Page 214 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

202 COACH YOURSELF TO A NEW CAREER

to wish your competitors or your boss dead. Keep your thoughts
and goals completely positive. Negative thoughts boomerang
back to you with negative results. Who
would you like to be? Write down your
I was going to buy a biggest “I am” statement fifteen times a
copy of The Power of day, and the genie of the universe will
Positive Thinking, and go to work.
then I thought: “What This is also an extremely effective
the hell good would technique to use before asking for a
that do?” pay increase, raising your client rates in
your business, or negotiating a salary-
—RONNIE SHAKES and-benefits package at a new company.

One of my senior-executive clients,
Catherine, used this technique before
negotiating her compensation at another company. I told her that
she shouldn’t accept the job offer until she was literally jumping
up and down with glee. The current offer was pretty good, but it
just wasn’t enough to get her excited. I could hear in her voice that
she had some reservations about taking the job at that rate. I asked
Catherine to make a list of all the things she wanted in the new
job: what base salary, bonuses, benefits, perks, and so on. She took
some time to think this over carefully and then wrote down every-
thing she could possibly think of. Then Catherine wrote down,
“I am making $_ a year at XYZ company” over and over until it
sounded perfectly reasonable to her. With enough repetition, you
actually program your brain into believing that your statement is
true and possible. If you don’t believe it can happen, then it prob-
ably won’t!
Catherine could then go back to the people recruiting her and
tell them point by point what would make her leave her current
company. She was able to ask for what she wanted (and it was a lot!)
with calm, cool confidence. She knew that if she hadn’t thought
it through, she would have been tempted to take the lower offer.
By writing it down, she was able to clarify her wishes. She said if
she hadn’t done this preparatory work, she would not have had
the calm assurance and boldness to ask for what she wanted. And