How Negative Self-Talk is Ruining Your Career

Confidence in the workplace is key when it comes to a successful career story but unfortunately that’s not always easy to achieve. Even when you’ve been in the workforce for a considerable amount of time, there are still many ways that insecurities can creep in and begin to weigh you down. Read on for ways that you might be sneakily engaging in negative self-talk that can ruin your career.

Limited Thinking

Limited thinking is the precursor to limiting beliefs and is the process of filtering life events through a negative lens. Limited thinking starts small. When you engage with it, you tend to overgeneralize and engage in flawed mind reading. Examples of this include having one pitch rejected and thinking “none of my ideas are any good” or interpreting a coworker’s off-glance as them disliking you. You also might preemptively make judgments on yourself about the things you can do, telling yourself that you don’t have enough experience or that you don’t want to go against the status quo of your workflow.

Challenging limited thinking can be just as straightforward as taking a moment to push back against the negative thoughts. When you take stock of ideas in your head and pointedly ask, “is that true?”, you remind yourself that every thought that runs through your head isn’t fact.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a particularly insidious brand of negative self-talk because it masquerades easily as a desire for self-improvement. It is absolutely healthy to desire to grow and better yourself, but true perfection is impossible to attain. When you begin to spiral beyond wanting greatness and into wanting flawlessness, you are bound to run into trouble. True high achievers are able to keep the big picture in mind, they don’t overly stress about past mistakes or look for things to pick apart in their work. You are bound to receive criticism at some point in your career journey, but that criticism should be constructive and come from a place of encouragement, not denigration.

Relationship Strain

Take a moment to think about your ideal coworker or boss. Chances are, they’re someone who feels good about themselves and makes others feel the same. They’re probably someone who handles adversity well and encourages the team when times are tough. It’s hard to be this type of person if you’re constantly in a state of stress, critiquing yourself and others around you. If your relationships are drained, it becomes harder to network. And the less you’re able to network, the more difficult it is to make the moves you want to make or complete the goals you want to achieve. In this way, negative self-talk tears you down by stunting your relationships, but also hinders the growth of your team because it makes it difficult for you to be able to contribute healthily and consistently.

No one is 100% confident 100% of the time. And you shouldn’t try to be (see the perfection paragraph above)! But undervaluing yourself is never going to lead you down the path to success. Instead, you should own your wins, surround yourself with a strong circle of support, and keep track of your inner monologue to make sure that you’re running the show and not your errant moment-to-moment thoughts. And don’t be afraid to speak to someone you trust and respect when the imposter syndrome and doubt creep in - no one gets to the end of their career journey completely on their own.

At Career Maven Consulting, we’re on a mission to help women up-level in their career, own their career story, and activate their career story and that includes you! Join the Career Maven mailing list and become part of the community today.