Mojo MAGIC: Balancing Effort & Surrender

There’s a lot of wisdom in the Serenity Prayer that applies to most any area of life, even outside of 12 Step addiction recovery programs. If you don’t know it:

“Grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference”

A successful job search is also a BALANCE.

It’s about finding a combination of:

Feeling good and aligned with your goals
(and actively managing to rebuild and maintain this positive anticipation),

and, of course,

Taking concrete, pragmatic action.

In a job search:  what we CAN control (aka, the ‘mojo in action’ stuff) might be, as one example: researching the companies you’re interested in, even reaching out to some contacts  you find on LinkedIn, with an intro note and connection invitation.

What you can’t control or change: whether that person/those people will respond, or assist you.

So when things we can’t influence happen, we can do the “manage your mojo” part to keep feeling positive and hopeful about our efforts by simply focusing on the positive action you took, and doing the internal work if needed to *know*, to trust, that SOMETHING is going to land, a network lead or other encouraging development or response WILL come from SOMEWHERE. We just need to keep putting out the feelers and doing our part. 

Having the wisdom to know the difference probably lies in discerning what is being motivated or persistent and what it just overdoing it.

For example, like sending out a follow up note to those you’ve reached out to (and/or have interviewed with already), or maybe two – but probably not 10, or, spending a fair amount of time actually doing job search activities (writing customized cover letters, tailored to each job, tweaking resumes for best key word match to each ad, etc.) and staying up until all hours in a frantic push to get an interview that leaves you UNbalanced – this is trying to FORCE an outcome, not the surrender and wisdom mentioned here.

And believe you me, if by some miracle you’ve NEVER tried TOO hard or ever WORRIED to a point of not be effective anymore in your efforts – finding balance when something is important or the stakes are high can be a tightwire walking exercise indeed!

Learning to live between effort and surrender IS the trick –
but doing it is tricky for sure!

Managing  your mojo + Mojo in action = SUCCESS!

Want to take some concrete action now?

Read related blog posts:

Be Assertive, Not Annoying: Ways to Follow Up Without Aggrevating Anyone
The Truth About Cover Letters (That You Don’t Want to Hear)

and/or, check out these job search inspiration posts
to help you “reclaim YOUR job search mojo!”