Follow the 9 practices – a new way to attract jobs

I landed my first job in the US! Yahoo!

Back in April 2021, I resigned my job in China and made a big move to live in the US with my husband. I suddenly had a huge work-free space. Then I was thinking how I should utilize my time? Should I learn some hard skills to prepare my future work? Should I attend some formal school to make myself look fancier? Or should I do something else?

I decided to follow my heart – what is it that I always wanted to do but didn’t have a chance to due to crazy busy work? The answer is coaching. Then the Deepening Practice led by Leon just happened to start in April. There I went!

During that program, I realized my coaching skills were not solid with a light/ short version of DCI I attended back in China years ago so after Deepening Practice I decided to take a deep/ full version of DCI to consolidate my foundation. This time I rooted deeper with the 9 practices. To me DCI is just a beginning. Leon and Cate prepared us to take away the wisdom of the practices so that we would carry them into our daily life and coaching space. Completion of DCI was where my story began.

I received my work permit in January 2022 but I decided to postpone my job searching until my DCI cohort ended in March 2022. I intended to have a full dedication in the training. 

How do I continue the practices after DCI?

I focused on one practice each week. To remind myself, I marked the practices on my weekly planner book. After finishing 9 weeks of 9 practices, I leave one week’s blank space then I begin another circle of 9 weeks’ practices. 

How do I apply the practices in attracting my job?

I intended to adopt a different approach to live and work after graduation from DCI. I started from reframing this “job searching” process as “job attraction”. Instead of the idea of “pursuing a job”, I intended to attract the right one to me so I ask Spirit everyday “where do you want me to serve?”.

However, it doesn’t mean I become passively waiting for jobs to come. I still do my work and adjust my tactics along the process. Looking back, I would say my tactics have worked…… in a space that Spirit holds for me and the 9 practices have facilitated my connection with Spirit along the whole process. 

I don’t have effective or solid network in the US, which put me in a disadvantaged place to attract my first job here. I had to rely heavily on internet, LinkedIn in particular, to connect with strange people, check job openings and apply for my interested ones. With the foundation of DCI, I’m in sync with the rhythms of my life and Spirit. I didn’t rush and applied only 2-3 jobs every day because I knew I didn’t apply for any job but only the ones I was interested. Occasionally the idea of rushing to finish this unknown and uncertain stage would kick me out of such a sync. The thoughts - “when can I land my job?” “how long will I stay in such an uncertain stage?” “what if I can’t get my loved job? Then what should I do?” - would cloud me and stir anxiety. Then Practice 2 reminded me that it’s not about how I want to control everything to happen in MY preferred way. Then naturally I asked Spirit “what do you want me to experience and learn in this process?”. The voice “ask for help” rose within me. 

I started to look for resume writer to help me improve my resume to fit in American style. I started to look for contacts in different criteria to help me build network. Although most of those contacts didn’t respond or couldn’t help, “rejections” were allowed and healed very quickly (Practice 3 and Practice 7 just naturally happened). I continued to connect with people sincerely.

When I was in the week of Practice 4 – let there be silence, I simply stopped job applications and left my space blank. Clear and affirmative voices just came through – “sitting in the middle of unknown and uncertain, I’ll simply keep doing what I’m doing until the right job comes to me.” I felt stronger sense of trust in life. 

Then many applications started to become interviews. With so much practice of coaching conversations in DCI, interview conversations became much more natural and fluid to me. Practice 5 reminds me to engage more from my heart in the interview conversations. Before each interview, I set up the intention of having a meaningful connection with the interviewer. Although interviewers’ questions are very often “transactional”, stories and reflections of my past work experience just spontaneously came out through me and I never rehearsed or prepared in advance. During each interview, Practice 6 reminded me to attune to the interviewer’s deeper dimension - sometimes I sensed fear from the hiring manager and I knew she would tend to go with the easy way rather than to patiently support the team’s growth. Such experience told me that she is not a good fit for me as a supervisor. On the other side, there were 7 interviews with one company, in more than one month’s span, which felt so smooth with humanity connections.  This company has offered me the job which well fits my career development and which team I feel resonated with. 

The job came before I finished the full cycle of 9 practices. I simply continue practicing. In the week to practice “Foster the emergence of what wants to happen”, I experienced strong anxiety due to the background check. All my past experiences were in China and the background check company in the US had difficulty to validate in great details my past experience. I knew everything in my resume is true and my anxiety comes from that I’m not familiar with how the system works in the US. The unknown is scary. When I started to ask Spirit “what wants to happen?”, words started to come through me. “Surrender” firstly came and I kept surrendering to the present moment, knowing that I didn’t lie so things would work out. With the anxiety gradually soothing, I started to think what I can contribute to this process so I dug out all the relevant documents in the past years and contacted my previous colleagues to write me emails to approve they have worked with me in particular position in specific range of time. I called back the company to check whether those documents would help them with my background check. It turned out that those documents were exactly what they needed and saved them a lot of time to verify details across country. 

After “surrender”, the words “settle” and “heal” came through me just in need and just in time. Those words served me. I didn’t know where they came from. They just came. I see them as responses to my questions to Spirit. Spirit is holding space for me. Then it’s perfect timing to practice “cultivating trust”, isn’t it? In easy time, we trust. In bumpy time, we practice trust. 

This is my post DCI exploration. I’ll keep exploring and share my journey with the community. 

PS:

9 Practices mentioned in the book Shift in Being by Leon VanderPol are

1. Slow it All Down and Sync with the Rhythm of Life and Spirit

2. Release Your Agendas; Live Your Spiritual Values

3. Nurture a Healing Space

4. Let There Be Silence

5. Coach More from the Heart, Less from the Head

6. Attune to Your Client's Deeper Sense of Self and Let that Lead

7. Expand Your Capacity to be with Pain and Allow Healing Moments

8. Foster the Emergence of What Wants to Happen

9. Cultivate Trust in the Mystery and Magic of Transformation

Red Akers

May 29, 2022