Job Hunting? Turn Down the Volume on Negative News

March 28, 2009

Pushing aside our negatives, gives our positive side a chance to shine.

Two weeks ago we met Carol, a bright, determined woman who just recently celebrated her 30^th birthday and has been busy going on job interviews since getting let go from her position as a project manager for a financial services firm.

Since losing her job last November she has been on 37 job interviews and has been called back for a second interview 13 times. When we last saw Carol she was getting ready for another interview determined to bring a new attitude to the process.

Carol realized that after 15 weeks of job interviewing, she was becoming increasingly negative about her prospects and she needed to shake things up. So Carol went to an employment-counseling firm and got some very good advice about body language and making sure that she ended each interview with a strong pitch to her potential employer.

Beyond that Carol had come to realize that her negative feelings were holding her down. In our March 14 story about Carol we talked about a lesson that John Gray shares in his book, How to Get What You Want at Work; negative emotions can throw you completely off balance.

John explains that negative emotions often cause us to lose our balance similar to the feeling we get when we move off center while riding a bike. Instinctively we tilt the handlebars to counter that imbalance and bring ourselves back to center.

Carol’s negative emotions kept her off balance and therefore not bringing her best self to the interview process regardless of the sincere desire she had to connect with another good job.

But her change of attitude did not bring immediate results. As we promised in our first story on Carol to bring you the results of that next interview, this is what happened: she was invited back and was told that she was one of two finalists, but she did not get the job.

So Carol stayed at it and looked for what else was in her life that could be creating negative emotions and holding her back from presenting the positive person she knows that she was just four months ago.

“Then it hit me,” Carol says, “all day long at home as I would troll the Internet, network with friends and colleagues, and hunt down leads, I had cable news playing in the background.”

The drone of that steady negative drumbeat she decided was pulling her back into feeling many negative emotions about her own situation. “At first,” she says, “I thought that could not possibly be the case, but then I started to pay greater attention to what I was hearing.”

Carol realized it was a steady diet of negative news. Unemployment up, businesses closing, people telling sad stories morning, noon, and night.

“I thought,” Carol explains, “suppose I was a little nervous about flying, and the day before I left on a long trip I sat down to watch a special documentary called The Worst Aviation Disasters of All Time. There’s no way I’m going to get on an airplane after that. Well I know it’s bad out there, but to listen to these cable news networks you would think that things are never going to get better.”

Carol knew that could not be true because every time she went on an interview she stepped into another world where people were busy doing all the things you need to do to keep a company moving forward.

With this recognition, a new attitude, and taking some time in the hours before an interview to do some focused meditation on her intention to have a positive outcome, Carol went on another three job interviews, and on the third try of what she calls, “the new me.” Carol was hired as a project manager for a quality assurance unit of a local utility.

“I’m very happy and very excited about this new position,” Carol says. “This process I went through was of course difficult, but at the same time a real learning experience. Negative emotions are a ticket to someplace other than where you want to go. If you want to see your future you have to turn down the gloom and turn up the hope.”

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Other MarsVenusLiving.com  Workplace Articles

Pedaling Your Way to a Fresh Start

Giving and Receiving Support in the Workplace

Office Romances: An Unexpected Fringe Benefit

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Mars and Venus in the Workplace

and How to Get What You Want at Work

Posted in Career