I am not finding a job, I am sad, I am angry. And this is OK!
How my job research is challenging me and what it is teaching me.
I didn’t think it could have happened to me. When other people told me that it would be difficult to find a job after the Master Degree I was skeptical. I had my plans, I had my high GPA, and I had my network. I was sorry for them, but I would have never be caught in that trap. I made the mistake that generally affect many other humans: bad things happen to others. Period.
I thought I would have had only one problem: choosing. The world needs not only young people with a Master Degree in Economics, but the world needs me. Then applications and days passed, the first rejection was surely a mistake, the second was the wrong job position for me and the third was part of the process. After more than 300 resumes sent I started to doubt myself. Maybe I miscalculated something, or, even worse, maybe I am not who I thought to be. It is incredible how rejections and missed answers can undermine people confidence. I started to be confused, I didn’t know how to take the next step and in which direction.
Then I ran into this article of Harvard Gazette, where Sarah Lazar said
“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day”
I should have tried.
I decided to keep it as simple as possible: free meditation apps, an old notebook to write my feelings and just 10 minutes per day. If I wanted better items or more time, I should have demonstrated my improvements, a kind of commitment with myself.
Thanks to these moments, I started to analyze the whole situation and I started to accept my negative emotions. I accepted them not as a final state of my mind, on the contrary, I understood that they were like fever, a warning that my mind was giving to me, trying to teach me something. I discovered that these emotional states (confusion, loss, sadness, uncertainty, hesitation etc.) were temporary; they were not a definitive judgment. These states were an answer that I gave to all those rejections and missed expectations that I had, once graduated. I didn’t try to transform them in positive emotions, I tried to know them better, I tried to see how they were affecting my days giving me tiredness and a sense of emptiness.
I accepted my negative emotions not as a final state of my mind, on the contrary, I understood that they were like fever, a warning that my mind was giving to me, trying to teach me something.
I considered this acceptance as an action in response to a difficulty, and not as a reaction driven by a fear.
This first step opened a new scenario: I started to hear to myself. I read a lot about mindfulness, inner voice, self-dialogue etc., however since I did not do any psychological studies and I haven’t enough information about these topics, I used the same method used for meditation. Give it a try. I tried to write down a “focus corner”, where I listed all those ideas and feelings that didn’t come from my meditation time, but that were arising spontaneously when I waslooking for new applications or during my daily training sessions. The “focus corner” gave me the sensation of having a lot of brain activity, it gave me the opportunity to understand that I wasn’t stuck in those negative emotions that appeared during meditation. I listed new startup ideas (probably already taken or impossible to do), the willingness to start writing some articles, new channels to find a job position and these are just some examples. Basically, I was able to balance all those negative thoughts that the meditation helped me to recognize with proactive thoughts and intentions focused to obtain some results.
The “focus corner” gave me the sensation of having a lot of brain activity, it gave me the opportunity to understand that I wasn’t stuck in those negative emotions that appeared during meditation.
This is how Alain Morin described some characteristics of the inner speech:
“The verbal labelling of self-characteristics (via inner speech) allows one to become fully aware of them and to gradually incorporate these characteristics into a selfconcept. This idea is consistent with the view proposed by several philosophers: attending to our inner speech makes it possible to bring out thoughts to consciousness.”
I have not found a job yet; generally, these kind of articles are written once the problem has been solved, this is not my case. I am still looking for a job opportunity. My new job will be the result of this journey, but all this path is teaching me something. I am not the person who graduated few months ago, I am not the person who did a period as an intern for an international bank. I thought I was lesser than that version of myself, now I am understanding that I am not inferior, I am just grown up. This doesn’t mean that I have to reject my dreams or my goals, this doesn’t mean that I have to reduce my enthusiasm or my future expectations, this doesn’t mean that the world doesn’t need me.
I am not the person who graduated few months ago, I am not the person who did a period as an intern for an international bank. I thought I was lesser than that version of myself, now I am understanding that I am not inferior, I am just grown up
On the contrary, the world needs each of us. I have realized that I made some mistakes in my expectations’ process, I realized that to build a skyscraper you need time. The final goal is always “walking on clouds”, but in order to reach that point you have to build a stairway or something similar before. Maybe I won’t be able to chase my dreams following all those paths that I thought at the beginning of this process, but I switched my point of view, understanding that this is not a bad thing, it is an opportunity to find simpler and faster paths.
Am I feeling good? No, not yet. The reality is being very different from what I expected during the last years, but I decided to learn from bad periods, to study what scares me the most and to light the darkness because it is likely that there is something juicy around here.
I decided to light the darkness because it is likely that there is something juicy around here.
Please read: your life matters. I am not a psychologist, a therapist or a mental coach. I have some issues and I tried to face them differently, working on myself and sharing with you my experience. If your issues are different, or you need another kind of help, please tell to a friend, to a relative, to an expert or to whoever you prefer. The world needs you.
