EP 299: What to Do When Your Job Search Feels Hopeless

Welcome to the podcast. Today I'm doing a podcast on a LinkedIn post that I wanted to speak to. I'm gonna read the post and then I'm gonna do an episode on what this person says, because I think it's what so many people are feeling. Here's what the post says. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. That being said, I feel like unemployment is one of the biggest tests in human resilience. You want to and try to control the narrative, but we're at a constant mercy of other decision makers. Yes, we choose where we apply, what we're qualified for, what we're willing to sacrifice, but in the end, it's never really our call, is it? We hit up the job boards, but no matter how early we are, we see it already has been visited by over 100 applicants. We apply anyway, throwing a Hail Mary into the mix. We try to be proactive, reach out to as many people as possible, seek the attention of a friend of a friend who knows a guy who's hiring for a role that's the perfect fit, but then they never respond, or if they do respond, it may be way too late. There are so many obstacles, so many instances that have a potential dead end. It's degrading. Sure, we can choose to walk away from an offer that doesn't quite hit the mark, but again, it was the company's decision. Decision to lowball the salary. You want to negotiate, and companies will compromise. Others will rescind the offer. At the end of the day, we're the ones who are sitting on our own little islands, having to muster up the energy to keep persisting, keep applying, keep hoping, keep manifesting, keep healing after each and every no. I'm not sure we were made to withstand this much stress, and under the guise of constant rejection. This is uncharted territory, at least for me. I'm not looking for answers here, as it seems way too many people are eager to jump in the comments and start blaming and pointing out what each of us are doing wrong, and that's why we're still in this mess. I know everyone out there who's in the same situation and is trying their absolute best. They too are feeling the exhaustion and experience every day like it's Groundhog Day. They too are feeling the guilt whenever they take 15 minutes for themselves to rejuvenate before they hit the job boards again, feeling like they may have missed something just because they walked away from the Their computer. They too know what it's like to see the inbox stay empty for hours and hours as their bank account totals continue to bleed out from every hemorrhaging and festering wound that gets worse as days, weeks, months creep by without a single hope of a prospect. I don't know what the answer is other than to keep chugging along in a market that doesn't seem to want to applaud job seekers for their efforts. It's an exercise in futility. Others are calling it a humiliation ritual. Nevertheless, what choice do we have but to keep going? Okay, this post—it sparked a chord in me. I actually because I went through it myself, right? I went through financial struggles myself. I went and got a job. I did it quickly. Reading the post makes you feel depressed. Reading her words and the way that she's described things—it's depressing. And so if you listen to the way she talks about her world, her reality. These posts are the problem with why everybody thinks that this is the situation. And it's not the situation for everybody. It is her thinking and her continued thinking that continues to make this reality for her. And so with business, it is very similar. We could read a post of somebody who started a business who's, who could say the exact same thing. They could say, it's up to the customers to buy from me. It's up to everyone else who decides whether or not they want to spend their money or not. It's up to the economy, and there's nothing I can do other than just keep going with this poor attitude and this poor energy, right? A business owner could say that who's been struggling for a long time. Somebody who is looking for their husband or wife who has been having a lot of dates that haven't been working out. And they could say the same thing. This could be the exact same post from somebody who is trying to accomplish anything. They could say, well, it's not within my control. It's ultimately the people that I'm dating that are not the right people, or they don't like me. I like them, but they don't like me. If somebody wants to lose weight, they could choose the story of, oh, but I'm doing all the things and yet I'm not losing any weight. And There's like, I'm doing all the things I can control, yet it's not working. And essentially that's the underlying thing is it's not working. I have no control over these things. And even the things she does say she has control over, she's saying, well, those things don't pan out anyway because nobody wants to hire me. There's too many applicants. Like everything is being put on the external and all the negative external. So when your brain thinks like this, it is going to find a way to see more of it and make it more True. I don't think that I'm coming in with some toxic positive stance because that's what I think people think I do is like oh she's just gonna try to reframe everything and make it sound like it's positive because that wasn't her experience right and I have been in this place so I understand it's not so easy to just get to a positive place right away when you're feeling like this when