Mojo MAGIC: Get Aligned to SHINE

Remember, an important job search “how to” is finding
(or rather, creating) a combination of:

Feeling good and aligned with your goals
(and actively managing to rebuild and maintain this positive anticipation – managing your ‘mojo’),

and, of course,

Taking concrete, pragmatic action.

I want to stress this time that  what it says here – rest, recovery, and REFLECTION – these things, perhaps counter-intuitively, ARE making progress (the “managing your mojo AND the ‘taking action”) towards achieving your goals.

Consider this: if you’ve ever had any sort of coach (any sort of GOOD coach, including a work manager that took a coaching approach/style), they all will advocate and incorporate rest days as necessary, for example, in sports, to build muscle (and not overextend to the point of injury, or ineffectiveness).

To go with this example, I watched a 10 part docu-series on I think Netflix last weekend, about Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player in history. Ya, I grew up a Bulls fan (how’d you guess?), living in the Chicago suburbs.

If you haven’t heard of the arguably best NBA coach, Phil Jackson, who coached MJ in the latter years of his career, in brief, Jackson grew up in Montana, with some influence from Native American culture and spiritual practices.

As an adult, Phil took interest in similar paths from other traditions, and, even integrated concepts such as visualization, and meditation, into his team’s basketball practices. While I’m sure at this point he isn’t the only one, I believe he was among the first. I remember reading Jackson’s book about this in the I think mid-late 90’s, too.

Sometimes called the “Zen Master”, he knew, that to ALIGN, for his team, and it’s individual players, to SHINE, to get in that flow, they had to do similar practices (not just practice basketball fundamentals, studying game tapes, and drilling down on fancy new offense & defense patterns). He, and now other, coaches use meditation, mindfulness, visualization, positive anticipation & no doubt other, related techniques to facilitate these aligned, positive, winning states of mind and body.

How does this translate into job search?

Once you take time to rest, reflect, get  in tune with and lined up with what you are truly seeking in your new job, then what your BEST actions, your MOST EFFECTIVE actions should be will likely become clear.  And, those answers will likely be different for each of you.

How do you do this? Also, different for everyone! Some exercise, some take long nature walks, some journal, some talk things out with a trusted special person, some sit quietly, in a tub, under a tree, some free write/brain dump (bullet journals or anything like it), some sing or play music, art, anything creative – some DO NOTHING. Remember those stories of great minds like Einstein getting THE idea, THE missing piece of the problem or puzzle, not while TRYING SO HARD, but in the shower, or even in a dream? It often is simply about ‘creating the open, receptive space’ in some way or another, to allow “it” to come in.

So again, the point this time is to remember that just action, the “hustle”, the “grind” culture is not only over-rated, it’s not likely to be AS effective as ALSO taking the time to ALIGN – reflect, relax.

Sure, you need to “hit the court” sometimes, ball in hand, so to speak, and put in good ‘sweat equity’. But it’s not the ONLY thing that will bring you victory.

However, the “get aligned part ” is most often the most neglected ‘action’. Once you are in that space, that flow, the rest comes more naturally. So start there.

Phil Jackson knew that BOTH of these types of actions:
reflection, alignment, then
inspired, informed action
is the winning combination!

He coached two teams (Bulls, of course, and the LA Lakers) to a total of 11 NBA championships, after all. I’d say, his methods are effective, whatever your profession!