“Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can't move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.” This is how Bob Marley feels about prejudice.

In my daily work I observe how prejudice can prevent my clients from moving forward in many different ways. Prejudice about the “Unknown”, whether it be new job trends, new social trends or new media trends. Prejudice about networking and about people in general. Prejudice towards “out of the box” corporations i.e. those companies which have chosen to move away from the conservative ways of doing business. Prejudice about the future, a belief that the past was always better…and so on.

I suppose if I asked you right now, you could relate a number of stories that would describe your own personal prejudices. As far as I am concerned, I consider the topic best to be avoided in my profession. However if I am completely honest, it is not always easy to distance myself from it.   

The other day I caught myself feeling prejudice, even though for a short period of time. I was in the middle of a phone call with a new client and after having talked to the person for a few minutes, I found that I had already fallen into the trap of feeling prejudice towards this person for a number of reasons. This feeling of prejudice not only prevented me from focusing, but also, quite unnecessarily, wasted a few minutes of my valuable time. This feeling meant that I was not able to concentrate on my other tasks and projects. I had to escape this feeling as soon as possible.

Feeling prejudice is human. We all do so. What matters is about how much we feel and how aware we are of its consequences. It is very important that we not allow it to become an obstacle or barrier.

The obvious question is how? You could track down a lot of research covering prejudice and its effect on our brain, but a far more simple and effective way of dealing with it would be to examine your own prejudice patterns very closely and determine how and what makes you feel these prejudices. What exactly triggers them and how do you deal with these feelings? Have you been able to overcome these feelings in the past? And if yes, how? You could also just ask others about their experiences relating to prejudice and perhaps learn from them.

Take the courage to NOT permit prejudice to overrule your positive thinking, your energy and your drive …