you're feeling like you have tried everything and you've had so many nos and you've had so many failures and I totally totally Totally get that. Like, in my business, I've had a lot, a lot of failures. I've had a lot of really close financial times. I've had a lot of that stuff myself. So I get that. And what I would say to this person right now is I would say, yeah, it's hard. Be where you're at and be like, yeah, this is hard. And feel the feelings. Be like, yeah, I'm going to feel some fear right now. I'm going to feel some frustration right now. I'm going to feel whatever it is I need to feel. And I'm not going to say, oh yeah, move to being positive and think about these things differently and reframe your thinking. Sometimes that is not what we need to do. If you just got broken up with, or if you were driving and a tree hit your car, it wouldn't be realistic or human to be like, oh, just get over it and be like, you're going to be fine. At least you didn't die. Everything's okay, right? No. You're gonna feel the feelings that any human, normal human, is gonna feel. So I would say the first step is to, is to feel those feelings. And feeling feelings is very underrated skill. And once I learned it, things could really speed up for me and things could totally change for me. So when I was having financial stress and pressure that was like probably the worst I've had in my life, I was starting to Resist the fear and the scarcity. So scarcity is a feeling, it's a version of fear and not enoughness. And I was resisting it. I wanted to be, I wanted to try to get myself to positive as much as I could. And so I was listening to a lot of positive podcasts and it wasn't going in because my brain wasn't believing it. And what I didn't realize was, is I was trying to resist it. And I even had a friend who's a somatic practitioner. She walked me through an exercise where I could feel the fear and I could just feel the anxiety, and I still was resisting it. Like, I didn't realize it, but I was still resisting it. And so it wasn't until I learned to actually welcome it and actually embrace it and actually be okay with it being there. That I started to change the way that I operated. So if you need to feel fear and scarcity, like if you are feeling fear and scarcity, the fastest way out of it is to actually let it in. Imagine it's knocking on your door and it's like, hey, it's fear. I need to come in right now. Instead of you saying, no, go away. I want to try to stay positive. I don't want you in my house right now. Instead of that, and this is counterintuitive, but it is life-changing, you actually open the door and you say, okay, come on in. I'm going to feel you. I'm going to feel every part of you. You are welcome here. You can stay as long as you need to. Let's do this fear. And you breathe through it. You do what you need to do. Maybe you cry. However it is you want to process, move the feeling. of fear or scarcity or whatever it is. And I want to do some work on some other emotions as well, but this one is a big one. It's like you feel this fear and scarcity, and once you move it, you process it. The point of it is because the chemicals are already in your brain, you've already had these thoughts. So this person who's posted this, she's already having these thoughts. And when you have these thoughts, they release chemicals in your brain, and the chemicals make you feel Sensations in your body. So you might have like a pit in your stomach or the anxiety. It always is in my stomach. It's always in the top part. It's already there. So when you try to push it away, your body's actually doing so much more work trying to push it away, trying to ignore it, trying to make it go away. When, if you were to actually try inviting it in, welcoming it and saying, you can stay as long as you like. It's totally fine that you're here. I understand why you're here. It makes perfect sense. Then your brain is able to process it through. It's like, okay, we can move through this now. We know how, and you'll get better at moving through it because you have fear, just like the CEO of ChatGPT has fear. He experiences the same fear, the same feelings, the same sensations, just like somebody who's experiencing unemployment is going to be feeling the fear of losing their livelihood or their house or whatever. That fear is actually the same sensation as someone at a very high level experiences. And the ability to feel the feeling all the way through is actually going to change the way that you experience the feeling. So there's a guy named Joe Hudson, and he teaches about moving emotion. And that's basically all he does. He teaches people and he coaches the top CEOs in Silicon Valley and he teaches them how to move emotion. And what he does is he will sit with them while they're experiencing their fear or there's the scarcity or the shame or whatever it is they're experiencing, and he will just encourage them to feel that feeling. And He will teach them how to feel that feeling all the way through so that then when they've gotten through it, they can then go take action from a more productive space. Because the resisting is what makes it last forever. It's like you resist it, you try to stay positive. You— like, I was in this for months just resisting it and trying to stay positive. And once I was just like, okay, come on in, fear, you're welcome. You can come in. He has this quote and it says, joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she