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5 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Career Success

Written by Natalia

Image courtesy of adamr, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Even though we might think that we have everything under control, it is very likely that we make a few big mistakes and end up sabotaging our career success. This article by Avery Augustine, in The Daily Muse discusses the five most common mistakes and ways to avoid them.

“Your inbox is empty, your to-dos crossed off, and your weekly report is in your boss’ hands a day early. Let’s face it: You’re the picture of success.

But while your day-to-day work is under control, and it might seem like your career is on track, you may want to take a closer look. Because, as it turns out, it’s pretty easy to make a few big-picture mistakes that can derail your chances for success.

How do I know? Well, as you’re about to find out, I’ve put my career and myself at a disadvantage a few more times than I’d like to admit. So, learn from my professional missteps and make sure you’re not sabotaging your success by making any of these five common mistakes.”

Read the whole article here “5 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Career Success”

Ignore The Hidden Wisdom Of Your Body At Your Own Risk!

Written by The Career Success Doctor

The mind-body connection is a powerful one, but whether we’re thinking about Career Success, Loving Relationships or a Happy Life, we tend to neglect the inner wisdom of the body, which is in fact profound. This has been brought home to me powerfully in the last month or so thanks to my coaching Professional Development activities.

Typically, if you go to a coach or a counsellor because you need help with an issue, you’ll focus on your thoughts. There might be the odd question like ‘where do you feel that in your body’ but this is not the commonest approach. Coaching and counselling are generally mental approaches, focussing on thought patterns and emotions. There’s a lot of value in this, and it’s an approach which helps millions of people every year. But it does tend to ignore another of our personal wisdom sources: the body.

But this may be changing.

In the last month I’ve ‘accidentally’ attended two different sessions on the wisdom of the body. (Jung would call this synchronicity, I suppose). Through my work as a hypnotherapist, I’ve known for a long time about body-language – how thoughts like ‘my boss is a pain in the neck’ can literally transform into neck pain without the sufferer ever connecting the two. It really is worth paying attention to your own body language: the people and things which you say give you a bad feeling in some part of your body. Things that ‘stick in your throat’, give you a ‘pain in the butt’ (or anywhere else in your body). If you don’t believe that our thoughts have a direct impact on our body, have a read of Nobel-nominee Candace Pert’s book ‘The Molecules of Emotion‘ (with a foreword by Deepak Chopra) or Bruce Lipton’s ‘Biology of Belief‘.

What’s even more interesting is what happens when you start moving your body consciously and noticing where you feel discomfort. For example, let’s say you have problems being taking seriously at work. It’s a common problem for younger women in particular. How can you tap into the energy of gravitas and confidence? Think of a character from a film, book, novel, myth, fairy story or card pack like the Tarot, who embodies gravitas and confidence. Let’s say a Queen. Imagine you are that Queen. Start walking around the room like her. (Mercifully you can do this in the privacy of your own home!)

Start with the stance. How does your Queen stand and hold her head? Stand like that. How does she breathe – where in the body, how quickly? Breathe like that. How does she move (walk, move arms, head and so forth). Move like that. You may well have done an exercise like this before.

Now notice what aspects of this Queenly behaviour you find uncomfortable. Why are they uncomfortable? Is it because they are unfamiliar? Or because they somehow go against your beliefs of how a woman of gravitas and confidence would behave? How is your daily behaviour in line with, or at odds with, this Queenly behaviour? Write down any insights this exercise gives you.

Doing this exercise at a recent coaching conference really took me out of my comfort zone and gave me some fascinating insights – and I always thought I knew about mind-body wisdom and consciousness. Highly recommended!

And finally, here is a link to the article on emotions stored in the body as pain that promoted this blog piece. It’s actually aimed at men, but it has real relevance for us women too.

Ill be posting a video in the next week or so to showing you the exercise I just described, so watch this space.

What Does Your Personal Brand Have To Do With Career Success?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

The term ‘Personal Brand‘ doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means, but it is certainly important for career success. I used to think ‘Personal Brand’ was all about visual image, but in fact there’s a lot more too it than that. I also used to think that having a PB meant I had to use exactly the same photo of myself everywhere. Some personal branding experts do claim this is true, but I’ve found a little variation actually works fine. After all, we are all of us complex people with more than one face. If I want people to get a sense of the real me, then different photos will give them a much better of idea of what I am like.

First, a little story…

Late last week a friend texted me with a special last minute offer: to go for a photo pamper. £30 for a manicure, makeup done, hair done and a photo done by a professional photographer. Ah yes, and wine and nibbles thrown it. Seemed a cracking idea for a Friday afternoon, so I signed up with alacrity.

