If you lose your job, it can be difficult to remember all of your professional successes and stay positive. But you can’t replace your old job by staring at a computer eight hours a day or praying for a recruiter to call you. The author offers five ways to overcome the cognitive dissonance of having to sell yourself and your abilities to a potential employer when you’ve taken a major hit in your self-confidence.
When Tonya* was working as a senior executive at a tech company, she was recognized time and time again for her value as a subject matter expert. After being laid off in December, she was confident her skills would make her marketable and land a new job within weeks. Three months later, she’s still looking for the next opportunity, and her confidence in her skills and abilities plummets with each rejection.
As the job search continues, it can be difficult to remember all of your professional successes and stay positive. Here are five ways to overcome the cognitive dissonance of having to sell yourself and your abilities to a potential employer when you’ve taken a major hit in your self-confidence.
Write down 10 reasons for your success and read them every morning.
Writing a list of accomplishments helps you change negative thought patterns that can destroy your confidence. It’s not enough just to write it down – it’s about reading it every morning to prime your mind to think differently about yourself and look for a job. Instead of focusing on the things that make you feel bad about unemployment and constant rejection, focus on the realities in front of you. What made you successful in your previous work environments? What made you “go to” colleagues when they had a difficult problem to solve? What skills do you possess and how do you use them to your advantage? For example:
I can quickly build trusting relationships, which is proven in the workplace when people rely on me to solve sensitive issues.
My performance has been praised each year, specifically for my ability to align stakeholders with the varying needs of their business.
Having the truth in front of you about your skills and abilities will help negate any unhelpful self-talk because it’s hard to deny the truth.
Set daily and weekly goals.
When you’re working, you usually know what goals you’re trying to achieve each day, week, or month. When you’re not working, you have a lofty goal of finding a new job, but as the days turn into weeks and then months, you may feel defeated that you haven’t achieved your goal.
Break this larger goal down into smaller parts. Determine the exact amount of time you will spend updating your resume, practicing interviews, researching potential opportunities, and applying for jobs. And don’t just look at your career – consider home goals that you can complete to feel a sense of accomplishment. Whether you’re painting a room, cleaning out the closets, or your kids’ room, now’s the time to pick one thing each day or week to stick around.
Find a digital or paper planner that will inspire you to write down your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. It should be broken down each week by what you will accomplish each day. Setting goals for yourself each day will help you “check the box” on both your job search and perhaps that long list of home projects you didn’t have time to get done. And using the planner will provide visual evidence that you’re getting something done every day. Ultimately, it will help you rebuild the confidence to carry on until you achieve the end goal of a new job.
Create a group to communicate.
Invite a group of people in your field (or a different field if you’re looking to create a career hub) to meet periodically and remind each other why you enjoy working together and how you can help each other. Consider this a Mastermind Brainstorming group. You can talk about how you can transfer your skills and abilities to a different field or give each other feedback about a resume or interview. This group could also aim to bring job leads to each other, connect members with connections or additional resources, or hold members accountable for their goals. Each meeting can help you rebuild your confidence because people are trying to help you, and they wouldn’t if they didn’t believe in you.
Show self-care.
Looking for a job can be stressful – every day you have to get up and apply for more jobs and connect with more contacts in companies with job vacancies. As Ben Alldis reminds me during every Peloton stretching session, “Self-love is never selfish.” Self-care is done with the pure intention of giving yourself new mental, social, physical or emotional resources to keep moving forward. Consider taking time to do something you’re good at or enjoy every day or week, like playing golf, pickleball, hiking, biking, or just reading a book. Adding low-stress, achievable goals to those activities—for example, “I’m going to read 30 pages a day” or “I’m going to bike 10 miles this week”—can help you feel accomplished.
volunteer.
It is crucial that you always think about how you will hone your skills over the course of your career. Volunteering is a great way to keep your skills sharp and even develop new ones. Bringing your experience as a volunteer will remind you that you have skills that can bring value to an organization to help achieve its goals.
Volunteering can also have great psychological benefits – helping others makes you feel grateful, and studies It has been shown consistently that those who are grateful are happier because they focus on what is good in their lives.
You may also be able to practice the skills you used in your previous jobs and prove not only to yourself, but also to others, that you have useful skills and abilities. You can also teach others in the organization, which will help restore your confidence as a subject matter expert.
. . .
You can’t replace your old job by staring at a computer eight hours a day or praying for a recruiter to call you. Give yourself permission to look for work for a set amount of time each day and then empower yourself to shut down the computer and try one of these other ways to rebuild your confidence. Confidence comes from feeling empowered in your mind and body to achieve anything you set out to achieve. Building your confidence when you’re not working will allow you to believe in yourself holistically, so when you find the next opportunity, you won’t depend on the job to assert your worth. As for Tonya, she accepts a job offer after six months of searching and is confident in her abilities, even if this new opportunity isn’t her final destination.
* The name has been changed to protect privacy.