Why Being Thankful Is Important To Your Job Search

Why giving thanks should happen more often than once a year.

The holiday season has just kicked off, and every year at Thanksgiving, I think that it is important to remember that focusing on gratitude is something that is important and shouldn't only happen once a year. Giving thanks and concentrating on the positives in life can help you live a more fulfilled and balanced life.

Even if you haven't had a whole lot to celebrate this year, maybe you haven't had the career successes that you had hoped for or you have been struggling to find a job, it's even more important to stay positive. Focusing on the blessings of life is good for not only your soul but your job search.

Staying positive can help you find a job and can even help you land the job you really want. Here are 4 ways that giving thanks is good for your career:

Reasons to be grateful – When you think about the things that you are grateful for it helps you get a clear picture of what is really important. From there, you can see what you have to offer and where your talents lie. This can offer an amazing amount of insight into how you can best market yourself.

Reconnect with the people who mean the most – During the holidays, many people have the opportunity to reconnect with family and friends that they may not have seen in a long time. When you have a positive mindset, it's easier to make connection and keep in touch. You never know, the relative you haven't seen in years might be the one who can tell you about a job or connect you with someone who can help.

Reach out and network with friends – When you count the blessings in your life you will probably find that many friends are on the list. Use the spirit of the holidays to reconnect with them and network with former colleagues. When you are stuck in negativity, reaching out to others becomes even harder.

Fight depression – One of the hardest things about being out of work is how easily depression can set in. Once you fall into the trap, crawling out is tough. Employers aren't impressed by desperate job seekers. By finding things to be grateful for every day, you can keep yourself motivated and hopeful about the future.

Create enthusiasm – Spending a little bit of time each day to feel grateful will help you become more enthusiastic about your life. Enthusiasm is contagious and if you try, you infect yourself with it. When you are excited and confident, following up on leads and networking become easier. An added plus is that employers want to hire enthusiastic people.

Giving thanks isn't just about eating turkey. It's about living a fuller and healthier life.

Do you take time out to give thanks? Why or why not? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for PhillyJobsBlog and Beyond.com, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.

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How Did Your Day Go? A New Daily Journal Site Wants To Know

Microblogging has a new incarnation. Meet OhLife, the email based daily journal site.

Keeping track of your daily highs and lows is a great way to celebrate your successes and reminisce about good times in you life. Throughout history, people have kept diaries, and with all of the technology at our fingertips, keeping a daily journal is easier than ever. For some people, keeping track of their job search, their personal growth and even their relationship successes gives them a touchpoint for creating the story of their lives and can serve to be a reminder of what they have been through.

The problem is, it's so easy to forget to update a blog daily, and even a Twitter feed may not contain the things you really want to remember and you're limited to a specific number of characters. Not only that but any social networking site or blog isn't exactly private. To solve that problem, a new website OhLife has an innovative idea to keep people writing. The basic premise is that the site will email their subscribers daily, asking a simple question, “How did your day go?”. Users simply email their response to the question and it gets archived into the user's account. Eventually, people will have enough entries to order a book containing all of their journals.

Because the site was designed to be a place for private thoughts, there is no social component and you can't share your journals with Facebook, Twitter or any other social site. The idea, and the site for that matter, is pretty basic, but it seems to be an idea that could actually work. TechCrunch reported that 50% of people who answer the first email continue to post at least every other day. Speaking as someone who likes to start journals and forgets about them after a week, these numbers are surprising.

It seems like a great idea, but without the social component, it's hard to say if it will gain a very large fan base. But, keeping track of your thoughts while you cope with unemployment, an extended job search or any other stressful period in your life can keep your motivated and help you work through them. For example, when you can go back and see exactly what you were thinking when you decided to apply with a certain company, you can recall the excitement and carry that enthusiasm with you to the interview.

Whether you decide to microblog with a service like Twitter, keep a traditional blog or even a notebook or journal and a pen, keeping a diary can be a lot of fun. I think that just the simple process of spending a small amount of time each day to sort through your activities, hopes and how you feel about them can help you process them and keep your focus on your goals.

I would like to challenge everyone to keep a diary for a month, in whatever format you chose. I'm going try again, and maybe I'll stick to it this time.

Have you tried keeping a journal? Let me know in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for PhillyJobsBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.