Secret Skills that Build Confidence and Engagement for Your Work…

Continuing on in our countdown of 10 Secret Skills that build confidence and engagement for your work…

 

Remember, they are a countdown because these are a progressive set of skills that can be developed and practiced in your daily work to connect you to a more vivid sense of personal power – of confidence that what you do makes a difference for others.

 

As we practice these skills we not only build our confidence, we simultaneously quiet the noise (the self-sabotaging comments) that produces naturally from our brains/ego in response to anything that is expressed from our spirit – our higher self.

 

So let’s get on with the countdown of  “Secret Skills” – and practice, practice, practice away at them!  Here’s #4 and #3…

 

Secret Skill #4 – You love your work

 

This is a skill?  YES!  How often do you hear people profess their love for their work?  (At least), “Sometimes” is hopefully your answer.  Now think about how it makes you feel to be in the presence of someone who loves their work (even if you are not a customer of their work at all) – pretty friggin’ great – right?  It’s intriguing – you may want to know more – not about what they do necessarily – but about how on Earth did they get to a place in their life when they could actually love their work?  You might skip that question to them and instead just submit to your story about them that might sound something like this – “Oh, they are one of those people who was born that way – they were blessed in the womb with knowing what they wanted to do and they had all the resources and support in the world available to them to pursue it and now they are living happily ever after.”

 

Love for your work is not as simple as you may think it is.

 

First let’s discuss the word “love”.  It’s not “love” in a soap-opera romantic sense or as in the opposite of “hate”.  It means a feeling that is achieved not by any outside influences.  It is an internal commitment to serve others in a certain way despite any conditions – negative or positive.  It is stable, committed, and unconditional in it’s performance.  It’s work performed day in and day out with it’s head/intellect bowed and relaxed – submitted toward it’s chest/heart and simultaneously it’s chest/heart rises to it’s head/intellect.

 

Second let’s discuss the phrase “your work”.  Your work is not your job – as I explained in my last blog…

 

Operating from ego is a state of being that requires effort in order to get something you want for yourself.  Operating from spirit is a state of being that requires seemingly no effort in order to enable a benefit for another.  Quieting your will/ego enables your spirit to be the filter through which you perform your daily tasks – that is doing “your work”.  Doing “your work” enables you to easily experience fulfillment.  When ego is the filter through which you perform your daily tasks you are (at best) doing “your job”.  Doing “your job” is often not enough to sustain an experience of fulfillment – or happiness.  

 

Your work is to hold an intention for another – the hope of a virtuous outcome that can only be fully felt by giving them a state of being – an attitude – that uplifts another and enables them easier access to feeling the potential value the completed task you performed can enable in their life.  Your work transcends your job as a whole, and as its individual predictable and unpredictable tasks that come unendingly – one after another – through a barrage of people who may appear demanding, antagonistic, self-preserving, despondent, apathetic, or even downright evil or miserable.

 

Your work is to discover and hold an intention you have for those you serve – whether it is easy or hard to do so because of your job conditions.  Your work performs job-enabling tasks which expand beyond job-expected tasks – it performs outside the scope of “that’s not my job”.   How many times have you uttered the words (to yourself or out loud) “that’s not my job!”  Focus on what is in and what is outside your job responsibilities creates a barrier to doing “your work” and it blocks access to feeling engaged in and fulfilled by “your work”.

 

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Here are a few examples of operating from loving your work.  As you will see – it is a skill that must be practiced to be mastered…

 

• Operating from loving your work transcends putting more weight in discovering source of problems and instead puts more weight in giving balance to what is – to nurturing people and situations back to balance and “health”.  When we practice operating from this perspective, we come to experience that the underlying sources of problems will naturally work themselves out.
• Operating from love for your work sees the whole and does not pass judgment or condemn for a particular that seems off balance/out of whack.
• Loving your work finds relatedness with those they serve/interact with and that leads to a natural empathy in delivery.  Empathy provides endless fuel to go above and beyond the restrictions of a job.
• Operating from love for your work is focused on what is good for the situation at hand (what is good for the company, the mission, a “customer-profile”, etc.) and it will sacrifice self-interest for a greater good.  It sees itself as part of that greater good – not as an individual navigating to or surviving until it’s next paycheck, promotion, salary increase, compliment from the boss, vacation, etc.

