When the job market is difficult to break into, what is that one can do?
Would you agree with the statement that everything is an opportunity?
Karen du Four des Champs is an Executive, Leadership, Intercultural and Mindfulness Coach who believes it is all about how we look at it.
She asked, there are economic challenges so how do we rescale, upscale and cross scale?
“I think we really need to work with mental fitness because mental fitness is getting the brain ready to be open with a growth mindset,” Karen said.
Instead of thinking of doom and gloom and sulking about not getting an interview or not getting a job or worry about the hundreds of people who have applied for jobs one could go into a growth mindset by asking, “Okay, what did I learn from this? What was the gift or the opportunity that has been gained?”
“We have to shift our perspective,” Karen pointed out. It was learning more about Positive Intelligence that led her deeper into the concept of growth mindset. The positive Intelligence Programme grows three mental fitness muscles as explained by the author of the book, Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine. Positive Intelligence is defined as a measure of Mental Fitness, indicating how quickly one recovers from negative to positive responses to challenges.
“There are two regions in our brain - we have the survival side, where we are on the fright or flight mode and it causes us anxiety, guilt and unhappiness. Then we have the striving part of the brain where our wisdom, creativity come and we are calm and take action,” she explained.
According to Karen, the survival region tells us we are not good enough, this is not good and this is where our saboteurs are. There are times when we doubt ourselves and wonder who we are to do this?”
She explained further on the other region of the brain - the sage region makes you less stressed.
Shifting perspective is not an easy process.
“It is difficult,” Karen agreed. But what can help is practising mindfulness.
“Pause, take a deep breath, reflect, do mindfulness practice. It is called Positive Intelligent Quotient to build the thriving part of the brain. To develop a growth mindset you need to take time to think, write and reflect.”
When one does not get a positive feedback after a job interview, what do you feel?
“Do you feel you are the best candidate and the right one for the job? And you are wondering why you did not get the job? I would ask, what is the 10-per cent truth to that feedback? There must be some truth. We have to ask ourselves - what is the learning here?”
We can overcome any challenge, we just have to look at their perspective. She suggested someone else should be asked for their perspective because one can be so stuck with their own perspective.
The question is when we focus so much on physical fitness by taking classes to learn football, train for running and cycling and know the benefits of physical fitness, how often do we talk about mental fitness? It is about building part of our brains so we are more mentally fit to recover quickly from setbacks.
The successful bounce back quickly from setback because they have been working on the thriving region of the brain. It is a life-long practice.
“Practising meditation, mindfulness, power breaks are all part of a discipline one must do every day,” Karen advised.
She said, “Ask questions like, what did I do today? Where did I trip? How quickly did I recover? When you journal it, you can go back and look at how you have improved over the months.”
@lakshmioman
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