Getting Started Again!

Getting Started Again!

I hope all of you had a great holiday season. For myself, it was a time with family for the most part. Most of my regularly scheduled activities and meetings were postponed until after the New Year’s Day celebration. Additionally, clients I have been actively working with have been busy with their own family and friends or have even been away traveling.

One of the challenges of a period such as the end of year holiday season, is picking up with one’s regular life activities once the holiday period is over. Many that I work with are in search for their next job or meaningful activity in their life. And, though the counseling is not to completely abandon or slow down their search during the holiday period, if they have, at this point they have no choice but to get things going again.

While we can hit stops in our journey to what is next in our life at any time during the year, they are definitely more pronounced at a time when we end one year and begin another. Additionally, with all the emphasis a New Year brings in terms of a new and fresh start, making resolutions to ensure this year will be different than last year, and even inducements from advertisers with New Year’s specials, it can actually lead to feelings of despair for those who feel they have not made progress. However, the only way to get going again is to organize oneself, with a plan, with a schedule and taking things step by step as opposed to feeling one has to accomplish everything at once.

I know in working with my clients, that if they are stuck in getting their job search moving again, that my approach to them will be to ask them a series of questions. Those questions will include such ones as “What companies or job openings were you pursuing before the holidays?” or “Who might be people on your list of networking contacts with whom you would be looking to connect?” I may get resistance about reaching back to such connections, but one never knows if that job or opportunity they were pursuing has actually been filled, or if it is indeed open as the New Year starts.

It is possible that one is inspired by new thoughts or ideas during the holiday season, or even through resolutions made at the very beginning of the New Year. Well don’t let those resolutions or leads just sit there. Develop a plan of action as to how to explore them. If you know one of your problems has been having ideas come to you and then disappear without acting upon them, start to dedicate yourself to making a schedule for yourself in the coming year. You can keep that schedule on an electronic calendar, on your phone or even with a daily planner that you actually write in with pen or pencil. The point is, if you know that you are not a disciplined person at following through on the activities you believe you need to do, set up a system for doing so.

Above all, don’t be hesitant about reconnecting with others. If you don’t hear from individuals right away, do not take the mindset that they are not interested in you or do not care to hear from you. Likely, they have been as busy as you. Perhaps they are as hesitant as you to reconnect. Someone has to make the first move. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THEM? WHY CAN’T IT BE YOU?