Steps Toward Optimizing Your Mojo

How do you optimize your mojo? The loss of mojo is likely to occur when you experience an event that has the potential to derail your work and life - such as a life-threatening illness or as most of us can relate, the pandemic.

Returning to work requires a certain amount of mojo: those moments when we do something with purpose, power, and increasing sense of ease and “flow”. When you take action in a positive direction, you are taking the steps to reclaim your mojo. Let's look at steps toward optimizing your mojo!

Step ONE: Honour Your Growth - Challenge Your Assumptions

You can begin by reflecting on the past to identify how you have grown. I wrote about this in my last post, Steps to Reclaiming Your Mojo-A-Go-Go. Reflection allows you to identify your current values and how your identity shifts over time.

We often operate from a template formed by our past experiences. As a result, we may be unnecessarily limiting our options. Instead, we can challenge the assumptions we make about ourselves.

Step TWO: Discover Your Ideal Self

I invite you to try this simple and powerful exercise. My clients are amazed at just how powerful this exercise can be in discovering the path to their ideal self and motivating themselves to take action.

Picture yourself a year from now - with your most precious hopes and plans fulfilled.

• What does that look like?
• How would you describe yourself?
• Why are you doing what you are doing? What’s your “WHY”?
• What assumptions are you making about yourself?
• Where are you placing limits? For example, are you depriving yourself of new and breakthrough thoughts based on outdated perceptions about your strengths and weaknesses? Are you restricting your perspective based on values that no longer support you in making the decisions that are “best” for you?
• How can you leverage your experiences, skills, values, and passion?

Step THREE: Integrate Work, Life, and Self

In my work as a coach specializing in the work-life-self integration for women entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals, I have observed several approaches toward creating the optimal return-to-work experience. Reflecting on the questions above and discovering the value of work-life-self integration is a good start.

At this point, I cannot step over how the myth of work-life balance has negatively impacted women's self-regard. This myth needs to be stricken from our lexicon and expectations. The myth is flawed in so many ways with the very concept of "self" being conspicuously absent.

Many clients begin their return-to-work experience by focusing on new skills required for “the position”. Considering the statistics, trends, and analysis on the future of work published by McKinsey & Company, a better approach is to identify and acquire skills for your ideal self, and then find the position that is a good fit for YOU.

Caveat: Start Where You Are and Begin with Small Steps

Reclaiming your mojo begins with small steps that you can take toward your ideal self. If you have trouble with that first step of reflection and envisioning your ideal self in the future, start with an action that will be helpful regardless of what happens tomorrow, or next week. 

A few examples:

• Review and update your bio, resume, and your social media profiles.
• Update your contact lists, track references, and review recommendations. We all need our own personal CRM in this time of digital marketing.
• If you haven’t already, identify a trusted mentor, coach, or other professional who can support you through the process with objective and helpful feedback. Find someone who will be your champion as you become your own hero and discover your ideal self.

What do you think? Are you ready to optimize your mojo? Let me know how you are doing. I would like to hear from you. You can reach me on LinkedIn, and on Maestro’s Facebook. Or click to Get in Touch.

• Subscribe for updates and receive the EQ Worksheet.
• Check out the THRIVE in Work and Life^TM programs.
• Check out the online mini-course Your Building Blocks to Emotional Well-Being and Resilience.
• Check out my 2020 blog The Myth of Work-Life Balance Just Won't Go Away I have been writing about this topic since 2005. I will keep on challenging the myth.
• Special reading for Women Entrepreneurs - BDC: Canadian Entrepreneur Mental Health and Well-Being Report, November 2020