Boost Your Job Search With Hypnotic Techniques: Step One

Krys Call


People who have felt a positive sense of identity from their work may feel a sense of loss after termination that goes beyond what's missing from their bank accounts. Losing a job can also result in self-blame and regret, not to mention a drop in the self-confidence that is vital to the search for a new job.

Persistent negative thoughts and emotions can sap our life force before we ever begin to come up with competitive cover letters and resumes, or to request recommendations. However, with consistent practice of hypnotic techniques, your search for a new job can actually be fueled and informed by the loss of the previous one. If you're nodding your head as you read this, you probably already have a personal philosophy that, as you practice it, includes some auto-suggestion of positive beliefs. The following suggestions are just basic ideas, with no aspirations to philosophy.

Step One
Step One is complete acceptance of the loss of your previous job with no identification with the job or its loss. Of course, a wrongful termination or other unfair circumstance is just that. So, some aspects of the termination may still be morally, legally, socially or personally unacceptable to you. For our purposes, complete acceptance just means complete acceptance that the loss occurred, and that for right now, the job is over and gone.

The next part of the suggestion, that there is no identification with the job or its loss, means thinking of your old job and its loss as something that happened, rather than as a part of who you are. It is a matter of reframing the situation thusly: without your vital efforts, any job is just a title, some unmet needs and data. When you walk away, the job loses its reality as a life function until someone else fills it. Your old job, and the one you are about to acquire, need a living person to inject them with living reality.

Thinking of your old job as something that happened, rather than as a part of yourself, can be done in various ways. If you were very attached to the job, you can think of it the same way you would think of a salad that you ate yesterday: it passed through you, and on the way, it helped you build some new cells. However, the new cells look like you, not like a salad: your identity has remained intact. Supposing you worked at a university; you would say working at the university was a situation that passed through your experience, not that you used to be a part of the university.

If you were not very attached to your old job, it could be thought of in the same way that you would think of a bout of the flu, or, if it was very short-lived, as you would think of a sneeze: it came, it was felt, and then it left your consciousness without making any change in your perceptions of who you are.

It is a truism to say that no job exists without a worker. However, in times of widespread unemployment, many people get the idea that they need a given job more than the employer needs them. So it is helpful, in your own manner of thinking, to realize that your vital life force, ideas, knowledge, experience and enthusiasm are what are real, necessary and valuable during times of unemployment and employment. This realization will get your deep mind and your conscious mind grounded together in a positive identity, and this identity is independent of issues of employment.

As quickly as you can stop thinking about the old job and the details of how it terminated, the better. Of course, some insights may be gained that will be useful at the next job. However, picturing yourself back at the old job doing whatever would have allowed you to keep it has the unfortunate side effect of giving your deep mind the suggestion that you are still in the old job.

The deep mind accepts whatever you think about as happening in the eternal present. If you think about yourself as you were, at your old job, there is no subconscious motivation to seek a new job. Also, repeatedly picturing yourself back at the old job creates a mismatch between your conscious and subconscious perceptions of reality. This can cause a sense of unease and disorientation.

Telling yourself that the old job is gone, and you are now in the process of getting a better one, puts your conscious and deep minds into the same present moment.

The next blog will be about Step Two, which is picturing the job you want as if you are already there. This, too, creates a mismatch, but since the deep mind is always stronger, it pulls your conscious mind along into feeling that you are working, or about to work. This lends confidence and authority to your job search.