as far as childhood or it can arise after experiencing a harsh episode in which someone felt like a failure.

In the first case, where the fear of failure arises from a long time of feeling inadequate, people with a fear of failure feel a sense of shame at being inadequate or incompetent. Maybe a harsh parent or care-giver magnified small failures they had when they were growing up. Now, they are afraid to try new things or to challenge themselves to achieve success. They give up easily when they encounter a difficulty. They settle for ordinary, mediocre lives instead of reaching for higher opportunities.

In the second case, the fear of failure arises from an important negative experience. Someone may be fired, say, and that causes such trauma that they lack confidence to get another job or to try to pursue a challenging career. Or someone else may have a relationship end in a cruel and hurtful way, so that the result is a fear of moving forward to meet someone else and find love again. The reluctance to act is due to a fear that the painful event will be repeated.

In either case, people with fear of failure shy away from situations in which they don’t think they will be entirely successful. For them, failure isn’t a learning experience. Failure is a shameful experience that feels like the end of the world. As a consequence, they fail at something simply because they never try it. In that way, failure is inevitable; the fear has won.

Fear of failure can lead to other self-sabotaging efforts, such as procrastination and low self-esteem. People with fear of failure may avoid starting new projects, or may start them but then fail to follow through on them. Or sometimes they set out on a project but then subconsciously cause themselves to fail, as though they want to prove to themselves and others that they were right all along – that they would fail at their attempt.

Fear of failure can cause feelings of shame, disappointment, anger, frustration and confusion. And it can lead to physical symptoms, some of which can be pretty scary. You can experience breathing problems like shortness of breath or rapid breathing, stomach problems like nausea or diarrhea, as well as faintness, tremulousness, flushing and excessive perspiration. People experiencing fear of failure may feel an overwhelming, general sense of dread.

How to Overcome Fear of Failure

If you are experiencing serious, debilitating fear of failure, the kind that is destroying your life, you should seek the help of a mental health professional. For more manageable cases, there are some self-help steps that you can take to get your fear of failure under control.

A small group of loving, supportive friends or family members is very helpful when it comes to overcoming fear of failure. They can help you heal your wounds. They can point out the successful qualities that you have but ignore. And they can give you practical advice that helps you to succeed in more challenging environments than you are used to being in.

If you don’t already have people like that in your life, you can look out for support groups in your community. Another self-help step is to do something that you can be pretty sure that you will succeed at, and then build on that, starting with low-stress steps forward. A good singer can join a choir, and even volunteer to do solos. A good dressmaker can make some items for sale at a community or crafts sale, attaching a card with contact information in case the purchaser wants more. By doing something that you are good at, and putting yourself in the position to get some recognition for it, you start to build up your experiences of being a success.

Another way of attacking fear of failure is to analyze it. Discover what it is that you are actually afraid of. Are you afraid that if you ask your boss for a promotion, she will turn you down? Then prepare for the promotion. Document the contributions that you have made to the company. Compare your achievements to others in your role and in the role you seek. Do special projects or take on more responsibilities in anticipation of your request. Make yourself highly promotable. It increases your chances of getting promoted. If, after all that, you still don’t get the promotion, ask for an honest assessment why. Take the response seriously but not personally. The feedback may be what you need to go on to more success.

Finally, the most important means of self-help that you can engage in is the one that takes the most persistent work. That is, to change your relationship to failure. Instead of thinking of failure as a personal flaw that you should be ashamed of, think of it as a learning experience that can help you grow.
Learn to treat failure is a step along the path to success. Do what you are afraid of. You might, after all, succeed. If you succeed, use your success to change your mind about yourself. And if you do fail, examine what happens. Do you die? Do people you love die? In other words, so what if you fail?

Eleanor Roosevelt said it best:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Finally, to overcome fear of failure, think of what would happen if you didn’t do the thing you are afraid of. First, the thing wouldn’t get done. Second, the personal growth that you would experience by overcoming your fear of failure wouldn’t take place. And, third, the future as it would exist afterwards won’t exist. The world won’t have been changed in that direction. Are you willing to give your fear that much power? The world will be that much poorer for your contribution. You will be that much poorer for yielding to your fear. If that’s not what you want, don’t let it happen.

Your goals and dreams are as big and as powerful as your fear. Give your goals and dreams the upper hand. Let them conquer your fear.