Alma Besserdin, Founder & Director of Wimmigrants and a Career Money Life certified supplier, writes about how one’s beliefs, thoughts, and attitudes affect their reality. According to Alma, most of the women she coached who are from other cultures would think that their cultural background hinders their success. Read what she’s got to say.
This article is written by Alma Besserdin, a Career Money Life Certified Supplier. You can view the original article on LinkedIn.
Did you ever notice that some people work hard yet nothing changes despite their best efforts? Then there are some people who always seem to get the best of life and career? What do they do differently?
The simplest explanation is if we keep thinking the same way, we’ll keep doing the same things over and delivering the same results. We just can’t achieve different results with the same old thinking.
Upon my arrival in Australia, I experienced challenges in getting a job and the career start I wanted. I kept focusing on how I was not getting a job! The more I focused on that, more I was frustrated! I needed to revisit what’s not working and what I need to change.
When things were not moving ahead, I decided instead to take a proactive approach. I looked for ways to improve my CV to better reflect my skills, began to meet directly with recruiters and started to network with other professionals in my field.
The energy around me began to change, and interestingly, so did everything else. All manifestations, success, status, abundance and joy starts in the mind as a thought without any exception. Our thoughts project our reality.
If we embrace a willingness to change our thoughts and beliefs, our attempts at successful careers, relationships, general happiness and satisfaction with life will greatly improve.
Beliefs and values shape the world around us, giving us meaning to life events that influence our success. Our beliefs are feelings of certainty about what something means to us. They in turn were shaped by many factors in our life like our upbringing, influences from family, environment, school and the like.
Through information that we receive in our daily life, we constantly delete, generalise or distort what that information or event means to us. For example, if our family and friends tell us that we cannot be successful in a new country because we were not born here, and they had not succeeded themselves, we may shape the belief that we will never succeed either.
I recently coached a professional woman who thought that her cultural background was a barrier to her success. I had to work with her to understand where those beliefs came from and how they were sabotaging her from achieving her full potential.
In coaching women from other cultures, this comes up regularly. Sooner or later they hit a wall even if they have been in Australia for a few years and want to transition roles. Often their belief system prevents them thinking they can succeed, not being aware they can change it.
The connecting dots between success and lack of progress, is our thought process. Changing our thinking is the key. It takes a bit of practice and effort to do away with the regular pattern of thoughts we are used to even if they don’t serve us, but it pays dividends.
Start with asking yourself these questions: Are you happy with yourself and your career progress? Is this what you want from life? Where is your career heading to? Has your belief system helped or sabotaged your progress? Do you want abundance and happiness in life? After you have explored yourself from within and found beliefs that have not helped you, it is ‘decision-making’ time. Weed out thoughts that are not serving you. The following are some steps you may take to revive your spirits, change your thinking and change your career and life in general:
1. Change your thinking and adapt new values and beliefs.
If you haven’t reached your ideal career or life, imagine the good things that can come to you. Write down your current values and beliefs. Are they serving you or they are sabotaging you? If they are not serving you, what are new values and beliefs you must adopt? Imagine your ideal job, career and life. What would that feel and look like? Use “what if” in your thoughts in positive terms. For instance, how about asking yourself “ What if” I have a career I want, what would that look and feel like?
Don’t limit yourself. Stop thinking about being any lesser compared to any other individual. Stop thinking it’s your bad luck: there is no such thing and you know it!
1. Figure out what your passion is.
Find out what your passion is and what makes you happy. If you are stuck in a job that you are not passionate about, it’s time for change. I always had the attitude, “If I can change countries, I can change jobs”. Worried about lacking the skillsets for a new job? The good news is you don’t have to be.
2. Passion is not enough, action is needed to make it happen.
Once you have figured out what your passion is, you will have to work towards developing those necessary skills if you don’t already have them. You also need to plan how and what to do to move towards your desired goals and just taking the action of starting to learn new skills will already make you happier.
Lack of courage and lame excuses work against you because you have the power to turn your life around. As they say, “Face it and embrace it”!
3. Stay positive and optimistic.
“Fear” is the biggest hurdle that prevents us from moving forward and act. We need to believe that we can make and embrace changes. All it takes is to overcome our fears, staying positive and believing in ourselves that we can change our lives. Don’t be impatient and don’t give up, no matter how hard it may feel at times.
These are just a few simple steps to take when we feel things are not working the way we want them, but remember you need a plan or you may drift away and allow old habits and thoughts to creep back in. Reflect on your progress on a regular basis and change your path if needed.
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