Take This Job And...
By: PT Staff

Psychology Today Online, 6 September 2005
Last Reviewed 23 Jan 2009


Many people are simply afraid to look for another job in a bad economy. Doesn't it make sense to wait for the market to pick up?

When anyone considers a job change, there will be reasons to stay put—the economy, your pension, being vested. Reasons always have a real element and an anxiety-avoiding element. Your strategy is to test reality by facing the anxiety (are there really no new jobs?). As you take action—write the resume, network—you will begin to assess your realistic limitations. You will also whittle down your anxiety.

What if the anxiety is crippling?

Try to separate your anxiety from your ambition. Picture your fear sitting on your right shoulder. Now look left. Desire and its accompanying vision have an energy—it's a counterpoint to anxiety. Reassure yourself that if you are allowed to dream, you may never decide to act.

Dreaming, thinking—and then acting—will strengthen the vision and make you cower less behind anxiety. Thinking costs nothing. Don't impulsively decide to quit and become a carpenter. Just register for one woodworking course. You're moving to the left but keeping the right in place.

How do I find my focus and vision?

Start by formulating positive statements from general to specific: "I will have a job that interests me" to "I would be good in my own business." Once you've formed the statements, write them, repeat them and visualize yourself in a setting where you might live them. Visions grow in this kind of mental soil. Creative activity—journal keeping, a return to the violin—has a way of stirring vision. We lose parts of ourselves as we grow older. Reclaiming them can renew possibilities. So can giving. When you don't know what to change, volunteering can be rewarding. At the least, it will take you out of yourself, and at the most, it will return you to yourself.

So we need to turn on the vision and turn down the anxiety.

Break job change down to bite-size steps and never look past the next task. If you need to call three scary people for an interview, put all your energy into that first call.

Also, volunteer for new tasks at your job and give yourself an opportunity to test your range in a safe environment. Try on a new identity at a volunteer job: You will feel less pressure because pay is not involved. Request a transfer at your current job or offer to train a new employee—you might get a larger vision of yourself.

What can we learn from the divas, explorers and entrepreneurs who embrace change? What do they have that the majority of us lack?

Juice, life force, X-factor—we are all born with it. Then, it's tampered with because life is hard, we have to be civilized or your mother told you you were stupid. Shyness and fear overwhelm this force, depression submerges it, rejection scars it and competition makes us uncertain about it. But the person who acts with courage—to face down anxiety—has the great reward of knowing it can be done. And that person is more likely to do it again. And even when these risk takers fail—which they do plenty—they don't die. This is true whether you're batting your eyes at someone in a singles bar or going to the bank for a loan. You went in, they said you were stupid and you lived to tell the tale.

Do you have enough instincts to turn yourself around?!