Maintain Your Job Search Mojo with a Self-Care Plan

Job searching is mentally and physically exhausting. You are depleting your dopamine looking for work. Here is how to regain your mojo!

When I graduated law school in 2012, I remember applying to over 400 jobs. I got such a flurry of rejections that my family would sometimes raid my mailbox and toss the rejections for me out of courtesy.

I am Vik Kapoor and I felt like I had Mono for a year…I was tired all the time and the outlook was grim.

In moments of generosity, people went out of their way to help me get through that time. But I still remember the many mean and hostile encounters as well. The discouraging comments, the ghosting, and the pretend friends.

It was a tough time.

You might be feeling the same. A range of emotions and adrenal fatigue. It may not always be easy to keep the energy going for job searching.

Resignation is a powerful mood that feeds off of this fatigue.

Do Not Give Up!

We find ourselves often making a choice between self-care and self-soothing, or dare I say self-abuse.

If you know your brain science, you know that this choice isn’t really a fair one because the more primal part of the brain will also be faster and stronger in the long run.

Doom scrolling, binge-watching, or binge-drinking will get us through the day. Sometimes that is what we need, so call it a cheat day or whatever you want.

But on other days, when we can do better, let’s do better. Your written self-care plan will help you, and it’s a friendly reminder of your well-being and your future.

Create a Written Self-Care Plan

We often have retirement plans, financial plans, and emergency plans but rarely do we have a written self-care plan. I would venture to guess you don’t have a written self-care plan either… yet.

I learned about the self-care plan while I was studying refugee trauma. I took the written self-care plan to FEMA and to several conflict areas for the United Nations.

The research and practice around this confirms that when you have a written plan you have a much better shot at executing on that plan.

Regain Your Job Search Mojo!

If you are feeling exhausted or worse, now is the time to reclaim your energy. You owe it to yourself, and there are some straightforward ways to get going.

This is what Wednesday’s Ask Me Anything is about.

Learn new tools and a quick framework to build out your own written self-care plan, so you can recenter and recharge whenever you need it.

Paid Career Pivot Subscribers can join us for Wednesday’s AMA Zoom meeting.