Are you daydreaming about work you enjoy, a job with purpose, maybe even about starting your own business? The State of the American Workplace study shows that 51 percent of employees are actively looking for a new job or watching for new job openings.
You’re forcing yourself out of bed every morning. You’re stressed just thinking about all the upcoming tasks and projects for the day, and you’re bogged down in negative thoughts about your manager and co-workers. Working in a corporation feels out of alignment to you, and all you want is to find a good reason to quit. You’re in a downward spiral, desperate for change and discovering more downsides of your job every day, and eventually of your life.
Putting yourself in the driver’s seat and taking back control is one of the most important decisions you can make. But you don’t need to quit your current job right away. Before dropping everything and leaving, there are things you can do to stop from being sucked into a frustrating professional and personal life. Affirmations can help turn around your thinking, to help you see opportunity, be more productive and stay motivated. They give you more choices.
Ever since you were little, the people around you have impacted the way you see the world. Your parents and teachers, friends and co-workers teach you how the world works, from their point of view. In every situation you experience, you make unconscious decisions about how things are—decisions that are confirmed by future experiences, because that’s what you’re expecting, that’s what your mind is focused on.
The key to changing the way you perceive a situation is to change your thoughts about it, to become aware of what’s going on in your mind in the very moment that you’re feeling terrible and out of control. Your thoughts are connected to emotions, which make you react to the situation in a certain way. And these actions create your experience, your subjective reality that you perceive as truth.
Affirmations change the way you think; they retrain your brain to see the world differently, in a way that you choose to experience life.
1. Become aware of your negative thoughts.
Negative thoughts can motivate for a short time through fear, but they don’t make you move in a positive direction. Understanding what causes your negative thinking, which people and situations trigger it, brings awareness to the problem.
2. Doubt your current belief system.
After gaining clarity around what the problem is, the mind has to be reprogrammed, which simply means to question your current perspective on your job, doubting that there is only one way to look at it. Becoming aware of all the positive things it does for you, the opportunities it brings and what amazing relationships you might have gained over the years puts you in a place of gratitude and opportunity.
3. Build thought bridges.
After disconnecting a thought from a negative emotion, you have to build thought bridges to make it easier for your mind to believe you. Building thought bridges represents a step-by-step process of feeding your mind with positive thoughts, and you want to be gentle and understanding, aware that your mind wants only to keep you safe. Telling yourself that your company is the best place to work right now when your mind is traumatized and terrified from your everyday life seems like a lie, but thought bridges build the gap between two very contrary thoughts. They lead the mind from This job is terrible to Is this actually terrible? to It’s not too bad when I consider… to What I like about it is… until finally the mind believes that the work you do actually opens a lot of doors for you, even if it’s outside of the company.
No matter if you decide to stay in your current job, to continue to work with a refreshed attitude and renewed energy, or if you decide to take the leap and leave for a new opportunity, affirmations help you get into a positive stage of your career and life. By mastering your mind, you take back control. You are aware of the freedom you have in choosing your reality. And as soon as you change the way you think, everything around you will change, too.
This article was published in September 2019 and has been updated. Photo by
