You are your own worst enemy
Adventures in gettting out of your own way
A smart, brash 13-year-old on Twitter posted:
“When someone tells you something is impossible, you can treat it as a challenge to prove that their mind is very limited.”
My off-the-cuff response?
“Most of the time, the person telling me something is impossible is me.”
Sound familiar?
Let me tell you the story of two job interviews.
The first interview
The first one came when I was still at the newspaper in Michigan. I had decided to leave my job, and set myself a hard deadline, several months away, where I would leave whether I had a new job or not.
So I found myself cooling my heels in a magazine office’s waiting room. I was shaky and sweating. I remember holding my fake leather briefcase in a death grip. Running through my head were all the bad things that would happen if I left my secure job as an afternoon newspaper reporter without first getting a new job.
Also swimming around in my brain were my thoughts about how through most of my career as a reporter, I felt like a professional fraud. I loved the writing and editing, but not actually being a reporter. I used to literally have dreams where they came and led me out of the newsroom, saying, “You don’t belong here.”
It probably goes without saying that I didn’t get that job. I couldn’t get the words out in the interview. There was too much pressure, and my confidence was non-existent.
The second interview
The second one was years later. I had already left my job at the teachers’ union, and planned to work for myself doing web and database design. I already had a handful of projects lined up. I saw an ad for a job at a health care marketing company, working on their online customer portal.
I knew I was qualified. It was exactly the sort of work I had just been doing. But I wasn’t convinced I even wanted to go back to another traditional office job. Still, I was intrigued enough to send in my materials, and I got an interview.
I remember distinctly that I shoehorned the interview between picking up my dry cleaning and going grocery shopping. I was so unconcerned and the stakes were so low that the job interview, something I would normally have sweated and worried over for days, was just an entry on my to-do list that day.
I breezed in, spoke confidently with everyone there, and even did an on-site coding exercise without batting an eye.
I got the job.
Lessons learned
It’s a cliche for a reason: you can’t control the external world; only your reactions to it.
When I put too much pressure on myself, and let myself be preoccupied with all my potential shortcomings, I was sunk. But when I put the interview in a proper context, and was confident in the value I brought to the table, they saw that value too, and hired me.
This isn’t the same thing as not caring. This isn’t about taking things lightly. But it is about managing expectations and being confident in your abilities.
We can all be our own worst enemies. It takes time and patience and perspective to get over that mindset. But the first step is realizing what is happening.
I wll be writing much more on Mighty Forces about different ways to take your power back in the job hunting process. But I think it starts with just taking a breath and understanding your worth.
Onward and upward.