4 SUREFIRE Ways to Maintain Your Sanity this Job Search
Keeping your head straight when your life is thrown out of balance
You’ve lost your job, now you’re trying not to lose your mind. With these four tips in mind, you’ll be ready to take on the challenge before you, and steer your mind back in the game with a cool head.
Embrace the job of cheerleader
Just because your status is in flux doesn’t mean you are. Retain the disposition that you held in your job; it’s not like by losing that job you lost your ability to do the job.
Once the shock of your situation has settled, it’s time to apply yourself to a new role — like a consultant role you’ve been recruited for on your area of expertise. Don’t sell yourself short. You know your stuff and every role they’d be lucky to have you.
Understand the game you’re playing and look at yourself as if from a third-party perspective where you are your biggest fan. You are your own Swiftie, your own Belieber. Beliebe me, you can’t argue with someone of intense fandom.
Press refresh with a good night’s sleep
The days are long, despair suffocating. Those headaches are migraines. Those people in fast cars are reminders of how far behind you are. Those suited and shiny, with a purpose and place to go make you want to be sick. The sun is out, it’s a beautiful day and you can’t enjoy it cause your life is in limbo.
Your life still goes on even as your 9–5 is currently on hold. Follow a process, have a plan, but don’t work yourself into the ground with worry in your time off. Just because you’re not working (at a regular job), doesn’t mean you’re not working.
The job seeker is its own type of job and one that will get old quick if you allow it to consume you when hours of business are closed.
Food doesn’t pop with flavor in your mouth as it once did, no longer do you share the same level of happiness at your friend’s good news.
If it feels too much and it feels like you can’t escape the doom of dark thought, it’s time to shut your eyes and wait till it’s light again. Good sleep can reveal a bright new outlook, a positivity you’ll need when those dark clouds reappear.
A detour is better than standing still
It’s crazy to me how sometimes the world outside is like its own social media filter that reads your mind and tailors its content to you and your situation.
I’ve seen ads for jobs on the doors in bathroom stalls and bus stops. It’s easy to forget that the world is still humming even as you feel stuck in place. Getting out can be hard as you face the world at work, but there’s a sign out there waiting to be read. Might not be something you’re ready to follow yet, but it’s something that might just lead to a better path for you.
I even saw an ad for a volunteer teen mentor role and was surprised by my own openness to a role I never even considered before.
It might not be the fast train you’re looking to get on, but it’s a step that might go before another and another, and before you know it you can’t stop climbing.
You are more than your job
Usually, this truth is revealed in times of loss (not of a job but of a friend or family member), and you listen to the eulogy and the person’s job position is mentioned in two seconds in what might be a five-minute speech. They might talk about the impact that person had with the people they interacted with at that job, but the job title holds such minimal insight into someone’s time on this earth.
Stop and go through the photos on your phone and see your memories are not of you at your job but the time between the job. It sometimes feels we accomplish quite a bit in the short time we find between work.
You are the smile to your friends, you are the laughter you bring to your family, you are the person who feels sadness when news is bleak, and the happiness when the coffee is warm. Don’t ever lose sight of who you are, cause your friends and family sure won’t.
