How to Harness the Magic of Coincidence, Synchronicity and Serendipity in Your Job Search

Here we go. Hey, everybody, Dr. Robyn McKay here with Mindset Rx, this is your place to be if you're an emotionally intelligent leader and you're ready to set the tone for a positive, productive and purposeful week. This year, I've been focusing on something a little bit more specific, in terms of the topic and focus of this conversation today. And the last time we met, I talked about careers and finding your dream job, and I wanna share with you today, some more information about that. So we are going to be talking today about how to harness the magic of coincidence, synchronicity and serendipity in your job search, and I'm so happy to be here with you. If you're with me live, say "Hello" in the comments, and let me know if you've got any questions or any Ah-has during our time today. If you're listening to our sister podcast, shoot me an email, the email that you can send me a message to is in the show notes. And I'd love to know, what are you thinking about this topic around Career Rx, and the way that I always approach job searches is quite different from what you might have learned in undergrad when you went to the Career Center.

Of course, there are some tried and true things that we all know that we have to do, if we wanna find a new job, like polish your resume or your CV and get your LinkedIn profile up to speed and all those things. But I love to talk about the intuition, I love to talk about the intuition part of finding your job and harnessing today the magic of synchronicities and coincidences, and serendipities is such a big part of that. And I wanna take a second to say hello to Bryan Ham. Bryan, I love... We used to work together a long time ago at ASU, and it's nice to see you're here and that you're present and see what's going on in your life these days too. Way back in the day when I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas, my focus for my PhD, was on vocational psychology, careers, how people make decisions about their careers. And for those of you who are new to me, what you would want to know about that is that I was actually an author on one of these really major papers in vocational psychology field, that we took a look at how people make decisions about their careers, and one of the things that we identified is that there are three major pieces to that. There's engagement, which means basically you have to do stuff, you can't just find your next job sitting on a couch eating bonbons and watching Netflix.

Right, you have to be out in the world doing things. That's more difficult these days, just because of the nature of the world we are living in today with everybody working from home for the most part. But there are still ways to get around that. So you do... Definitely have to do stuff. Network, connect with people, let people know what you're up to, let people know what's going on with you, that you're looking for something new, you're looking for something different. And you also have to decide what it is that you want. We are so far beyond the days when you could throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, that's a very early stage of career development approach to finding your job. It's something that, when I was an undergrad even, I remember watching people who were engineering students and they would go to co-ops and they would apply for all of these jobs around the country, and it kind of looked to me like it was a crap shoot. Like, "Oh wow, Susie ended up in Philadelphia. Who would have ever thought that?" It didn't make any sense to me. And she, Susie, even treated that experience like it was quite random, maybe you did too. I never had that experience though with my jobs, what I would do is decide what I wanted to do, and then I would go do it. And my job search is from the very beginning, we're always very pointed and directed.

I didn't realize at the time, I was what they call an unconscious competent. It was just something that I knew how to do. And I know early on in my career, right after I finished my undergrad, I... It was way back in the day when we would look for jobs in the wanted ads of the newspaper. That's how old I am. It was long before the Internet, I think they... Well, no, we had the internet, 'cause I already had an email address, but it was a while ago. And I made five job applications, these were for professional positions, five job applications, three job interviews and two job offers out of that, and away I went in my career and that's always just kind of how it's been for me. So it made sense for me later on when I was in grad school to focus on how people make decisions about their careers. I even kind of fell into that too, it was just like the next obvious thing to do. My contribution, I believe, to that paper, it was a group effort, but one of the things that I really brought to it was the role of intuition, that sixth sense that we have access to as emotionally intelligent people, that doesn't get a whole lot of play time. Certainly, didn't back then and is just now starting to come on... Come online as something that's important and vital in not just job searches, but in anything from innovation to helping other people to choosing direction for where you go, not just in your life, but in your career, in your business as well.

