Help me find a career is what we hear over and over and over. We say, stop job searching and start job finding! Here is the first step…
Discipline.
So often discipline is associated with punishment or constriction of freedom. Yet in truth, discipline is all about self-care and is the “tipping point” to job finding. A disciplined job search will take you from desperation to fascination, from fear of what will happen to love of what is happening. Discipline will calm you down, focus your energies and bring you your desired results; meaningful, lucrative, engaged employment. Because many job finding experiences are often chaotic and frustrating, laced with desperation and negativity, the outcomes are slow to come and seem to elude the job seeker. When you bring discipline into the unstructured job search process success is on it’s way.
Help me find a career? Here are six keys that will take you from job searching to job finding:
Every morning, sit quietly for as long as you can and set your intention for job finding. Visualize what your day will look like. Consciously decide what results you are seeking. What will you notice? Who will you connect with? How do you want your job search to feel? What results do you seek? Write down your intentions and put them someplace where you can be reminded of your priorities. Schedule job finding into your calendar and make this time holy. Nothing interrupts these precious hours you have dedicated to finding the job opportunities you want. This is when you conduct your research, send out resumes, and call potential employers.
Create a job-finding space that is sacred and honors the work of finding work. When unemployed, it can feel like you lose your “professional” productive place in the world. Recreating a respectful work space will help you to feel grounded and focused. It is here that you keep your files, contacts, calendar and favorite coffee mug.
Inform your friends, family and associates of your disciplined job search. Let them know when you are available and when you are not. Others may assume that being between jobs means you are more available for chores, errands or socializing. You will need to clarify that this is not the case. Do not allow yourself to be pulled in different directions simply because you are not currently making money. Job finding is your job.
Connect with positive people. Optimism calms the brain and helps you to find more opportunity, especially when it’s sitting under our nose. If you surround yourself with people who are overwhelmed, negative and convinced we live in a bad job market, they will sap your job finding mojo. Turn off negative television and stay away from headline news screaming the decline of our society and employment market. Focus on the work you want to do and the people who are doing it.
Have fun job finding. When you are aligned with purpose, intention and the knowledge of the work you are seeking, discovering your next employment opportunity will be interesting, engaging and quite the adventure. If your job search is mired in scarcity and feels like you’re trudging through mud then your job search will not bear the fruit of success. Follow your happiness and allow yourself to be guided by your interests. They will lead you to your next job.
This is the beginning of how to “Help me find a career!”