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Conscious awareness and your job hunt
If you are looking for a job, do you feel stuck and like you don’t know what to do next? You are not alone, as most job seekers I know don’t intend to become professional job hunters and don’t feel confident that they can move from step to step, knowing exactly what they are doing.
Last month, I attended a workshop with Havi Brooks. She specializes in what she calls “Destuckification: working through the stucknesses that get in the way of doing your thing.” Havi teaches about how to get unstuck via a mind-body/yoga practice called Shiva Nata. She calls it “brain training that looks like martial arts and acts like drugs-that-make-you-smart-and-hot.”
Even Havi calls is “wacky,” and it is nothing if not a bit unconventional – teaching your brain to act differently by focusing on patterns, deconstructing them and building new ones! (I’m no expert on the subject, having just starting studying it, but I think that gets at the basics for our purposes! Read Havi’s blog and explore her site for more details.)
So, what does this all have to do with you – the job seeker who is stuck and can’t figure out the next step? One of the big things we discussed at the workshop was how important it is to bring “conscious awareness” to patterns in order to challenge and change them. Really, that’s just a fancy way of saying that you need to notice what’s happening and point it out to yourself to impact a change.
So, instead of wallowing in self-doubt and avoiding your job search like the plague, stop and think, “Hmmm…how am I feeling when I think of my job hunt?” Does it give you a stomach ache? Your head hurts? You panic? You know it’s important and urgent, but instead of working on it, you decide to take a bike ride instead? Or, eat a plate of cookies?
Every time you think of your job hunt and you go numb and panic, try to be aware of the pattern.
Look at your intellectual response – I “should” do this now. I feel guilty if I don’t work on my search.
Examine the physical response – I can’t breathe. I get a pain in my neck. Stress creeps into my shoulders.
Focus on what you do – I clean the house instead. Or eat chocolate. Or watch TV.
Then, think about little steps you could do differently. If, when you think of sitting down to your search and start getting stressed, you took a moment to be really aware of all that is going into those feelings, you may have a much better chance of jumping over the hurdle and making a change – step-by-step. Maybe instead of cleaning the whole house, or eating the whole box of cookies, you decide that you’ll JUST clean one bathroom or eat two cookies and then do 30 minutes of job searching.
I’m no expert in teaching about conscious awareness, and I want to make it clear that is my interpretation of when of the things I learned from Havi, but I thought it was too important of a concept NOT to share the idea. Take some time to be aware of what is going on with you – you may be surprised by the results!
Would it help to have a coach on your side? Learn more about how I can help you overcome your “stuck” by teaching you what you need to know to propel your search forward!
photo by dyanna
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Being aware of what we’re feeling is essential to forward movement. Happy you took the time to share what you’re learning. It applies not only to an overwhelming job search, but to anything in life that we allow to become a hurdle or a roadblock. Excellent, excellent advice.
Dawn – Thanks for visiting. I’m glad you agree about the applications. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be self-aware enough to help move us forward despite obstacles!
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Miriam,
Excellent post, and such great advice. The strategies you mention for consciousness and paying attention to your “safety responses” are so important–and have so many parallels to our work and the job search process at large.
In job search, one statistic that routinely haunts me is the RiseSmart study that the average job seeker spends over 50 hours a month in the online search. Contrast that with the perennial findings that a majority of non-entry-level positions are found through networking. Sometimes the best way to get a jump start, is to leave the kitchen and talk to other cooks!
Many thanks to you and Jacqui for your leadership in launching this new forum for discussion!
Chandlee
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