The 5 Ways Negativity Can Unravel Career Potential

The overwhelming majority of job seekers fail to ever push their capabilities to the limit. Most never come close.

Our sales recruiters have seen that the lack of achievement is not a result of lesser intelligence, education or even having a poor boss, but rather comes from a skewed perspective that is overly negative of their own capabilities.

This negative perception gives rise to a multitude of issues and in time results in a less fruitful, lucrative career. This happens in 5 stages.

The 5 Stages in Which Negativity Eats Away at Career Potential

1. Damages the person’s self image. A negative self dialogue begins by attacking the professional’s self image. While negative dialogue differs in each pessimist, it eventually convinces the brain that the you are a certain way or that a particular outcome is bound to happen.

Regardless of whether this is true or not, the individual accepts it as the truth and behaves according to this prophecy. For instance, if every time you make a mistake, you call yourself stupid or claim that you’re a failure, you eventually will play the role.

2. Decreases ability to make sound career choices. Once we lock onto a preconceived notion of how we think things are going to work out, we then go and create the situation or gather information to make it a reality.

Low self-esteem will then make the person feel that they are not in control of their career and, ultimately distorts their ability to make beneficial and sound decisions. Often, these individuals accept less pay and end up surrounding themselves with others who have a very low sense of themselves which furthers the issue.

3. Decreases focus. When an individual makes poor career decisions and surrounds themselves with negative thinking individuals, it results in both inward and outward anger. This hurts the individual in several ways. First, the inward anger and subsequent negative dialogue deteriorates mental capacity , drains our energy and hinders the ability for complete focus on more complex tasks.

While this is happening, our outward anger over stimulates our senses and greatly increases your changes and frequency in sudden, erratic and emotional actions. Anger towards others is an acid that begins to further eat at potential.

4. Decreases performance. Because the negative thinker cannot focus on complex tasks nor give up what has happened in the past, they get used to losing. Losing becomes a habit.

5. Decreases work ethic and hinders creative thinking. Eventually, the constant loss eats at morale and makes the individual overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion.

Our recruiters see job seekers give up all the time. They fixate on a problem instead of mulling over creative solutions to overcome roadblocks. In time, the person says, “what’s the point?” and, ultimately gives up on bettering themselves or reaching their actual potential.

What You Can Do

When it comes to negativity, a person can either stay with the same self-defeating thought processes or convince themselves that it is in their best interest to change.

Individuals have to learn to stop attacking themselves when their performance does not live up to our expectations because the negative self-talk is the catalyst that brings upon the 5 steps that lead to failure.

However, it goes further. Many mental health professionals believe that thought alone is not enough to change actions and performance.

Lasting change must begin with imagery. By vividly imagining success combined with taking steps to create a more productive internal dialogue, you begin to lay the foundation for a healthier, happier and more lucrative career.

We have to learn to stop attacking ourselves when our performance does not live up to our expectations because our negative self-talk will only increase poor performance.

About the Author

Ken Sundheim is the CEO and founder of KAS Placement Recruiting, a sales and marketing executive recruitment firm specializing in assisting all levels of job seekers reach their career ambitions. Ken is a writer for Forbes, Business Insider, The Ladders, Entrepreneur.com and many others.