will not enter a house where her children are not welcome. And joy is the feeling that we want to have, but we can't just feel joy all the time because it wouldn't have any meaning. We need to feel the other emotions too, the ones on the spectrum. Fear, scarcity, shame, disappointment, humiliation, embarrassment, frustration. We need to feel all those emotions too, and none of them are going to hurt you. Like, none of them actually hurt you. What hurts you most is resisting them. So we used to think that stress caused heart disease, and after many studies, stress doesn't actually cause it. It's actually resisting it. Resisting the stress, trying to push it away, trying to pretend it's not there, trying to ignore it, trying to distract from it, that causes the heart disease. Stress is okay. It's okay to feel some stress sometimes. It's okay to feel some pressure sometimes. It's okay to feel some fear and some scarcity and some doubt. It's okay to feel all those things. And if you try this, you will start to notice that the feelings become less intense and that they don't hang around for as long as you think they will. But the key is you can't do it just to be able to say you did it and then be like, okay, when am I going to feel good again? You actually have to be willing to feel them for as long as they need to be there. I remember when I had broken up with my 10-year partner who was narcissistic, and I had gotten out of that relationship and I'd hired a coach And she was helping me to— her tagline was, get over your ex and find someone better. And I remember I kept saying, okay, I'm ready to go out and date again. I'm ready to go out and date again. And she was like, no, no, no, you have to be content with yourself, with your own life before you go out and date again. Because I'm the kind of person who my whole pattern was I was never alone. I was always with the next person because I didn't want to be alone. Being alone was really painful for me, so I would choose to be with someone who I didn't even really like just so I didn't have to be alone. Now I know that that wasn't healthy now, but that's kind of the pattern that I did through all through my teens. I always had a boyfriend even if I didn't really like him. And so to break this pattern, my coach said you need to be alone and just be so in love with your own life that you don't need to date. Like, you literally do not feel the need To go and date somebody, and so I thought to myself, okay, I'm I can do that no problem. So I started doing my exercise classes. I'm like creating a life for myself, going out with friends, and then I'd be like, okay, okay, now can I date? And she's like, you're missing the point. And I remember thinking, okay, but what do you mean? I'm happy. I'm and she's like because. If you really did get the point, you wouldn't be asking when you can date. So if you're feeling the fear and then you're like, okay, okay, is the fear going to be gone yet? Can it go now? Is it done yet? Like, you're missing the point. You need to be in that space of you're welcome, you can stay as long as you need, it's okay for you to be here. And as a human, we are not going to experience the feeling forever. It's actually not Feasible for you to experience fear forever. The thing that makes you experience it longer is pushing it away. Another good analogy is like a nagging child. If you have a nagging child that's not getting his or her needs met and they keep coming to you and they're like, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, and you keep pushing the child away and saying, leave me alone, not right now, whatever you might want to say to the child, the child's going to just keep coming back and they're going to nag you and they're going to keep getting louder and louder and louder until they get their needs met, right? But if you sit with the child, address the child, see what their needs are, meet their needs, then they're going to stop nagging you, right? Because they don't need to anymore. That's how I thought about this with the feelings. It's like fear comes knocking. I might have some thoughts that create some fear, and I'll be like, okay, come on in, come on in. Now, I don't want to indulge the fear. I don't want to Have thoughts that spiral the fear out of control and make it more intense. But I do want to just say, I understand that you're here. This circumstance is creating fear for you, and that makes perfect sense that you're here. So come on in. Then I'm going to have those sentences. Like if you're in a situation where maybe you are unemployed, you've lost your job, you're laid off or something like that, you're going to have those sentences, the sentences that say, oh my God, what if I end up back living with my mom again? What if I lose my house? What if I lose everything? Those are sentences. And another strategy that's really good is you can say, yeah, that's an interesting sentence, right? You can have fear like that. I'm so scared that I'm going to end up go have to live back with my parents or something. