5 approaches (you may be using) that harm your career transition


When you’re in the mood, mode, or hurry to change jobs or careers, you’re focused on what’s next. And knowing what you want next instills a feeling of confidence. It’s that sense of direction that we crave to feel. Now, all you have to do is go and get what you want.

Just one quick question as your hurry on your way: Are you sure you’re not at all a little bit (or a lot) on the attached side? Because when in the mindset of attachment, you can start to treat all of your interactions (to get the job) as transactions.

And it never feels lovely on either end of that equation.

Here’s how you can tell if that’s what’s going on:

You’re experiencing symptoms of motivation rather than inspiration. You’re calculating rather than spontaneous. Stressed rather than calm.

Your cells are gyrating future-focused anxiety instead of being in the now – the most powerful place to be.

And I know you wanna give me ‘a hand to talk to’ ‘cause (you say) you’ve already wasted enough time. You know what you want and time is of the essence.

And all I want to ask is: Can you conceive that you and what you truly desire belongs with you and that nothing could prevent that … maybe except you?

In the sprint for what you want, you’re really afraid that if you slow down the process, you can’t survive what you’ll learn about yourself.

That if you slow down the process the self-evaluation will never end.

That if you slow down the process that you will feel the judgement of inadequacy.

Speed is the ultimate defense because it obscures you from really seeing yourself.

Because if you did (see yourself, I mean), you wouldn’t like what you saw (even though you want other people to like you more than you like yourself doing what you’re doing – ironies of ironies, I know). Speed is how you talk yourself into things you don’t really want to do.

These 5 speed-related antics that sabotage your career are a ploy of your mind and nothing more. They kill the possibility of joy:

1. The outcome is pre-determined.


Everything you do, your appearance and behaviour, is controlled to influence how people respond to you. You watch and play to the responses you receive. You want the ‘dream’ situation where someone offers you a job on the spot. Worst of all, you feel ‘let down’ each time it doesn’t happen.

2. You already know the answer.


You have decided that you fully understand the job and that you want it. At networking meetings “en hurried route”, you ask predictable questions to get predictable answers. You even misinterpret or ignore what information is presented to you because you’re attached to the outcome you’ve decided upon.

3. You’re “shoulding” on yourself.


Rather than thinking about who you actually “want to meet,” you’re thinking “I should meet this person” so that things can speed along. You resist the experience of your process and reading the information that’s in the moment to inform your decision-making.

4. Your first assumption is that you’re inadequate.


You fear that you’re not good enough, not a fit. But you want to be. Mentally you’ve boxed yourself into a corner, so you want to find a way to make it work. You want the other person to see you as a fit. You are quick to contort yourself because you’re in a race to reach your goal.

5. You can’t see what’s really there.


You’re blind to potential downsides and rationalize why something that’s not a fit, is really a fit and how it will all work out. In the process, you overestimate what you’re willing to actually work with (the hours, the work space, the commute, the culture’s attitude towards work and the people who work).

Using these approaches sets you up as someone just looking for an opportunity who sees others as always holding the key to that opportunity (if you manage to please them first …and fast).

What you really want is trust in your experience. Trust in the outcome. Trust in yourself.

Is this how you really want to teach yourself how to do that?

The good professional relationships, the ones you actually want don’t have strict social schemas. Do they? How do you continue to get those results consistently?

Easy:

Go through your contact list. Read the name. Close your eyes. Feel how that connection feels.

Pay attention to what’s there without trying to make yourself feel differently. Feel where there’s willingness and where there is resistance and the desire to override it with ungracious swiftness.

Now you know who you really want to meet. Pronto!

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