Work and Self-Worth: What to do when your job hunt isn’t going well

Job hunting, or seeking a career change or doing anything of that nature, is one of those things that should be really exciting. You’re moving on to a new chapter, it's a challenge, you’re embracing change, all that good stuff. But it’s also something that many of us built up a huge story around.

“It's so hard, that it takes so much work, that it's going to be impossible or take forever or is risky”, etc. etc….So of course we have a lot of emotional drama around it! 

These are all just thoughts of course - it's not a fact that job hunting is so hard or takes so much work, or is going to be impossible or take forever or is risky - but we think thoughts like this so much that we believe them as facts, rather than recognize they’re just optional thoughts. 

We don't have to see job hunting this way.

We have a real tendency to tie our self worth and our whole self identity to our job or career……..I was at a wedding this weekend and found myself asking people, “What do you do?” as part of normal conversation. But notice even that language - what do you do - and we all know what we’re asking when we ask , “what do you do for work?” But we ask it like this because we so closely tie what we do for work with who we are as people. So of course, if we’re looking for a new job or career and are hitting walls and not getting far in the process we’re going to feel bad about ourselves, because we so often tie what we do to who we are.

You can have your work be an extension of who you are and how you want to make an impact, but your work is never who you are. So when your hunt for work is not going well it's never a reflection of who you are, because you are not your work. You are who you show up as at work. That’s the important distinction to make. 

So how do we separate the job hunt from our self identity? How do we make sure we don’t get work and worth tangled up, so that when work isn't going well it doesn’t impact our sense of worth?

The first step here to addressing this is to: separate the facts from the fiction, or in coaching speak, separate the circumstances from the thoughts. Circumstances are facts, they’re things that are universally agreed on, or that you could prove in court. “I am looking for a new job” is something you could prove - you could show someone the number of jobs you applied to online or the number of interviews lined up in your calendar. So we’d call that a fact.  Whereas “Job hunting is so hard” or “job hunting sucks” is a thought. It’s a choice to think that. Not everyone agrees - there’s plenty of people who can’t work and wish they could. They might not agree that job hunting sucks. There’s people who have the mindset of excitement and abundance when they’re job hunting so they don't think it sucks. Some people get the first job they apply for so they don't think it's so hard.

It's really important to start looking at your thoughts, looking at what's in your brain when it comes to job hunting, and pull apart what's a fact, and what is a thought. Write it all down on paper (we call this a thought download) and just go back and circle the circumstances only. It’s pretty amazing to just see how much drama we create by choosing thoughts that aren’t useful, vs how few circumstances we’re usually dealt with in the day to day.  Just seeing the difference can start to dull the overwhelm a bit, which can then lead you to some slightly better thoughts petty quickly, such as, “OK job hunting isnt easy but it's not that bad..” 

Next, when we’re talking here about the problem of letting your job hunt impact your confidence, we need to unpack that. Because it's never the circumstance that creates our feelings, it’s always our thoughts about it. The circumstance is just neutral. “I’m job hunting” - that's a neutral fact. It’s not good or bad until we have a thought about it. And it’s that thought that makes us feel a certain way. So if your thoughts are something along the lines of, “I’ll never find a job ... .I keep getting rejected…This will never work out for me” and those thoughts create feelings of defeat, or frustration, or insecurity, then yea, you’re going to struggle. A lack of confidence is not coming from the job rejection, or rejections. It’s coming from your thoughts about not getting the jobs you’re interviewing for. So you need to focus on changing those thoughts to a thought that will be more useful.

Even if you don't like a thought like, “Everything happens for a reason” (personally I don't like that thought and don't believe it, and don't find it useful to me at all) - you can look for a thought that you do like or believe to lean on when you’re feeling your confidence is shaky after a job rejection. A thought like, “I don't know when, but something will work out” or “Yeah this sucks right now but if I keep going I will find something I like” may be easier for you to believe, and move you just a bit closer to feeling how you want to feel, which will then create the actions you want  to keep going in your job hunt until you get to where you want to be.

Finally, you want to take a look at how much of your identity you’ve tied up into your job or career. I like to think of your self identity, or your self concept, as how YOU describe yourself to YOU. How you think about yourself to YOU. Your self identity is how you define yourself. And your self identity can change whenever you decide it does. 

I was never a dog person until I got a dog in my 40s. Now I'm obsessed with all the dogs. 

I was never a runner until I decided to run a marathon with no running experience and became one. 

I never really cared about getting married and now I’m happily married. 

I never thought I’d have my own business and work for myself until I did it. 

I used to be very closed in and not reach out to people when something is bothering me and now I am like a laughable external processor and everyone in my life knows way too much about me. 

You can change your self identity any time. And your self identity doesn't have to have anything to do with your career unless you want it to. What you do doesn't have to be a part of who you are.

When it comes to your career and your self identity, I like to think of how you show up to work every day, who you are at work, as your self identity, regardless of the title you have or the career you're in.

How do you want to define yourself at work, no matter where work is for you? 

Think of the ideal version of yourself  - who is she? When she goes to work or is in her career and at her best how does she show up every day? How does she treat her co-workers? How does she handle feedback? How does she respond to challenges? How focused is she? Does she take a lot of time off? Does she work 24/7? Is she the same in the workplace as she is at home? What's the same? What's different? 

None of it is right or wrong but it can all be a part of how you define yourself in your career. The more you build up that self identity of who you are at work, and become that version of yourself that you want to be, the less you’re going to tie what you do to your identity and your overall self worth. You can be a kick ass, hard driving, ambitious boss even if you’re in a job you don't like or that you plan to leave soon, or even if your career hunt is going as planned. 

Show up as that version of yourself during your job hunt. That's the you who is going to get where she wants to go because she is not defined by her circumstances, she's defining herself by her thoughts about herself, and she can take that with her no matter how challenging her job hunt might be.