What Color Is Your Parachute? 2021: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success

by Richard Nelson Bolles

Believe that your behavior matters. What you do makes a difference. Many people who have given up simply believe that they can’t do it.

Dr. Seligman’s book Learned Optimism can teach you how to think differently. He also offers a free optimism assessment

What actions would I take if my behavior counted? can start you on a new path.

Develop a flexible mindset by reframing your situation.

“appreciative inquiry”

we create our reality.

you can choose what aspects of your life to focus on. Another principle states that since we can choose what to focus...

ask ourselves better questions to get b...

What would I like to see more of in my life now? or What would I like to focus on today to move my job search forward?

Where have you succeeded in the past?

What other times have you set goals and achieved them?

What if you reframe your anxiety as energy? You do feel more jazzed up when you’re anxious, right? What if instead of worrying about your anxiety, you focused on how much energy you have to do this particular

appreciative inquiry is that images inspire action.

author Julia Cameron recommends that you create a list of twenty-five things you like. She then uses her list to help her make decisions about her life. If you are picturing gloom and doom in your future, keep this in mind: you are not a fortune-teller.

focus on positive possibilities: what might happen. And then work and do everything in your power to make that positive dream real.

making a vision board isn’t going to magically produce the job. But what it will do, if you look at it every day, is remind yourself of what’s meaningful and important to you.

then decide what steps you will take that day to bring yourself closer to your goal.

set meaningful goals. Think of steps you could take (even baby steps) that would improve your situation. Can you set some goals that are relatively easy to accomplish?

Just knowing that I have already done something toward my goals for the day gives me a boost as I look at the other tasks yet to be accomplished.

Flower Exercise in this book (see this page). This exercise alone will help you feel more empowered and focused and will help you find the meaning in what you’re doing. Completing each step of the flower puts you one step closer to your dream job and gives you more self-awareness and confidence.

Focus on the units of your search, not the whole task at once.

Resistance is at the heart of our procrastination.

the more important something

is to us, the more likely we are to resist it. Because we want it to be perfect. We’re afraid we will fail. We’re afraid of rejection. So we resist.

Do the Work by Stephen Pressfield.

He says that creating the mindset of “turning pro” (becoming professional) will help us overcome our natural reticence.

A professional will take themself and their work seriously. An amateur won’t. A professional will do the work that is needed to get the job done well. An amateur won’t.

How can you take yourself and your job search seriously?

Seligman’s 2012 book Flourish. Psychologist David Burns’s excellent book Feeling Good has been clinically proven to improve both depression and anxiety.

Do I feel in control and not overwhelmed? Have I set goals for my search? Am I keeping up with those goals?

The study focused on how people perceived the steepness of a hill. The researchers learned that we are more likely to perceive a hill as steeper if we are alone. If

we have the support of a friend, the hill seems less steep. And get this: even if we just imagine we have a friend with us, we perceive the hill as less steep.

you’re thinking that there is some issue (hidden or obvious) that is keeping you from getting hired. Something you can’t just think your way out of.

you can’t possibly have an issue that will keep all employers from hiring you. You can only have an issue that will keep some employers from hiring you.

If you know what your unique talents and skills are, I guarantee some employer is looking for you.

Some employers out there do want you, no matter what the others think. Your job is to find them.

For a list of employers who have promised to hire even the long-term unemployed,

changing fields of employment, looking for a job in a distant location, moving from a small employer to a large employer or vice versa, changing jobs too quickly, staying at your previous job too long, and so on.

know what the employer’s resistance might be and be prepared to explain

your history. Stay positive and focus on what you did well. If you left jobs quickly, discuss your desire to find a long-term opportunity.

After age forty it becomes important to consider why such a bias might exist and what you can do to reduce a potential employer’s concerns.

there are still employers out there who will hire you, regardless of how old you are, if you come with a positive attitude about your aging and you convey energy and enthusiasm.

requires this kind of persistence: keeping at it, keeping at it, keeping at it, working at your job hunt far longer and far harder than the average job hunter would ever dream

of doing, because you know you will be valuable to any organization that is able to see you ...

One way to challenge “fit” is to

focus on “add.” What do you add to the work environment? Yes, you might be different or have unique characteristics from the people who currently work in a particular setting, and that’s actually a benefit.

Shyness in this context is a catchall term for other difficulties with social interaction; it could also be labeled social anxiety or introversion.

Work with it—find your strengths and get to know them so well that you focus on them in interviews.

Focus on your successes. What have you done well? What are the three strengths you want an employer to know about you?

don’t bring it up by writing “I misspoke” or “I may not have explained this”; instead, write something like “I’d like to add a point to my response about…”