You might be a perfect match for the position you apply for but fail to nail the job due to nerves. Nervous excitement is common and even supportive in small amounts. It can give you the extra push you need to apply yourself. Too much worry, though, has the power to ruin your attempts to impress an interviewer. If you’re prone to the jitters during interviews, and your dream job is just an interview away read on to discover how to develop confidence using an effective, little-known trick.
How thoughts become stress
Fear crafts anxiety-laden imagery and statements in your head. What’s more, thinking about what could go wrong during interviews promotes stress hormone production and causes you to enter fight or flight mode.
Being fearful isn’t helpful when you want to appear professional and self-assured while being interviewed. Luckily, though, you can switch pessimistic thoughts for positivity. After doing so, your confidence will expand, and you’ll be better equipped to shine.
Why you need to swap stress for success
Your mind is powerful. It creates your emotions and colors your perception. Your thoughts influence how you behave and the results you spawn in life. By changing the way you look at the world, and in your case, job interviews, you can alter your reality.
When you’re nervous about interviews, pictures pop into your mind that reflects your fears. You might imagine being stuck for words or giving a ridiculous answer to a serious question. Additionally, you may see yourself looking anxious and an interviewer frowning or staring aggressively at you.
On occasions when you produce negative imagery and hear adverse judgments in your head, you’re creating worst-case scenarios. Your brain allows you to run through the worst you can imagine happening so you can prepare for failure and look for solutions. But you should try not to let your job interview nerves completely take over.
Nonetheless, your mind’s attempts at helping you don’t always work. Sometimes, they just make you so scared you want to hide rather than show others your skills. Happily, though, you can construct thoughts that aid victory rather than encourage failure.
How to craft thoughts of success
The job interview nerves mind trick you’re about to learn involves swapping negativity for positivity. First, find a quiet place to sit or lie down, and shut your eyes. Picture your fears about being interviewed for a few moments. Notice where images are located in your head. Are they to the left, right, or middle of the screen in your mind? Are they big, bright, and colorful?
The place you see pictures and the quality of the images match how you always see fearful subjects. Your mind presents negativity in similar ways, no matter the topic at hand. Now, do something else for a moment or two to cleanse your mental palette. Get up and walk around or carry out a chore before settling down again for more visualization.
When you’re ready, picture a job interview going well. Imagine a best-case scenario, where you and the interviewer get on effortlessly. Notice how your mind presents the imagery you see. Where are pictures located? How big are they? Are they colorful? After exploring them, imagine the screen in your head turning white, so no more pictures are visible.
Next, picture the worse and best-case scenarios simultaneously. Hold the images for a few seconds, and then shrink the adverse scene. Make it monochrome, place a border around it and stick it on top of the best-case scenario. See the negative image becomes small and disappears, so only the positive image remains. Make the preferred picture bold, large, and colorful, then white out the screen. Repeat the exercise ten times in quick succession.
Later, test whether your thoughts about job interviews have changed. Imagine attending an upcoming interview, and notice where you see the images in your head. Do they resemble the best-case scenario? If not, repeat the exercise a few times until the picture sticks and automatically appears when you consider the topic.
Don’t let job interview nerves get you down, wipe them out with the new trick you’ve learned. The outcome will be greater confidence and less stress. You’ll carry your positivity into interviews and sail through them with ease.
For more interview tips here’s a great article on indeed.co.uk
