One of the most discouraging aspects of a job search is for job seekers to continually get disappointed about the unsuccessful outcomes of their activities. When they don’t get an interview they get frustrated. When they do get an interview and don’t do well on it and get rejected, they get frustrated. When they are told that they are a great candidate or when they come in “second” and are chosen, they can get downright mad. In fact this may be one of the biggest reasons people stopped looking for work. They are so frustrated at the outcomes that didn’t live up to their expectations, they quit.
We should look to the example of elite athletes to find that they have no expectations for outcomes. They do, and I repeat, do have expectations for their own performance, but they do not have expectations for the outcomes. A batter doesn’t go to the plate thinking about winning the game. An elite basketball player doesn’t shoot the ball worried about winning the game. They focus on their own expectation of themselves doing their best and letting the score, the result, take care of itself.
Job seekers would have a lot less emotional strain if they had no expectations about outcomes. They should have expectations of their own ability to get a lot of interviews. They should have expectations about their ability to perform really well in initial interviews, but no expectations about moving beyond the initial interview. They should have high expectations of themselves to perform well on secondary interviews, but no expectations about why they did or didn’t go beyond the secondary interviews. They should have high expectations of themselves being able to negotiate a job offer, but no expectations about getting the job offer. If jobseekers have expectations about outcomes, they will spend most of their time being emotionally flattened.
Maximizing expectations of ourselves and minimizing the expectations of the results allows us to channel our emotions toward what we can control and not lose energy over what we can’t control.