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting sentence. Yeah, that's an interesting sentence. Hmm. Yeah, that's an interesting sentence. Because I didn't want to indulge the sentences. I didn't want to fuel them. And as one of my mentors says, make out with them. I didn't wanna make out with the sentences. I didn't wanna story fondle or make it bigger in my head, but I also didn't wanna shut them down because they were valid and they're only trying to protect me, right? The fear thoughts and the scarcity, it's all trying to protect you because your brain wants you to be safe. I would be like, yeah, that's an interesting sentence, isn't it? Hmm. That's funny. That's, hmm, I wonder where that came from. And I would just say, yep, sentences, more sentences. Oh, look at that one. Yep, sentences, sentences. And then I would have more positive ones come online, more positive ones come online, and ones that felt better. And another way to deal with it is you can't really know the future. So we might think that, you know, if we read somebody's post like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, We might think, oh, that's what the world is and that's what's happening. That's one person's version of what they're experiencing. And that person's version is valid. It's true to them. It's what they're having to work through right now. It's their thoughts, their interpretation, their perception. And their perception and their experience has nothing to do with yours. Just because they're having that experience, it doesn't mean that is your experience. It's not going to be identical or the same. Your brain might want to look for similarities, but there's also a lot of things that are very different about your experience than this person's experience. No matter who you are, there's going to be a lot of things that are different, and your experience can never be that of somebody else's. When I was looking for my job, I know that my experience is my own. I know that the ability that I have to create something is different than somebody else's ability. I know that I can have a different energy, and I know that I'm capable of that. I know that I can choose that. Now, some of you might not want to go there right now. It depends on if you're in a very negative state, like the person who wrote this post. You probably need to feel some fear, some scarcity, and you need to get good at feeling that so that then you can move forward with your wisdom and your genius. Because we are so creative as human beings. There are so many very creative ways to solve our problems. That is what we are here to do. When you get around people who are not struggling, or they actually don't think it's that big of a deal, you start to see things differently and feel things differently and just see a different reality. These things happen. It's like, it's only because they were thinking differently. They've conditioned different thoughts. They've tried things and they've seen different results, and they've chosen to look at what they've been doing and seen what they could control and seen what did work. And the other person, maybe same capabilities, same qualifications, chose to look at things that didn't work, chose to look at what they couldn't control, chose to look at what they had no power over, right? When there was a lot of things that they do have power over that they can do differently and that they haven't done yet. For the purposes of this episode, I'm going to give you one thing that you could do differently that you might not have thought of, just to prove my point here. So the woman who made the post, she said Ultimately, it's not in our control. Ultimately, all we can do is put— is throw our Hail Mary into the mix and hope for the best. And that was her perspective. And I'm willing to bet you that there's actually 1,000 different things that you could do that does not involve that at all. Here's one. You could bypass completely that system by doing this one thing. You could start to search LinkedIn posts instead of jobs. You can go into the search bar on LinkedIn and you can search for the word hiring and then you select posts. You can select or you can search for my team and then select post. You can select your job title and then select post. You put in the search bar and then you hit the the word post. You'll have options at the bottom. It'll say. Jobs, posts, people. So it's like posts. You're going to search the posts. You're going to search on LinkedIn for what people are posting, what words they're using. You can search for we're growing. You can search for the word apply. Search for words like what would someone post if they were hiring for someone? And maybe you see some posts of someone hiring and then you can see some more words that people would use and then search the search bar for what posts have those words in them. Then you can send the person who posted that a value offering, a connection note. You say, hey, I saw that you had posted about this role. I've spent the last few years doing this. I've done this. I'd love to see if I could help you with this. Then start being proactive about finding the people who are posting and hiring. So now you've got a human being on LinkedIn who's posted about a role and you made a connection with them and you've sent them a specific note. This is one way that I guarantee you probably haven't tried yet. You haven't done. And it just goes to show, because when somebody's thinking like the woman who posted, well, we have no choice. We just have to throw in a thing in the sea of applications and hope for the best. And it's just a Hail Mary. That's one mindset that thinking that is going to shut down every other creative opportunity that your brain might come up with. It'll shut it down. Your brain, if your brain believes that, it's just going to say, yep, I guess