A Self-Empowering Job Search Resource

When job seekers think of resources to help them find a job, they usually focus on external options, such as job boards, LinkedIn, Twitter, career coaches, resume writers, and more. However, after trying and not winning the game of finding a job after an endless length of time, despair and discouragement can set in. Maybe now is the time to look at resources to assist your internal process.

Journaling is such a resource. When frustration and defeat dominate your thoughts, they can overflow into your actions causing inactivity - the biggest enemy of your finding a job. If you want to work on your inner thoughts and feelings, start keeping a journal. Writing about what's going on with you - inside and out - can help you manage it all so much better. Journaling is an easy-to-use self-empowerment tool - give it a try!

Here's a quote from Steve Pavlina's blog, "Personal Development for Smart People," that summarizes quite well how journaling helps:

"While your brain is technically capable of processing a great deal of input simultaneously, your conscious thoughts play out in a certain sequence. One thought triggers the next, which triggers the next, and so on. Sometimes these sequences have a few branches, but they’re still subject to linear time, and at any given moment, you’re following one of those branches. These thought sequences have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it’s nearly impossible to see the big picture overhead view of a sequence while you’re stuck in playback mode.

This is where journaling can provide huge advantages. Journaling allows you to break free of sequential thinking and examine your thoughts from a bird’s-eye view. When you record your sequential thoughts in a tangible medium, you can then go back and review those thoughts from a third-person perspective. While you’re recording the thoughts, you’re in first-person mode. But when you’re reading them, you can remain dissociated instead of associated. This dissociative view, when combined with what you’ve already learned from the associative view, will bring you much closer to seeing the truth of your situation."

Until recently, there were only a couple of ways to journal - write by hand in a notebook or type a Word document and save it on your computer. Now there is a third option: participate in an online community where journal topics are even provided for you to help sort out your thoughts.

Last week Abilities Enhanced launched a free Career Community where after you join you will receive a free 52-week journal. A public forum and Abilities Enhanced newsletter are also included in the program. Of course, Career Coach comments from me are part of your membership. You may choose the level of privacy you wish to maintain and how much you want to interact with your peers.

As our career community grows, I will be adding paid options to enhance your experience. But for now, there's a lot to do that doesn't cost a dime - perfect for the unemployed job seeker. However, journaling is really for everyone involved in career management.

To join, click on the link below that will take you to a shopping cart where the purchase price is $0. Following a couple of thank you's, you'll receive a "Next steps" email from me with a link that takes you to the actual AE Career Community site where you'll need to set up your profile to become a member. This is a critical step - you have to set up your profile before the career community will let you participate.

(Note: if you are a career coach and want to join, please do! The free option is open to all.)

Here is the link to get you started:

http://tinyurl.com/29osgno

Happy journaling - hope to see you in the AE Career Community soon! And, please, let me know if you have any questions.

Wishing you career success in 2010!

Meg

SPECIAL NOTE: I am honored to be a member of the Career Collective, a group of careers experts who will each month share their advice and tips to enhance the management of your career. Please link to   their blog posts below. Your comments are invited and much appreciated. Follow our hash-tag on Twitter - #careercollective - as well as follow everyone's individual tweets on this month's topic: "Favorite Resources for Job Seekers."

 Career Collective Posts for September 2010:

If your industry does not participate online, you can lead the way, @Keppie_Careers 

6 Ideas to Put In Your Toolbox, @WorkWithIllness,

Your Best Job Search Resource? You!, @WalterAkana

In a Job Search, Knowledge is Power, @barbarasafani

Jump Start Your Job Search Now!, @resumeservice

Favourite Resources for Jobseekers, @GayleHoward

The Best Job Search Tool Ever, @careersherpa

Find What You Do Best, Know Your Stuff, and Connect, @chandlee

27 Recommended Blogs for Entry-Level Job Seekers, @heatherhuhman

Invaluable Resources for Job Search Success, @heathermundell

Favorite Social-Media Resources for Job-seekers, @KatCareerGal

Canadian Resources for Job Seekers, @EliteResumes @MartinBuckland

A Self-Empowering Job Search Resource, @KCCareerCoach

Covering your bases: 5 ultra-useful online career resources, @LaurieBerenson

Favorite resources for Job seekers, @DawnBugni

Top 3 Resources for Job Seekers to Position Themselves as Experts and Increase their Visibility, @expatcoachmegan

Time as a Career Resource: How "Not" to Squander It, @ValueIntoWords

Favorite Internet Resources for Jobseekers, @ErinKennedyCPRW

The Facts Behind Why LinkUp Is the Most Revolutionary Job Search Engine Available to Job Seekers, @GLHoffman

Comments

[Gayle Howard]

What a great idea Meg! I'm also encouraging this type of work too as part of a job loss program I've been doing which encompasses meditation, visualization, emotional closure and moving forward. I think these things in combination with writing notes and journals can really give a voice to those suppressed feelings that negatively impact a job search. A great recommendation.

[Meg Montford]

Thanks, Gayle. Appreciate your comments. What I want is a tool that brings everyone together in the spirit of career management - the unemployed as well as the actively employed. We can all learn from each other. Your program sounds very comprehensive!

[Laurie Berenson]

This is such a great idea, Meg! It's important to recognize the emotional side of job searching, and most especially extended job search efforts. It can be extremely therapeutic to journal about one's thoughts and feelings - plus the option you've shared of doing it as part of an online community brings added benefits not received if using pen and paper or Microsoft Word.

[Heather Mundell]

Meg, this is a fabulous idea, and I'm so glad that you're starting this community! So many people will benefit.

The excerpt from Steve Pavlina's blog is pretty fascinating. Just recently I have decide to resume journaling as a way to explore some new ideas I have, and now I understand just why it's a good idea...

And finally, you are so right - inactivity is the biggest obstacle to finding a job. That's one reason I ask new clients who aren't employed: "Are you doing everything you can possibly think of to find a job?" The answer is usually no, and then we go from there.

[Career Sherpa]

Meg,
This is a wonderful concept!

I was contacted once by a woman who wanted to offer journaling classes to help job seekers, she had lots of data that suggested the writing really helped move people forward in their job searches. I am a believer. I am so glad to hear that there is now a resource online!

Thanks for sharing and keeping us up to date!

[Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, Master Resume Writer]

Meg,
As someone who has looked to writing as a way to process and organize thoughts and ideas since I was a little girl, and now as a career resume writer, I say, "Amen" to your journaliing resource for job seekers.

I love the idea that "journaling allows you to break free of sequential thinking and examine your thoughts from a bird’s-eye view." This makes good sense! We sometimes try so hard to "sequence" our thoughts, and become stuck. This process you offer is such a beautiful tool to allow those loose thoughts to fall onto the virtual page and branch out sequentially (interesting!). The idea that our "brains are technically capable of processing a great deal of input simultaneously" is a good reminder that sometimes facilitating that processing in a new way will better leverage the technical aptitude we sometimes forget we possess.

Well done!

Jacqui