Career stalls should be evaluated carefully

You were rolling along for several years, climbing the path to success and definitely moving forward in your career. Then what happened?

Aware that you haven’t progressed in some time, you began to question.

Certainly, there are plateaus in every career choice, minimums and maximums for every classification. Burt the reasons for staying at the same level for too long are reasons enough to examine attitudes and beliefs. As we all know, careers, like the stock market, can be boom or bust.

To analyze a career stalemate, usually, a person needs to examine his or her beliefs and attitudes. Attitudes, like beliefs, are not always constant.

• Have you started to believe that no one cares about the work you are doing? Have you laughed as you said, no one is indispensable?

• Have you changed mentors, possibly associating now with someone who is not as aggressive, someone who may be on a lower level?

• Have you become negative and started to concentrate on obstacles rather than solutions?

• Have you quit learning and growing?

Nearly everyone has periods when some or all of these beliefs and attitudes start to encroach his or her thinking. But the way to dismiss such thinking is to discover that most of these beliefs are irrational ones that can be discarded.

• Believe that people do care. Your employer cares because it is in his or her best interest to have a productive happy employee. You need to reshape your thinking, begin to value each contribution you make.

• Realize that lowering your standards may not be the best way out. Associating with someone who doesn’t have the drive and the ambition you formerly had may feed your ego. It may make you feel equal or even superior to a new colleague, but that doesn’t replace a mentor who inspires you.

• When you become negative, you lose the ability to hope. As you quit looking for solutions to problems that arise, you may be admitting to yourself that you creativity is waning. Then, when hope and enthusiasm are gone, you tend to become depressed.

• Think back to the time when you began your career and your future looked bright. You were eager to learn something new every day whether by observation, self-study or hands-on experience.

Look around, take on a new project, volunteer for an active committee. Look alive. Be noticed. Read and study.

• Envision your career as full steam ahead.

Research has shown that successful people have common characteristics.

They are lifelong learners. They never get to the point where they say, I do my job and keep to myself.
They stay involved. They associate with other successful people.
They know that their attitude is as important as their energy and knowledge.

Discarding irrational beliefs, changing your attitude and revitalizing will cut short the stalemate.

Copyright c 1994 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.