How To Look After Your Mental Health While Job Searching

Allow Yourself To Feel Low

While it's important to maintain a positive outlook, it's also important to allow yourself to feel low from time to time. This can help you process and work through difficult emotions and ultimately lead to a more authentic and balanced approach to life. Here are some tips for allowing yourself to feel low:

• Acknowledge your emotions: Recognise and accept your feelings without judgement. This can help you process and work through them more effectively.
• Reach out for support: Talk to someone you trust about how you're feeling. This can help you feel less alone and provide you with a fresh perspective.
• Take care of yourself: Practice self-care activities that help you feel better, such as getting enough sleep, exercising, or spending time in nature.

Remember, feeling low is a normal part of the human experience. By allowing yourself to feel these emotions, you can ultimately grow and learn from them.

Be Kind To Yourself

Job hunting can be emotionally and mentally exhausting. It can generate feelings of grief, anxiety, and self-doubt. Setting healthy boundaries, establishing realistic goals, focusing on quality over quantity, allowing yourself to feel low, and being kind to yourself are key ways to take care of your mental health. It's important to empathise with yourself in a difficult situation and to celebrate the small wins to keep your confidence going. Keep yourself motivated - having an upbeat attitude will make all the difference!

Avoid Negative Self-Talk

Job hunting can easily lead to negative self-talk and rumination, causing stress and insecurities to grow. To combat this, it's important to recognise negative self-talk and replace it with comforting thoughts or activities. Avoiding negative self-talk will help you stay focused on your career goals and work towards achieving them.

Set Realistic Targets

It's important to set achievable targets that fits in with your schedule. Whether that means applying to one job per month, or one job per day, make sure your goals align with your other responsibilities. Don't be discouraged if you need to adjust your goals along the way, but having benchmarks in place can help you stay focused on what you want to achieve.

Everything is Temporary

It's worth remembering that everything is temporary -including this period of job hunting. Don't let rejection or setbacks get you down, as they are just temporary roadblocks. Keep a positive mindset and stay motivated, knowing that a new opportunity is just around the corner. This is a chance to reflect on your career goals and priorities, and make any necessary adjustments. Appreciate the journey and the lessons learned along the way, as they will ultimately lead you to where you are meant to be.

You Are Not Alone

Recognise that you are not alone and at some point, nearly everyone has been in the job-searching process and can relate to what a strange and uncertain era it is in life. Try reaching out to others and asking about their experiences with job searching, they might even have some advice for you! You could even join online job search communities or forums where you can share experiences, advice and tips with other job seekers similar to yourself.