Behold the Stars

I had an interesting talk yesterday with Angela Loëb, author of  the new book What You Need To Know To Get A Job Now! and the blog Attitude and Longitude. Angela has some insightful ideas about finding the right job based on what she learned during her 16 years in human resources and recruiting. For those of you who are either looking for work or thinking about a career change, I encourage you to buy the book.

I was interested in something Angela calls the Attitude Shift Pattern, an approach for overcoming the negative labels we’ve placed on ourselves. For example, Phil, a middle-aged job seeker who is having trouble finding work, notices during an interview that most of the people in the office were younger than he was.  Later after being rejected by another company, he hears from a friend that the company had hired a younger candidate.  Phil puts two and two together and concludes that, “no one wants to hire me because of my age.” He becomes hyper-vigilant, watching for signs of ageism in every interview, and starts to doubt whether he’ll be able to get a job at all.  He now has labeled himself as “old in a world that doesn’t hire old.”

Phil’s obsession with the chink in his armor – age, in this case – has become   His defensiveness and insecurity create a negative energy that comes across in interviews, hurting his chances to get a job. In Angela’s terms, Phil is sabotaging himself by wearing an “invisible cloak” of ageism that limits his ability to present himself well.

Many of us have an “invisible cloak.” Maybe it’s not our age, but our education, or our weight, or our family. We take an area of our lives about which we feel insecure and selectively filter our world to “find” all evidence that the world is conspiring against us.  We then react to the world as if this were a universal truth by limiting our actions. Phil doesn’t apply for jobs with young managers. Mary doesn’t try to date because “men don’t like heavy women.”  Ben doesn’t try for a management position because he didn’t finish college.  Each of these people has selectively taken bits of information, some of which may not even be true, and built a reality around them.

This is where the The Attitude Shift Pattern comes in. Loëb found that many of her clients, stuck in a negative mindset, dragged themselves down until they hit some point of surrender at which they would say “The heck with it. Who cares about my age/weight/education?” It’s as if they realized that there was nothing they could do about their “weakness,” so they moved on despite it. That was the shift.

Suddenly, everything in their worlds would change. Opportunities would open up, interviews went better, and they’d find work. The point of surrender, of giving up, set them free from their self criticism and allowed them to function properly.

In a nutshell, Angela lays out the Attitude Shift Pattern this way:

No results? come up with something to blame ? develop a “chip on the shoulder” (negative attitude) ? still no results ? get to a point of desperation and surrender in some sort of fashion (shift) ? then lo & behold, opportunities start popping up (positive attitude).

~  Angela Loëb, Attitude and Longitude

It reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon in which two scientists in lab coats are standing in front of a chalk board. The left side of the board is filled with complex mathematical formulas, the right side is filled with complex mathematical formulas, and in the middle of the board are the words, “and then a miracle occurs.” One scientist is saying something like, “I like it, Johnson, but I have some problems with the middle part.” Of course, the hard part of the Attitude Shift Pattern is the middle part – the shift.

Angela’s experience was that the shift came spontaneously, a sort of “bottoming out.” But she believes that it isn’t necessary to hit bottom to make the shift. You can force a shift by taking deliberate, positive action: “For example, take advantage of a networking opportunity you’ve been resisting.  You can take a class to improve your skills set or finish your degree.  You can look into hiring yourself out as a consultant.”     In other words, act, do, risk.

You can also let go:  “…you could simply say “Que sera, sera” and open your mind to what will unfold.” To get what you want, you must find a way to get out of your own way, stop worrying about what others think, and trust that everything will be okay. As hard as it sounds now, when you’re caught in the negativity, you’ll find that it’s a much easier way to live.

So what’s the chip on your shoulder? Maybe it’s time for you to knock it off your own shoulder and throw it in the trash.  Once you’ve done that, you might check to see if there are other chips to dispose of.  You’ll be glad you did.

Make a great day.