 

What opportunity do you have to practice operating from a place of love for your work (despite a job you may hate)?

 

 

Secret Skill #3 – You can hold a positive attitude even in adverse situations

 

Having a sense of humor and being able to laugh and make others laugh is a skill we can all agree on – not everyone can make others laugh and forget their worries even if only for a moment.  If you have that ability – it is absolutely to your benefit to talk about that on a job interview.  But practicing a positive attitude goes far beyond humor…

 

The truth is we all experience moments of anger, envy, fear, grief, despair, guilt, shame, etc.  But how quickly we can overcome those thoughts and emotions and bounce back to a place of siding not just with hopefulness (a belief that something good could happen – no matter how bleak a situation may seem),  but with downright joy – is a skill!

 

You might be thinking:  “How can you develop that?  You are either a happy person by nature or not.”  True some people just seem to be born happy – we all have witnessed people who seem to have a smile on their face all the time – for no reason.  They seem to be people one of my mentors Marci Shimoff describes as Happy for No Reason (she actually wrote a whole book about this which includes the scientific evidence of how we can become Happy for No Reason too – even if you see yourself as a depressed person).

 

Here a few ways to start developing a positive attitude – especially in adverse situations.  Many of these ideas are compliments of Shawn Achor – happiness researcher, author, and speaker known for his advocacy of positive psychology:

 

• Find the gift of every situation.
• Start every day with naming 3 things you are grateful for.
• End every day with telling someone something that happened to you that you appreciated, or a kindness that you witnessed.
• Commit to a fitness routine.
• Acknowledge someone every day for something they did that made a difference for you.
• Practice trust that opportunity is around you – even if you can’t yet see what it is.

 

This skill when practiced gives way to a realization that the more you practice being positive, the easier it is to merely be positive and happy – no matter what is happening around you.  Practicing that is not only a skill but an activity that actually can change your brain.  It can replace what was once a dirt path with a superhighway to the area of our brains that regulates how happy we feel.  In Marci’s book she quotes brain researcher Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin who said “Based on what we know f the plasticity of the brain, we can think of things like happiness and compassion as skills that are no different from learning to play a musical instrument or tennis . . . it is possible to train our brains to be happy.”

 

Common by-products of practicing positivity include:

• patience
• compassion
• peace
• effortless accomplishment – an experience of what seems like daily miracles
• a connection with a higher source of energy than anything you can generate on your own
• a desire to impact a better way of life rather than just individuals in particular situations through your job

 

What can you do to practice positivity at your job?

 

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Develop 2-3 examples (stories) to demonstrate how you operate from secret skills #’s 4 &/or 3.  And don’t forget – your story/example should demonstrate how operating from these skills made a difference FOR ANOTHER (never just for yourself).

 

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Want some help identifying your unique expression of the Secret Skills?

 

Discover what you have to offer to others and learn how to explain that in a way that sets you apart from your competition – even those with more experience than you.

 

All job candidates can express their strengths – but can they also express their unique expression of that strength AND the impact their strengths can have on others?

 

If you can paint a picture for the interviewer to help them see what’s in it for them to have you around day in and day out – you will absolutely set yourself apart from other candidates.  Why?  Because most candidates don’t (and can’t) do this – those who do come across as self-aware, confident, conscientious and passionate.  People want to align with people who have that kind of energy – don’t you?

 

Get this language for yourself in just 1 hour – during my Secret Skills series I am offering you to book a Personal Brand Confidence session with me for a preferred rate of just $147.  Contact me today at 888/560-8233.