Wow. This has been some ride lately. If you’re reading this you may be looking for ways to cope with having been laid off, downsized, right sized, wrong sized, fired, or worried about all of the above happening to you. You may also be thinking ahead and trying to come up with proactive ways to approach your next moves in your career — Your Stimulus Plan.
I’m with our President — we will recover from this chaos and more and new opportunities will appear. What does that statement do to you when you read that? Take a moment to notice. Are you skeptical? Too anxious and impatient to take a breath? Or do you brighten just a tiny bit? Any of these reactions will inform you of how your beliefs are affecting your actions, and therefore your outcomes.
My previous post was about not engaging in job search activities all the time. Why? Because we need our personal resources to be as available to us as possible. Doing a job search can be stressful, and it can also be fun. I used to enjoy job search activities (so I guess I found my right livelihood, right?) because it was a great way for me to learn about what other people did for work. It was a great excuse to talk to people I didn’t know and learn about what various companies were doing — sometimes I found interesting things, and others not so much. The job searches I did always opened new possibilities for me to learn something new, and my insatiable curiosity would not only be slightly satiated but new friends and opportunities would present themselves. And that’s how I always found what I was looking for — through curiously reaching out and talking about what I loved to do and what was important to me.
I may not be looking for a job, but I know what stressful thinking can do to me. When I’m stressed and fearful I react with irritation to most everything, or I get exhausted. I’m less available and upbeat with friends, definitely with family, and even at functions where I’m meeting new people — something I really love to do!
What’s the best way to approach your personal Stimulus Plan? Take a moment to write down what you’re worried about. And then ask yourself if what you’re worried about will really happen. And if it does, then what’s the worst thing that can happen from there? And if you find that you really believe all of this awful stuff you’ve written down I want you to go to Byron Katie’s website, www.thework.com, and look at what she offers as a way to deal with your beliefs. She’s figured out a way to deal with stressful thoughts that really is simple and helpful.
Because all of us at Daisy Swan & Associates also help people manage and undo their stressful thinking you can just talk with us and we’ll help you with the next steps to enjoy your job search strategies. We’ll help you get your mind around what actions you can take to increase your opportunities, how to create your best resume ever, how to talk with new people who may turn out to be the next most important people you’ve met yet, and how to create and move through your Stimulus Plan. You are your thoughts and beliefs. We will help you untangle those so that your path can become clearer and calmer. As Joni Mitchell says in one of her songs, we’ll ‘mirror you back, simplified’. There are gifts in this economic downturn. Be someone who finds them.