What do I want?

What is fulfilling to me?

Where am I choosing to focus?

Remember this — at times when you feel like you have no choice or like you’re being forced to do something, you’ve lost touch with your own personal power. Find your way back.

Here are a few suggestions.

• Ask yourself…who or what can I appreciate right now?
• Ask yourself…who appreciates me?
• Ask yourself…what am I thankful for?
• Think of something nice someone did for you.
• Think about a time when you felt powerful and let your body and your mind feel it.
• Be appreciative of how far you’ve come.

Its not easy to let go of the way you’ve been thinking but if you want different results its worth the effort. Often changing your own outlook and attitude makes all the difference…much more is good than is not good…keep your mind on the good.

Nothing puts your self-esteem on the line faster than a job search. You face rejection and self-doubt daily. It takes a good deal of internal motivation to keep moving at all, much less to keep the correct frame of mind needed to win interviews.

A single day of beggar mentality (“Please, somebody give me a job.”) is a whole day wasted. One interview done with self-doubt could mean losing the opportunity of a lifetime. Hiring-decision-makers hire positive, cheerful, high-self-esteem people who are confident (but not arrogant) about their value.

Your motivation must be jealously guarded, protected, renewed, and nourished when you are job hunting. Take some steps to eliminate self-doubt:

• Take special care to ensure your proper motivation.

• Periodically ground yourself with your value by reading your resume and remembering your successes.

• Schedule a weekly contact with culture—a play, an inspirational movie, a work of art—as a reminder that whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

• Avoid negative newspaper stories, TV news, sitcoms, and negative people. People tend to come away with a general depiction of life as boring, tragic, and inane. This is something you cannot afford while job hunting. Do keep up-to-date on important news, particularly developments in business that may alert you to opportunities and help you present yourself as an informed candidate while networking.

• Use motivational tapes and books as well as nurturing times with spouse and friends.

• Attend networking groups, but only the ones that create a positive mental attitude. If you feel burdened, flat, etc. after a network meeting then you’ve just attended a “Pity Party.”

Feeling a little stress is a normal part of the working day but when stress gets to be too much it can affect your judgment causing you to make rash decisions. Or, it can affect you physically causing tension in your muscles, increased heart rate, or aches and pains.

The key is to keep stress at a manageable level. One way to do this is with a simple breathing exercise.

• Sit still in a relaxed position with your back straight.

• Clear your mind as much as possible.

• Breathe in slowly, for a deep breath.

• Hold, but only as long as is comfortable.

• Breathe out slowly.

• Hold.

• Breathe in.

• Hold.

• Breathe out.

• Hold.

Repeat as necessary. Take a few seconds here and there and use this simple breathing exercise on a regular basis to help lower your stress level.

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” –Etty Hillesum

We all face some amount of stress in our lives. Some stress is caused by situations beyond our control, making it all the more important to do what we can to reduce stress in the circumstances we do control.

One thing within our control is our level of organization.

While on the face of it, organization may seem to have little to do with stress levels, a lack of organization will prove otherwise in a stressful situation.

If you’re under pressure to find an item in a stressful situation, imagine how much more stressed you will become when you cannot locate it.

As you shuffle through papers, folders and drawers, your frantic searching may cause further disorganization, setting the stage for a later repeat of the situation. If instead, you can quickly locate what you need when you need it, your stress levels will be lower than they might otherwise be.

Naturally, the first step is to do a thorough cleaning, eliminating clutter and organizing everything that is needed.

• Make sure you organize everything in a manner that makes sense for you, using a system you will remember and stick with.

• Once you get organized, stay organized.

• Each day, set aside a few minutes to get your work area back in order.

Ideally and when practical, follow a pattern where you handle each item only once. For example, when you get a new document or piece of mail, read it and then act on it, file it or recycle it. Eliminate the “I’ll do it later” items as much as possible. Too often, later never comes because of other more pressing needs. Additionally, you won’t suffer the stress of seeing a growing stack of “I’ll do it later” items sitting on your desk. You can better focus on the job at hand rather than being frustrated by the amount of work left to do.

Being better organized will not eliminate stress, but it can help keep it at reduced levels. Plus, it makes for a better and easier workplace, so there is no downside. Get organized and reap the benefits of increasing your productivity and reducing your stress level.

Often changing your own outlook and attitude makes all the difference…much more is good than is not good…keep your mind on the good.

There’s a difficult time between where you are now and where you want to be that must be managed when you are changing careers. One thing that helps is to focus more on what you want next rather than what you don’t like about where you are currently because that makes the current day-to-day very difficult and keeps a negative vibe going in you. So during times of change, its important to focus on the excitement of what is coming but with an ability to be appreciative of where you are now and how far you’ve come.

• Ever notice that often you’re trained to do tasks that aren’t on the job description?

• It seems that often one only gets “meets expectations” for doing what is outlined in the job description on annual reviews.

• One thing that is kind of neat is that often the highest praise and potential for advancement comes when taking charge of something that is not on the job description.

Morale of the story: Don’t take a job description too literally —and use that to your advantage to customize a job to best match your strengths.

You have to control your focus to be happy…in fact it is the only thing you do have control of. You can’t control others or at-the-moment situations you find yourself in but you can control what you think about and give your attention to.

You probably feel pretty aware of how easy it is for an employer to find someone else who will take the job. But you are selling yourself short if you assume that is their attitude and you don’t even ask.

They key to remember to is they probably don’t want to hire just anyone. They are looking for they best they can get. So, do your research and ask. If you don’t ask, you already have your answer…its no!

There is also the matter of acting with respect throughout the negotiation process as you did through the hiring process. Don’t take it personal that they will try to hire at the most advantageous pay rate for them. Of course, you will work to help understand that they get what they pay for…this is your leverage.

Remember this too: the wage you accept will impact your attitude on the job. It will either be in a positive way or a negative way. The salary you accept now determines the raises you will get later because raises are based on percentages usually.

All that being said to help you see the importance of negotiating, here are some techniques you may want to consider.

• It is important to buy time when a number is thrown out there. Pausing for just a few seconds when a number is mentioned can give the impression that they will have to come up on something so you can meet in the middle. It could be money, time, or perks that they come up with but something more. They say a number and you pause as you are considering your response. Sometimes those few seconds can make you thousands of dollars! If not now then certainly as you work for them years and each future raised is based on what you accept at the start.

• You also buy time when negotiations are closing for the day. You sum up what they are offering and say, “I will sleep on it and speak with you tomorrow if that sounds okay with you.” Or you may sum it all up and say (as long as it is true), “I expect another offer to come in soon, when is the latest I can get back to you? Can I reply by Friday, does that sound acceptable?”

• Sometimes you do have to say “no” to an offer if you feel they are just too low and it will affect your attitude and work ethic to accept. There is power in walking away if they refuse meet your needs and you feel you can get your needs met elsewhere.

• One technique to use is to say something like this, “after careful consideration, I must decline your job offer. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me and please do call if the budget changes.” That way you give them room to come up to your expectations if they are really pained to see you walk away.