that's just what we got to do. Okay. And it won't give you any new ideas. Whereas if you're thinking, literally, there are 1,000 other ways to get through. If your brain can't get to 1,000, then that's okay. You say there's 5 different ways that I have not even come across or done. That I could be put forward for a role. There's 5 different ways that do not involve sending a thing in and hoping for a Hail Mary. Or maybe even there's 2, or there's 1, right? Then your brain is going to start to think of what it might be. But as long as you keep shutting yourself down, and thoughts that shut us down are like, this is not working, nothing works, nothing's in my control, ultimately it's not up to me. Those thoughts are going to shut your brain down from coming up with anything that could be different. So I'll recap what we talked about here. One, if you're feeling very, very negative about something, the first step is not to try to jump to the positive. It's just to simply feel your feelings and learn how to feel them, knowing that when you feel them and you realize there's nothing to be afraid of, You'll start to experience yourself and your mind and everything a bit differently because you'll be able to take action from a more productive place afterwards. It's like fear keeps knocking and it keeps knocking, just like the child who won't stop nagging, and it will keep knocking until you agree to let it in. And you could let it in and just say, okay, I'm non-judgmentally aware that you're here, okay, fine, but I'm not happy about it. And that might be step one, but The part where the real growth happens is when you're like, I welcome you. Come on in. You can stay for as long as you need. Do you want a glass of milk? Do you want some cookies? Please sit on my couch. And then fear doesn't become so scary anymore. And literally you can feel it. You can breathe. Breathing deeply always helps. You can do some EFT tapping as another way to really process those feelings through. There's lots of techniques to feel your feelings, experience your emotions, and learning to do that will lead you to a better life and a higher function of your brain. Such a higher function. And a little thing that is happening to me, I'm like, okay, I'm ready to welcome fear in anytime fear wants to come. I'm like, okay, come on in. I welcome you. And what's been happening to me lately is literally fear will say, actually, never mind, I'm okay. I don't need to visit you today. And I've been finding that very interesting because I'll say I'm opening the door and then I'll say, come on in, fear, come on in. And it'll say, no, actually, it's cool. I'm going to go. And I'll say, are you sure? I'm like, you're welcome. And it'll say, no, it's okay. See ya, and then it might not come around for a while. So your experience will be very interesting, and I'd love to hear if you experience anything similar to me going through this process or how that's worked for you. I recommend Joe Hudson if you'd like some more information on how to process emotions. He is one of the top Silicon Valley coaches, and he's like. A really cool person who I really enjoyed his podcast. It's called The Art of Accomplishment. So I highly recommend you check that out. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And another thing, if you are struggling with getting an interview right now, I've just created a free writing class that will help you to get an interview. And it's how I did it. I did it using 2 skills. One was strong writing skills and the other one was strong research skills and how to get Somebody to respond to you, how to get an interview. And I didn't know these people and I was doing this as a test to see, can I get interviews even if I don't need one right now? I'm going to see if I can get an interview. So I've done that. I've given you the exact examples of how I did it, what I said, although the wording isn't the most important thing. It's the skills and the attitude that I had towards it and the things that I focus on. If someone said to me, you got to go get an interview next week, I could say, no problem. And I want you to be able to do the same. So if you would like to get that, it's free. Free writing class on the 2 skills that you need to get interviews. So if you are struggling to get interviews right now, as I hear that is something that people are really struggling with, I've created that class for you completely free of charge. And I'd love to hear what other kind of content you'd like me to make. So if you'd like me to talk about a certain topic, if you'd like more information on something, if you heard me say something in this episode that you're like, oh, I really wanna double-click on that. I wanna hear more about what she has to say about that. Please let me know because I would love to make some content on some specific things that you found Really interesting. Let me know what that is. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate your time and attention. I know that it's not cheap these days, and I will see you, talk to you next week. And if you're on YouTube, please go ahead and subscribe to my channel. Give me a thumbs up if you like the video. Give me a thumbs down if you didn't like the video, and click the links down below. I've got those free resources for you and a free a free class if you'd like to learn how my whole process on how to get a job you love, and I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye!