Managing mental wellbeing in the job search.
At Gradup and Livitay we know the stress of job searching and the strain it can take on your mental health. Job searching can be demoralising, tiresome and given the current climate, the process seems to be getting longer. As well as job searching being time-consuming, it also can cause a wide variety of negative effects on your mental health. Depression and anxiety have become increasingly common alongside job searching, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, when job searching there is this constant anxiety running in the background, whether it is financial stress or career stress. This long-term strain can cause you to struggle with unwinding and taking time for yourself. Over long periods of time, this could lead to depression and anxiety, which may, as a result, affect your motivation.
Then there are the effects on your self-confidence, rejection is normal during job searching and especially when the market is so competitive. Therefore, it is common for you to start feeling as though you may not be good enough and begin questioning your worth. Do not take this rejection personally, you never know who you were up against and what the employer was thinking. In addition, the mindset “Everyone is finding a job except me” is also incredibly destructive to your mental health and self-confidence. Sadly it is also a vicious circle, and the longer the job search goes on the more your mental health is impacted. We have therefore provided some tips that we believe will help with managing your mental health during the job search process.
Tips to manage your mental wellbeing 💭
One of the first things to think about is watching out for negative thought patterns. When faced with negative news we often end up in ‘thinking traps’, for example, thinking that being rejected once means you will be rejected every time in the future. This spirals and leads to thoughts such as ‘I’m useless’ and you may feel like giving up. The ‘trap’ then is that if you genuinely don’t believe you’ll be successful, your ability to give your best in that situation is really limited. These thinking traps are our emotional reaction to news like this, so when faced with rejection try to take a step back and examine your thinking- is it rational? Being aware of your negative thought patterns is the first step to changing them
One of the ways you can counteract these patterns is by adding some perspective, thinking about all the things you are good at and the times you have been successful at things. Trying mindfulness exercises such as meditation can also be helpful to change your thinking (we’ll attach a link to a beginner’s meditation below). It is also good to distance yourself, it’s easy to get wrapped in the world of applications and interviews, but taking time away and doing something different that you enjoy for a few hours help you realise that there is a world outside of your career.
The last tip is to take back control. One of the worst ways in which jobs searching affects our mental health is through the lack of control we feel, the idea that our fate is completely in the hands of others. However this is not the case, we are the ones that make the decision by applying, it’s easy to feel trapped in this race for a job but it’s important to take a step back and make sure you’re applying to the right things. Rejections are never nice, but they also serve as feedback, and you can regain that feeling of agency by looking for patterns in your feedback for areas to improve. Companies such as Gradup (link below) can be helpful for this, having a mentor to coach you through the process and improve your application is one of the ways you can take back control of the process. Remember, you are ultimately the one in control.
We hope this helps, check out the Livitay website for more tips on how to manage your mental health. :)
Link to free meditation 🧘: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkZp_xoPZYo
Link to Livitay website 💻: https://www.livitay.com
Link to Gradup website 💻: www.gradup.xyz
