Career Development

Enhancing my employability by developing my mindset and attitude to work

Many of us are lucky enough to work at what we want to do. Others aren’t. They can feel trapped.

Many of us don’t want to do the same thing all of our lives. We ASPIRE to grow ourselves and our capabilities so that we can become the best version of ourselves that we can be.

We tend to prefer to lead fulfilling lives.

The key to both doing what we want to do and to being more successful at it lies within us.

Skills, knowledge, abilities, qualifications are all important but we see enough examples around to see that some well-equipped people struggle whilst others, apparently less able, seem to thrive.

The difference lies in their approach to their lives and to their work. A combination of Resilience and Positivity called Mental Toughness.

By Mental Toughness we mean the extent to which are comfortable “in your own skin” and can take challenges in your stride and have the confidence to deal with them, seizing opportunity as it arises. It is not describing how macho you are.

It is a well researched psychological concept which describes “how you think” when things happen to you and around you. In turn that influences what you do – your behaviour. If we can understand that about ourselves, we can do something about it, enhancing it where needed and learning to cope with potential disadvantages in our mental makeup.

When asked, most employers cite “a positive attitude” as the most valuable quality an employee can offer to the organisation.

The research shows that mental toughness correlate positively with employability as well as with progression in career.

Creating self awareness about our level of mental toughness is, for most, the key to optimising their careers. Its not easy because what we are now describing in in our minds. Its not visible and its very hard to assess with confidence and accuracy.

We now have the enhanced capability to do this. Research shows that the concept embraces 8 factors, each of which can be instrumental in career success.

These revolve around 4 major themes – our sense of “can do” and maintaining poise in the face of difficulty; accepting goals and making the effort to deliver them; when faced with new challenges, seeing the opportunity and not the threat and, finally, having the self-belief to seize the opportunity and master the threat.

Understand this and we can optimise who we are and enjoy a career that enables us to be the best that we can be.

As Confucius once said “Find a job you love and you’ll never do a day’s work in your life”.

MindSummit provides a free of charge first step.