Facing a Professional Setback? Here's the Perspective Shift You Need

Professional setbacks can take a major toll. The power of its impact can cause a ripple effect that stretches far beyond your career life alone — wounding your self-esteem, triggering your emotional health, and distorting your inner beliefs.?

When encountering setbacks like job loss, demotion, or professional rejection of any type (from missing your annual sales goal to the 2016 backlash of Beyonce’s performance at the CMA’s), your recovery lies in learning how to restore the health and functioning of your Ajna Chakra Zone.?

Restoring the Ajna Chakra Zone?

The Ajna Chakra Zone is the behavioral hub within the brain that processes information and forms the nature of your perceptions. After experiencing professional setbacks, the functioning and health of this zone takes a hit. Beliefs about yourself and your capabilities are triggered, leading you to perceive yourself from a disempowered lens. You may find that your mind replays memories of your adversity within your head, over and over again.?

Here is our energy zone method for cultivating a brand new attitude.?

Perspective Shift #1: Your Self-Image Will Help or Hinder How Your Move Forward?

Your setback has led you to view yourself in a negative light, and now you’re assuming that your peers, colleagues and family members must be thinking the same. Yet, it’s integral for you to realize that the wounded self-perception you’re holding onto is swirling around in the mind of you, and you alone.?

There are a million different versions of you that exist in the minds of others, because no two people think, interpret, or perceive you in the exact same way. With this acknowledgement, comes a powerful sense of freedom: the only view that you can control — and the only one that matters — is the view that you hold of yourself. It is the quality of that self-view that is going to determine the success of the next steps you take to recover your career. Are you going to allow yourself to remain trapped by your replays of the past and immersed by guilt over factors that were far outside of your control? Or, is it time for you to give yourself the grace of self-forgiveness, detachment, and letting it go? Your bounce-back is heavily dependent upon the quality of your inner self-talk. Choose your words wisely.?

Perspective Shift #2: You Can Find Power From Your Pain?

Your biggest career breakdowns can become the source of your greatest breakthroughs, so long as you take the time to find the lessons and higher meaning behind what you’ve gone through. Reflect on questions such as: what unexpected clarity or insight has this challenging time brought to me? Has this situation revealed any patterns or recurring issues in my work approach that I can now address? What are the silver linings or unexpected opportunities that come along with this setback? How can I reframe this situation as a stepping stone that is aligning me to achieve the greater desires that I hold for my future??

Taking this retrospective lens as you reflect on your journey can present you profound insights that enable you to cultivate a more empowering narrative around what you’ve faced. Better yet, within your story lies clues about your purpose — but in order for you to see them as the golden nuggets that they are, you’ll need to take the steps to transform your pain into your power.?

For Your Energetic Wellness:?

The best performance of your ajna zone comes along when you are fiercely focused on the present moment. When your ajna zone is functioning from a healthy state, you reap the benefits of strong mental clarity, heightened intellectual activity, and empowering thoughts that allow you to take effective action toward reaching your new career goals.?

Remaining in the present moment requires self-discipline. You will need to manage your remembering and the replays of your past, so that your thoughts are no longer caught up in what was. Find activities that easily allow you to drop into a deeply focused ‘flow state’. For some, this looks like yoga, outdoor walks, washing the dishes, or warm showers. As you engage in this activity, challenge yourself to stay focused on the present moment as if your life depended on it. Pay greater attention to the sensations around you than you typically may — be it your breath, the colors of the leaves or the temperature and feel of the water as it runs on your skin. The more often you practice the art of mindfulness, the more easily you will find yourself able to anchor into the present moment throughout your day.

While professional setbacks will inevitably hit you where it hurts, I implore you to remind yourself of a harsh, albeit liberating truth: companies and consumer-pockets will always be in it for themselves — and their bottom line. Their loyalty is never guaranteed.?

The loyalty you seek can only be found within yourself — and it comes as you make yourself the promise to always find the strength to pick yourself back up after you fall, as you courageously affirm to yourself:

My worth does not lie in my work.?

This too, shall pass.?

With the right perspective, you can be like Beyonce, and transform this adversity into a bittersweet, albeit beautiful chapter in your career story.?

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