Blog Post: Spirituality In Your Job Search

 This posting looks at the importance of bringing together body, mind and spirit for your job search.  Information about contacting us and an exclusive networking event are at the end of this post.

Let me start out by saying that when I speak of “spirituality,” I’m not gong to suggest anything strange or weird.

Spirituality is a topic of conversation in the Boardrooms of many Fortune 500 companies, with gurus, shamans, priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, etc. being asked to give talks on the importance of spirituality in the business world.

Unfortunately, we have tried for so long to have a wall of separation not just between Church and State (where it belongs), but a wall of separation between our deepest selves and our work life (where it doesn’t belong).  We rigidly separate out our work from our “real life.”  Well, I’m here to tell you that work is a part of life and life must be brought into your work or you will hate it and do poorly.

As important as bringing your whole self to work is, engaging every part of yourself in your job search is even more important.  But what do I mean by “spirituality?”

For those of you practicing a religious path, it is important that you use the tools of that religious path to assist you.  Ask for prayers from your faith community.  Get your faith community involved in your job search.  Supposedly the purpose of a faith community, aside from worship, is to love and assist one another.  It is, however, a bit hard to love and assist someone who isn’t sharing his or her need for love or assistance.  Talk to your priest, rabbi, imam, guru, minister, shaman…what have you…and ask his or her aide and help.  Your clergy person will generally be more than happy to assist you in any way he or she is able.

But there are other ways that spirituality can help, even for those who are not involved in a faith community.

Developing a very strong vision of your future and concentrating on that vision for at least one-half hour a day is essential.  Take 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening to get to someplace away from spouse and kids, sit (not lay down) in darkness with the light of only a single candle, and begin to clear your mind.  Start by counting your breathing in and out and concentrating on that.  In about a week, you should be making some progress in having a clear mind.

Then put into that clear mind a strong vision of where you’d like to be.  Don’t concentrate on a particular company.  See the essence of what you’d like to do for a living.  See how the people treat you.  See yourself receiving a paycheck commensurate with your desires for money.  See the position you’ll have.  Feel the respect of others.  Notice yourself, in your vision, having the money and the time to do wonderful things with those you love.  Then let it go.  Repeat this again and again each day.

If, after you’ve cleared your mind, writing out your vision and speaking it aloud helps, this is also very powerful.  Just, again, be careful not to lay out the details.  Concentrate on the essence, and let the Universe (God, the Force, Allah, Krishna , Universal Mind,…whatever name you give to it) take care of the rest.

If you do not have a vision, do a “true 360.”  Involve everyone you know who is positive and has your best interests at heart (and only those who have your best interests at heart) help you understand what your Path is.  Ask yourself and others the question, “What am I here for?”  Like the Blues Brothers, each of us is on “a mission from God” to serve others.  Each of us has been given great and unique gifts to do this.  Our job is simply to figure out what they are and point ourselves in that direction.  You’ll be amazed what will happen.

There are numerous techniques to free yourself from resentment about the past.  If you cringe when you think of the day you got your pink slip, make it comic.  Put a cartoon soundtrack to it.  Make the boss or HR person who gave you your pink slip a caricature of a boss or HR person.  Make the scene that you’re playing over and over in your head into a comic scene.  Then make it into black and white.  Then make it with stick figures.  All with the cartoon soundtrack.  You’ll find it loses its power to hurt you.

 While space here is very limited, there are many other things you can do to bring all of you to your job search.  Our clientele is composed of upper level executives.  When we move them from the typical job search exercises to creating their perfect job spiritually, things begin to “crawl out of the woodwork.”  While this amazes them, it has ceased (usually) to amaze me.  The ability of the human spirit to create its own reality is almost limitless.  That a simple thing like a perfect job or career path should be created this way seems very easy.  Now, if we’d all just work on world peace…

 John Heckers, MA, CPC, BCPC, is an executive transition and small business coach in Cherry Creek , CO .  He welcomes your questions and comments at jheckers@aol.com or 720.581.4301.  If you’d like a free résumé handbook, write at jheckers@aol.com, and put RESUME in the subject line.  We also have a monthly Free Executive Structured Networking Event on the second Monday of each month, usually in the Jobing.com community room.  For more information, please email John and put EVENT in the subject line.  For more information or questions on the spiritual aspects of a job search, please call and I’ll be happy to get together with you.