Personal Growth Is Important for your Career

When you are seeking to change your career or find that career, you are changing your life. This may seem like a common life change to you and to anyone who has grown up in a capitalist society.

But it’s anything but common. It’s unique to everyone. It is a growing experience.  We are here to tell you that personal growth in your career takes shape during the application process. Learning why will give you new powers you may not have taken the time to consider.

Personal Growth is not always for the Better

Like every Personal Growth experience, the steps to accepting a job are filled with highs and lows. In these moments, high or low, you react. Your reaction is led by your emotional response. That is almost never a good thing.  An emotional response to highs and lows in your career search can be misleading.

Learning how to take control of your emotions during your search process will give you advantages that others who ride their emotional waves don’t have.

A Reset for Personal Growth

See your career search as an opportunity for personal growth. Don’t fall for the classic cliché “Think Positively”. It’s a shallow statement you might find in a movie or a bumper sticker. It doesn’t explain on its own what the action steps to positive thinking need to be.

For that we draw from the writings of Marcus Aurelius.  As an aging Roman Emperor, he wrote a fascinating series of “journal entries” which have been assembled called “Meditations.” (this is not an affiliate link, click away).

“The quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our lives. We should always strive to improve ourselves and our actions.”

Sometimes emperors get it right. We wish that we had this discipline when we were beginning our careers. But it just seemed so stressful and upsetting at the time. You may know where we come from. We think it’s far worse now. What with everyone clicking to apply 50x a day, you could rack up 250 negative responses to your application every week for a long time.

No real person can “Think Positively” under that kind of strain. The process can really be an emotional one.

Personal growth takes more than positive thought.

It takes resilience built on careful thought, reflection, and inquiry. Achieve this and you’ll have achieved personal growth.

Here are a few ways to think about your emotions as they affect your Personal Growth.

We are not going to give you a list. You’ll need to continue reading and think clearly and calmly about your career search experiences and how you have reacted to them emotionally.

Each time you receive an automated email stating you were not selected for the job or an interview for the job it is normal to feel a wince of hurt. You put yourself out there and you were declined by a company.

Maybe you react with anger. Anger is a habit. Each time you become angry or feel anger, you are reinforcing the habit. Recognize this.

Next time you receive an automated “declined” notice, pause and think about it.  Do not react. Take a moment to think about what causes your emotional reaction. Is it a pain from rejection?

Look, we are not here to tell you how to feel or why you feel that way. Those things are yours alone to know.

We are here to tell you that a better way to look at your “decline” letters is to see them as what they are. People on the other side of your application who rely on technology to make their decisions for them. That’s frankly embarrassing for them. It’s not a reasonable way to review people or to hire people. More times than not, the fault lies with them, not with you.

But this doesn’t help you get the job. Agreed. That’s not the purpose of this article. We have other articles and services for this.

Remember, we are trying to learn how to control our emotional response so that when we do get that great career opportunity, we are in a better position to manage our careers thoughtfully. The ability to control your emotions in the business world is a massive competitive advantage.

Final thoughts on Personal Growth and your emotions.

We are not saying do not have passion for your work or career.

We are not saying you won’t have disappointments, large and small, during your career.

But being led by your emotions in business never works for long. To do this you need to begin practicing their control now. You may feel like your stress levels during job searches is high. But, it is not even close to the stress levels you’ll feel when your best performance and decisions result in business set-backs.

If we had one piece of advice to offer you, it is this: When something happens that disappoints you, get into the habit of pausing and thinking about what has created that disappointment. Inquire as to whether the outcome is a result of the system or your approach. Ask yourself how the result has contributted to your growth. Then get on with your day, your week, your career.

Not only will you have controlled your emotions, which is powerful. You’ll be in a far better position to consider how you will approach your next project and to learn from your experience.

Learning is the real goal. You need to control your emotions first to get there. None of this is easy.

Start by learning to pause. As simple as it seems, learning to pause is a great first step in your personal growth.