Managing your work search well—discovering the right work, landing a new job, making a career change or re-entering the workplace—tests your mettle. It challenges your creativity and perseverance. The path to achieving your goals is uneven at best. Its ups and downs can take a real toll on your self-confidence. How can you successfully manage through it? Know how to carefully protect your self-esteem.

There are plenty of occasions throughout the work search that try our self-confidence. We blow an interview, can’t seem to find the right opportunity, someone in our life criticizes the direction we’ve chosen or the length of time it’s taken to uncover opportunities. I’m sure you have some pretty interesting war stories.

How you react to the slow going and apparent obstacles—matters.

Low self-esteem is a result of anger, frustration, disappointment and doubt—turned inward. It’s a judgment you make on yourself and your worth. As Nathaniel Branden explains, “Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”

Throughout a difficult work search, you can maintain your self-respect, sense of self-reliance and overall feelings of well-being. Here are three tips:

1.  Guard your self-esteem.

Are you listening to others’ pessimistic or shaming comments? Or are you being worn down by a constant internal conversation? Don’t invite the negativity to stay, to take hold. This will take your vigilance. Refuse to believe or accept disheartening messages as truth—regardless of where they come from.

Maintain a positive perspective. You’re a capable, talented person looking for the right opportunity, moving ever closer to achieving your goals. You’re taking great care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

2.  Choose wisely at each turning point.

At each apparent setback, you can make a powerful choice. Will you feel defeated and permanently wounded by this circumstance or will you learn from it, get up and go on? Make the choice that will get you back on the road.

3.  Take action. Do something to move you forward. Action begets action.

Psychologists suggest building self-esteem through accomplishments. Mastery at each step leads to a sense of competence, an ability to handle situations. You gain the knowledge that you can carry on through uncertainty.

In spite of the emotional highs and lows of every work search, you can come through it with your self-esteem intact.

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on. -Maxwell Maltz

Please see our earlier post on How to Handle Disappointment in Your Work Search.

Today’s question
Have you protected your self-esteem during challenging times?