Seeing Possibilities - Mental Bandwidth Is Critical To Your Career And Life
A few weeks ago I was mentoring a young professional at the start of her career. She was terrorized: she had submitted a job application to a good firm she was interested in and was waiting for an answer. She was really worried and stressed; despite having good grades, high ambition and great personality, she felt that her whole professional life depended on that single job application.
As it turned out, she did not get the job. She was shattered and wrote me an email questioning her career choices and preparation. However, as I told her it would happen, another firm contacted her a few days later with a higher offer and an even better position!
After just one rejection, she was losing the big picture, her vision and purpose blurred. This has happened more than once to each one of us, and yet how many other opportunities show up when a door closes? How many times have we been rejected in a circumstance that seemed important only to find that it was a blessing, because it left the door open for something more valuable, more important that only showed up later?
All systems are resilient to external shocks and no single event is so shattering that it can make or demolish your career.
It is hard however to keep a big picture perspective and keep seeing options when your mental bandwidth is closed and cramped, when your mind is so crowded with everyday minutiae and information flow that there is no more space to think, dream, observe and see possibilities.
In front of any major decision or event we are often so confident of its immediate power to shape our destiny that we think that single decision or event is what will irrevocably shape our life for the future. But that is not usually true. It is the little things we do - or don’t do - every day, the small steps we make on our path that shape that future, minute by minute. Major decisions are only a consequence and product of those smaller, sometimes imperceptible steps we take every day.
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