We had to take several outfits to be photographed in, and it’s extraordinary how different each one felt in front of the camera. Once we had been made over, we trouped in and out of the studio, into the changing room, quick slurp of wine, back in for more poses, different backgrounds and different seating arrangement. Then a wine-fortified wait while the photos were uploaded for our viewing and selection.

We knew we would be sold additional photos, and we were, but it was so nicely done, and the photos were so good, it was worth it. And they gave us more wine to facilitate the selection process.

It was fun, it was social, and the results were very pleasing. (I’ve included a few here so you can judge for yourself)

And I decided to count it as my weekly Creative Date (which I am doing as I follow Julia Cameron’s ideas for opening up the creative juices – see my post last week on Creative Dates and Creativity).

Anyway, back to personal branding.

I now have some cracking, recent photos I can use. Working for myself, I don’t need to look formal and staid. They are not qualities which people normally use to describe me anyway, and many of the photos I have had done in the past didn’t feel true for me because they didn’t show my fun side. They felt inauthentic, or as one friend said ‘creepy’.

Authenticity is a key part of your Personal Brand

If your Personal Brand isn’t authentic, if it doesn’t ring true for you, it won’t last. Business Week recently published an article on the Personal Brand which made this very point. Being inauthentic drains your energy, because it’s hard work. The Business Week article also talked about ‘sharing yourself’ – making your gifts and expertise available to other people. I think this is a particularly important point for women. We do tend to hide our lights under the proverbial bushel, and one way of shining without seeming to boast is to show your talents in the service of others, so they can boast on your behalf. This then becomes part of your Personal Brand.

At the same time, you have to balance the need for authenticity against the culture and style of the organisation. In the long term, if there is a real mis-match between the two, you probably won’t enjoy working there. We get the greatest enjoyment at work when the organisation’s values are aligned with our own – something I wrote about in an article published recently in Changing Careers. If the organisational dress code (implicit or explicit) is a dark suit and shirt, and these either don’t suit you, or don’t feel right, then you will need to be in a very powerful position to get away with anything less than a dark suit and shirt. If the organisation says its values are honesty and customer service, but they lie to customers and outsourced the customer service to a very cheap, rather poor call centre in the Far East years ago, you have to question whether this is the right working environment for you.

When you make living by your personal values a part of your Personal Brand, things start to flow. When you give up your own values for the sake of someone or something else, things become more of a struggle. Work feels like effort. The career feels like a weight upon your shoulders.

How To Find The Personal Brand That Supports Career Success

In my opinion there are two aspects to your Personal Brand: visual and behavioural. One way of dealing with the visual side is to go see an image consultant – someone like Sam Bell at Pixie Bell http://pixie-belle.co.uk A lot of image consultants focus on what they know from the book, without considering the inner you which wants to shine through, so if you do see an image consultant, which is well worth the money, then make sure they think about who you are, not just what the books say you should be.

The behavioural side is rather different. You need to go internal – spend some time thinking about who you are and what you stand for. Consider your talents and expertise, your dreams, and what it is that you love in life. How would you describe yourself? How do others describe you? Who are your role models, and why? What do you like to read, to do with your spare time, if you have any – and if you don’t have any how two you feel about that? The best way to do this is ask yourself the questions and write down the answers. Although my ebook, How To Have A Career That Really Works For You wasn’t written with personal branding in mind, it actually gives you the questions you need to answer, with worksheets and exercises for you to follow.

December is a great time to do this thinking. The days are growing shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly if you live in Northern Europe or Canada, and we naturally turn in towards hearth and home, as we prepare for the year to turn. Why not take the time now to decide how you want people to see you, feel about you and experience you, so that you start 2014 knowing exactly what it is you want to tell the world about yourself?

And if you need help with identifying your personal brand, feel free to get in touch.

Do We Women Sabotage Our Own Career Success?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Mindset is so critical for career success, and it’s one of the ways that we successfully sabotage ourselves! I came across this article, Career Talk For Women, on a site called Post-Journal, which discusses this in some depth. As the author, ELIZABETH P. CIPOLLA, says:

‘It’s no secret that the world needs more women who are shamelessly confident in their ability to serve as role models and change agents. Our region (New York) is no exception. This month will focus upon the self-imposed handcuffs that can hold us back from making our mark as a competent leader if we aren’t quick to intervene.’

I love that phrase, ‘self-imposed handcuffs’. It describes the way we sabotage ourselves so well! You can read the rest of the article here.

Are You Too Old To Be An Entrepreneur (by Neil Asher)

Written by The Career Success Doctor

One of the options for anyone wanting to change career is to be an entrepreneur. One of the things that stops people from even thinking about becoming an entrepreneur is the idea that it’s a young person’s game, that anyone over 30 has no chance. A couple of weeks ago I was at an internet marketing seminar where I swear the average age was about 60. They clearly thought you could become an entrepreneur later on in life.

