Motivation Is An Internal Fire That Can Be Stoked By Mindfulness, And It Can Definitely Help You In Your Career
Mindfulness can simultaneously serve the dual functions of helping people to be content with their current state, while also priming personal energy reserves that can increase motivation. Both of these functions can help you with where you are now in your career, and with moving towards where you want to be. Keeping motivation high is key during a job search, too.
Mindfulness practices can give the mind and body a needed break from everyday stressors, worries, and obligations. This can, in turn, help individuals to focus better and longer on the next task at hand. So, to help you get started on embracing mindfulness for the sake of its many benefits, and for what it can offer to your career, here are five strategies and practices that can help you stay motivated during a job search and career development.
Meditation for discovering yourself and your passions
At some point, most people become aware, to varying degrees, of meditation. Its popularity may ebb and flow over the years, but these days most people are familiar with the concept and some of the touted benefits. At its core, meditation can somewhat be summarized as the practice of watching and then releasing thoughts, without judgment. Meditation can then reveal to the practitioner not only their ability to have non-attachment towards their own thoughts, but also who one really is beyond the thoughts. Meditation can also show what thoughts jump out as most important to the individual. It’s those thoughts that reveal themselves as most important that can be pursued outside of meditation practice, to drive meaningful personal motivation in career prep, career development, and even job searches.
Visualization techniques for mood and motivation boosting
Visualization is another mindfulness technique, where the individual chooses the formation of a mental image to hold in one’s proverbial mind’s eye. Visualizing desired outcomes in your career or job search, and positive influences and situations, not only boosts mood in the moment, but it can boost motivation. This can help job seekers to strive towards making the visualized situation an actual reality.
Sentence completion can be a powerful affirmation cue for motivation
Setting aside time to focus on writing as many answers as you can, to a list of prompted and meaningful statements, can yield powerful and surprising results that will support you in where you want to go with your career. The key to this mindfulness practice is not to think too much about the sentence completions, but to let them rise up from within you spontaneously. Examples of the types of sentences that might be helpful in this practice include:
· I am hoping for…
· I least desire…
· I am most comfortable when…
· I am most excited by…
· My greatest strength is…
· I feel most at a loss when…
· I feel most accomplished by…
If you feel you need more guidance in an exercise like this, seeking out the help of a coach can add a lot of expansion to the mindfulness practice.
Acceptance of the moment and all that it entails
Carving out time during the day on a regular basis to explore where you are, how you are feeling, and all the sensory perceptions of that present moment (whatever they might be) can lead to startling personal discoveries. You might find that there are things you tend to tolerate in a current job that make you feel profoundly unhappy. You might also inversely find that when you stop for a moment, you are actually more contented with your work and career than you realized and have a lot for which to be grateful. Whatever the case, getting in touch with the reality of the present moment can motivate you to take the next steps in career development and a job search.
Embracing the concept of beginner’s mind
This is a mindfulness strategy and practice that can be tough to apply day to day. But, trying to approach tasks with the view of a beginner (even if you are more experienced than that) can lead to new ways of seeing tasks that are often taken for granted. This can open up new work concepts, job experiences, and avenues of career transformation. All of that can greatly enhance personal and professional motivation. Another off-shoot of this practice is to purposefully take on entirely new tasks at your job, for which you are indeed a total novice. This can grow one’s personal curiosity, and out of curiosity comes a natural sort of motivation, which can be professional, too.
The benefits of mindfulness strategies and practices are often cited in studies to include general stress reduction, fewer sick days, greater levels of creativity, increased personal resilience, and enhanced motivation. So, if there are times where you find your own sense of motivation lacking, then why not try a mindfulness strategy or two… and see if those strategies can stoke the internal fire that helps you keep going? You never know where that next career step or job search might lead. And, isn’t that exciting?...
Be sure to check out the Stride Insights article, Staying Social During Digital Times, for further reading.
And, to find out more about Stride Career Prep’s online programs, visit the site: https://www.stridelearning.com/career-prep.html