3 Tips From Yoda If You're Over 40 And Unemployed

If you're over 40 and unemployed, you might want to change your job search perspective. Related:5 Things You Should Be Doing If You’re Unemployed I don’t know about you, but the original Star Wars trilogy was a big part of my young life. Star Wars was actually the first movie I ever saw. My family went to the drive in to see a double feature - Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit! Yoda trained Jedi Warriors to use “the Force,” which seemed to me to be nothing more than Zen Philosophy spoken backwards. The long and short of it is, he taught people to unlearn what they had learned. To think from a different point of view, to look within.

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3 Wise Tips From Yoda For The Unemployed

Here are the top three things you can learn from Yoda about changing your focus from “job search” to “getting hired.”

1. "No! No different. Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned."

What Yoda is saying is if it ain’t working, blow it up and start again. Don’t be stuck in the past and the ways you are used to and comfortable doing. Unlearn the things you are doing that don’t work and try something, anything that might! The best news is... if you try something different and it doesn’t work - you are no further behind. You’re in the exact same spot you started, with a strategy that doesn’t work.

2. "Do or do not; there is no try.”

This one seems pretty obvious. Don’t go out and try to find a job, find one or don’t. Personally, I don’t like the term “job search.” Searches often last a lifetime. Often the person searching never finds what they were looking for. It’s abstract, fluffy and undefined. I would rather you have a clearly defined objective and stop searching and find something. Find what you want. A new job. Most people go through their “search” trying not to get eliminated from the jobs they apply to (think about it, it’s true!). Yoda is telling you to stop trying and be the person who cuts to the front of the line and says “here is what I offer, here is what I expect from you to be successful, do we have a deal?”

3. "The fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side."

If you are afraid of change, trying something new or just afraid of not getting hired - that is what you’ll get. No change, nothing new and not hired. The neat thing about fear is it only exists in your head. You can’t touch it, see it or smell it - it’s just a feeling. Having said that, it can be a great inhibitor or motivator in your strategy to get hired, it’s your choice. If you want it to be an obstacle to getting hired, put it out in front of you every morning so you have to use up all of your energy getting past it (or over it, under it, whatever it takes) and be exhausted for the things that are important - getting hired. If you put it behind you. Deal with it and only look back on it in your rear-view mirror so you can focus on all of the amazing things ahead that will help you get hired, it will serve as a motivator. A “force” that will push you toward your goal and help you. So, it’s time to decide if the “force is strong within you?” Or will you keep doing the same things that aren’t working, searching for a job and hoping you get hired and letting fear stand in your way? This post was originally published on an earlier date.

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