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Are you struggling to enhance your career?
We’ve all been there. You might be stuck in a role that hasn’t led to growth in years, or perhaps you no longer feel any passion in your current job. Maybe your company doesn’t prioritize growth, or maybe you just don’t feel motivated at all. Whatever your reasoning is – you’re not alone.
In today’s digital age and world of instant feedback, social media chatter, and computer-generated graphics, we’ve become more critical, negative, and even spoiled, to our own detriment. More of us are finding it harder to find fulfillment in our lives and careers.
If you’re feeling stuck in the day-to-day bore of your job, there are some things you can do to shift your mindset and thus improve the quality of both your career and your life.
4 Ways to Enhance Your Career
1. Be easy to impress
Be in awe of people, talent, nature, art, technology, work, and the world around you. Embrace a sense of wonderment, like a child does. There are so many extraordinary people and things around us all the time, we just don’t often stop to appreciate them and allow ourselves to be impressed, especially at work and if we’re feeling frustrated with our current job.
2. Be hard to offend
In other words, don’t take things so personally and allow yourself to get offended so easily. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and said to yourself, “It’s going to take something enormous to offend me today.” That would probably be a good mindset to take to work and out into the world, don’t you think?
Once we’ve lived a bit, gained some professional experience, or think of ourselves as somewhat sophisticated, we often get jaded. It takes something pretty remarkable to impress us. And, sadly, we get offended very easily and blame others for our stress, frustration, and disappointment.
3. Make a commitment to yourself
Make a commitment to yourself to be easy to impress and hard to offend…and see what happens to your career and your life.
Making a commitment to yourself is a crucial part of both personal and professional growth and development. It fosters self-discipline and empowers you to pursue your goals.
Making a commitment to yourself builds a strong foundation for self-improvement, allowing you to take the right steps to prioritize your well-being and enhance your career.
Remember: committing to yourself also means being able to realize and fully acknowledge when or if a certain career isn’t for you, or when a certain part of your role or career has run its course.
If you’re starting to realize that you’re no longer bringing your whole self to work, it may be time to take a step back and figure out what caused the change.
4. Have a growth mindset
Operating with a growth mindset means committing yourself to constant learning and embracing challenges as opportunities for development. Actively seek out feedback and use it to motivate you to improve in your career.
When you embrace this type of proactive growth, it helps you feel more comfortable taking risks and seeking out new responsibilities that can show your skills and potential for advancement.
Take the Right Steps to Enhance Your Career Today
As I travel around the country and the world working with people, leaders, teams, and organizations of all kinds, it’s clear to me how important having this type of approach can be. Unfortunately, we often justify our lack of being impressed and how easily we get offended, instead of realizing all the ways these things hold us back.
Moving forward successfully in our careers has a lot to do with how we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. While it may be easy to get caught up in the drama, stress, and negativity of others, our work environment, or the world we live in, ultimately, we have a choice.
If we choose to be easily impressed and hard to offend, to make a commitment to ourselves, and to operate with a growth mindset, these things can have a dramatic and positive impact on our careers and our lives.
This article was originally published in 2019 and updated for 2023.