Get Promoted While Lowering Stress Level
Nancy Wu, Head of Client Service
The start of a new year never fails to prompt introspection. Something about having that fresh pack of 365 days just invigorates us to start the year with our best foot forward.
According to Forbes, the top career resolutions for 2013 are to get a promotion at work and to reduce stress. Isn’t this interesting, considering that the two don’t usually go hand in hand?
But perhaps they do. While to a large extent, getting promoted and lessening stress are determined by forces beyond our control, there is one prevailing habit that seldom fails to put us on the path to both:
Show up to learn.
A learning attitude helps develop new skills and strengthen relationships – two essential ingredients for professional advancement. When we open our minds to learning every day, we won’t need formal training courses and networking lunches, which are often pricey and produce questionable results. We will naturally find opportunities to tackle new challenges on the job while building meaningful connections through mentoring and project work. And in doing so, we position ourselves as strong candidates for a promotion.
A learning attitude also helps lower our defenses. As we face unyielding budget cuts and staff shortages for the oncoming year, it’s easy to adopt a defensive position – hunker down and do only what’s necessary to get by. Playing defense is stressful because time is spent battling and resisting. A learning attitude assumes that we will come across new experiences and encounter change, and that a shifting external environment is not only OK, but welcomed as an opportunity to innovate. Going with the flow is much easier than fighting the tide.
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