Job Hunting Tips #1 Containing Anxiety

It hangs from ceiling above your bed while you toss through night hours. It waits inside door of every employment office you enter. It dogs your footsteps as you pound job search pavement. It lounges in an empty chair as you crawl through another desultory interview. It sits on your shoulder while you balance your checkbook’s alarmingly diminishing balance.

Its name is anxiety. It’s made up of fear, self-doubt, guilt, dread, and self-reproach. It ties your stomach in knots, makes sweat ooze from your pores, makes your head hurt, your memory blur, and your concentration dissipate. You can’t wash it away, will it away or beat it away. The only way to contain it is to embrace it, to make it your ally and your friend. How?

1. Although anxiety can unnerve you and make you feel paralyzed, consider its ability to energize you. Watch it carefully, without emotion or judgment distorting your vision, and you will see it raise hairs on your neck, excite your thought processes, heighten your senses, stir your imagination and make you keenly aware of being alive. Trace its pathway through your body, coursing through your veins and touching every part of each extremity. Instead of fighting it, embrace it as if it were a natural amphetamine, a pill that makes you feel a little strange but also exhilarated.

Job Hunting Tips #2 Self-Preservation

Dr. Bola operated a rehabilitation company, developing innovative job search techniques for disabled workers, for 20 years. A licensed clinical psychologist, she developed vocational programs for mentally ill, served