How ‘Your Word’ Can Help or Hurt Your Job Search
Simply Hired Staff
“Be impeccable with your word,” is the first agreement in “The Four Agreements,” a bestselling book by Don Miguel Ruiz. “Through the word you express your creative power,” he writes. “It is through the word that you express manifest everything.”
Your Word is How You Talk about Yourself
When you search for a job, you are highly dependent on your word. What you say about your past experiences and what you say about what you desire for the future both have a huge impact on your success in getting the job you truly want. You use words in your resume, cover letter and throughout the interview process. There are many resources available to help you with using words that put you in the best possible light in these areas. Check out these articles.
Your Word is How You Talk to Yourself
Being impeccable with your word, according to Ruiz, is more than just about telling the truth. Impeccability means “without sin.” Ruiz defines sin not as breaking some religious code of conduct but as “anything you do that goes against yourself.”
“Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you don’t judge or blame yourself.”
The very act of reading job descriptions and comparing your experience to listed requirements can put you in a state of negative self-talk. In Ruiz’s terms, the messages that appear in your mind that say you don’t have enough experience, that you’ll never get a job, that there’s nothing out there and so on are all examples of using your word against yourself. These thoughts judge you for you not having a job or having enough experience and blame you for not looking hard enough.
Being impeccable with your word “means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself,” says Ruiz. These messages of judgment and blame come not from ourselves, Ruiz argues, but from other’s opinions that we have turned into beliefs. Perhaps a family member is worried about you and expresses their concern by telling you to look harder. Or perhaps you had a boss that accused you of doing a bad job when you were actually working very hard.
By seeing these opinions just for what they are – opinions – they lessen their hold on you and give you the energy to create a more positive outcome. If you are doing everything “right” in terms of using words on your resume and in your interview process but still have not found a job, your problem may be with how you use the word against yourself.
“Impeccability of the word can lead you to personal freedom, to huge success and abundance,” writes Ruiz. The more you practice a positive internal conversation, ignoring the naysayers and voices of fear, the more successful you will be in your search and at your new job.