Yesterday, this great email arrived in my inbox from one of my mentors, Neil Asher. Neil has a Digital Marketing Agency, called RoarLocal. They do an amazing job on the digital marketing front, with a powerful command of the best ways to attract traffic and sell your wares, and if you’re looking for help in that department, they are well worth talking to, or at least following. Neil is a living, breathing, example of career success as an entrepreneur. He has spent a lot of time studying what works in business, both in terms of practical strategies and mindset. This one is all about mindset.

So let’s hear it from Mr Asher. It’s a great read.

“Last week I turned 42

As usual I spent the day with family and friends  and lay awake at night contemplating life and my  place in it.

This habitual philosophising has become a  hallmark of my birthdays and I’ve found it an  interesting intellectual exercise.

This time however I got to thinking about getting  older and being an entrepreneur as I age.

I know many of my friends who work in jobs have  thought about breaking free and starting their  own business and so I thought I’d share some  insights into slaying the “I’m too old to start a  business” dragon that lurks in us all.

First up, for many of us (myself included) the first thing we’ll try is rational thought, we’ll try and  reason with ourselves.

Just know that this will NEVER work…

Shrinks spend years with patients trying to get them to be more rational about their lives  with little effect.

Instead, know that the super ego inside your head is the scolding parent’s voice, or the dark  asshole living inside you who refuses to allow you to claim victory for anything (or to ever feel pretty, or competent, or anything above the pure shame  of being a flawed, horrible person).

That’s the voice that rises in volume late at night  and during times of self doubt… and yes, it really  is trying to crush your spirit.

Nobody truly understands why our “brain  software” has this quirk in it. Sociopaths don’t  have it, which is how they rise so quickly to  powerful positions in business, politics and life.

They’re operating with shameless (and often  ethical-less) efficiency, while the good people  around them struggle with feelings of inadequacy  and shame.

You can’t “think” your way around this voice. You  gotta just roll up your sleeves and deal with it like  you would a home invader — with viciousness  and ruthless counter-moves.

Step One: Identify the voice, separate it from the  other random chatter in your head, and give it  form — I imagine mine as a snake in a suit, a truly  despicable creature who’s just trying to ruin  things. Giving the voice a “shape” makes it easier  for the following steps.

Step Two: Confront the little bastard. This is a  Jungian tactic for nightmares (“turn and face  what’s chasing you”) that understands how our  fears shrivel under close inspection. Turn to your  invading snake (or whatever form you’ve made  the voice into) and say, quote: “Shut the fuck up!”  In your mind’s eye, move into the snake’s space  and back the little creep up into the wall.

Step Three: Now imagine either a closed door or  a big soundproof box. Force Mr Snake into it, and  lock it up. Don’t even imagine a muffled sound  coming out — he’s completely locked away, out  of sight and mind.

Step Four: Get on with your pursuit of specific  goals.

Sounds too simple to work, doesn’t it. Get over  your doubts — this is professional-level brain  management. (And yes, it works with nightmares,  too.)

You won’t banish your fears forever — they’ll get  out and try to slip into the conversation again  tomorrow, or even an hour later. Doesn’t matter  — you simply go through the process again. And again. And again, as many times as you  need to until his absences get longer and his  reappearances more brief.

It’s just a voice. A nasty voice that knows how to  wound you, but plays no proactive role in your  pursuit of a good life.

You do not “risk” any damage to yourself  whatsoever by doing all this. You won’t turn into a  sociopath (and you wouldn’t even need to know  about this process if you were one already, as  you wouldn’t even HAVE Mr Snake hanging  around in the first place).

He’s not performing some secret vital function for you — he’s pure non-essential crap, like crumbs  in your keyboard that play no positive role, yet  show up frequently (especially if you eat at your  desk, like most entrepreneurs do), and just need  to be pounded out of the keys occasionally so  you can get back to your work without the keys sticking.

I give you permission to use this tactic  immediately. It works every time. You may need  to get good at it, and Mr Snake may be better  than you at escaping right now, but you can  overcome that with a dedicated effort.

Good luck.

Oh, and the idea that there is some sort of  benchmark age you should quit trying to become  an entrepreneur is nonsense. Only in the rise of  Hollywood over the last century has the idea that being young is essential to being creative taken  hold. It’s bullshit. Older and wiser beats younger  and dumber every time. The ONLY thing youth  wins at is stuff that requires quick physical recovery or lack of regular sleep.

Extra Tip: Sleep is your friend. When I get sleep  deprived, I feel actual depression coming on. A quick nap obliterates it… which means the “down”  feeling was nothing more than my internal system  feeling drained. Sleep conquers almost all the ills  short of serious sickness.

Now get out and enjoy your weekend!

Neil”

If you want to know more about how to have a career success mindset,

check out my ebook, How To Have A Career That Really Works For You.

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