So, part of that sixth sense, part of that intuition, is this thing that oftentimes we'll call coincidence. In fact, I think that if you're not really conscious of your intuition, you're more likely than not to call it a coincidence, to say, "Oh, wasn't that weird that X, Y and Z happened?" So let me illustrate coincidence, depending on your level of understanding and your awareness of your intuition. Coincidence or serendipity or synchronicity, in terms of a story, I'll just share something from my experience and maybe you can add to this, maybe you've had something happen in your life too, that was, if you just look at it on the surface, it's a coincidence. But if you look a little bit deeper, you can see the magic of the moment that you experienced and realized that there was more of a synchronicity and aligned meaningful coincidence that happened with you in your career. So this was when I was in graduate school, I had finished all of my work, I had finished my post-doc, and I had made the decision, I was moving to Arizona. And I made the decision I was moving to Arizona, but I was not moving without a job. And so I did all the right things, I sent out my CVs, I sent emails to all the people that I knew within the ASU, the Arizona State University community that I was coming, and I got a couple of conversations with some people in my field at the university and other places too. But I knew I wanted to work at the university.

And the first person I spoke with, I just had the sense that I was not gonna be a good fit for that particular segment of the university, and so I kept looking and I got a job interview at one of the community colleges. And, I probably would have gotten a job offer, but I took myself out of it, and do you wanna know why? It was something so simple, but something so important to me that I just knew I wasn't gonna be a good fit for it, so don't laugh at this. But, I'm a Kansas Jayhawk and then I did my post-doc at the University of Missouri. So I have this level of... I love my school mascots, these are important, these were at the time, very important to me, the Kansas Jayhawk in particular. And this community college that I interviewed at had as its mascot, the fighting artichoke, and it's in that moment when I realized that everything else not withstanding, that the salary was good, and the work would have probably been okay for me, not particularly challenging, but okay for me.

I couldn't be a fighting artichoke, I just couldn't. Some people can, some people don't care, at the time, I cared very much, and there was something about that that just made me say, "No, thank you," to that. So, I actually think that my energy, my decision, that I was not gonna be able to work there created the conditions for me to not get that job. I think I ended up as an alternate for that particular position. But in the meantime, remember, I had sent my CV out, I had done all the right things, and nothing was happening. And I was getting closer and closer to the end of my post-doc. Maybe... Like six weeks left, so it's in mid-July at this point. I still don't have a job for the fall, and I'm starting to get really nervous. I was single, I had my bills and my student loans and all the things that you have when you're just leaving graduate school. Responsibilities, duties, obligations, and I needed a job. So I remember I was at my mentor, Barb's farm, she's the one I wrote Smart Girls with. And we were getting ready to host this group of Italian executives for a day-long team build, equine assisted team build, we had horses, we had a picnic, we had all the trappings of middle America to share with these Italian executives.

And I remember we were going into town, Barb and I, to buy some wine and pick up some supplies before the event, and I was crying. And y'all, when I cry, it's not pretty. It's not pretty flowing movie star tears, it's like snot and gnashing of teeth, and the whole thing, I was really scared. And Barb, being a psychologist, made these very kind reflective noises, soothing noises as she just let me process through that, and I said, "I don't know what I'm gonna do if I don't get a job. I'm so upset." It was the whole thing, I just unloaded, all the way into town, and all the way back to the farm. And then, we have these Italian executives all day long. At the end of the day, I checked my voicemail, and there was a message on it from the director of one of the counseling centers at ASU, and he said to me, "Robyn, your CV just came across my desk. We've had a psychologist quit, and I get to do a focus hire because we're really on a time crunch here, we've got school starting in a few weeks. Will you come and interview for this position?" Some people would call that a coincidence, but because of the way I had... Because of the way I understood how things were working, I know that everything is connected, I know that my actions, my decisions, my emotions, my beliefs about myself in the world affect everything else.

I’m not wholly and fully responsible for it, but definitely I'm a contributor to how my life goes. And in that moment, I was like, "Oh my God, this is it. This is the job I've been waiting for." And it happened on the tail end of a beautiful day with the Italian executives, but also after I had that big emotional meltdown on the way into town to buy wine. So some people would say that was just a coincidence. Carl Jung, the great psychologist, referred to synchronicities as meaningful coincidences, so maybe we can go with that. But I would say more likely that to me was a serendipity, a moment of connection, where I was able to actually transcend my past experiences, which was, I don't have a job and I don't know where I'm going to get a job, and I don't know how this is all going to work. And leap into this next chapter of my life. Which, the end of the story is, I went down and I interviewed and, got the job. Moved to Arizona, started my life and had a great experience working at ASU for five years, being able to contribute in ways that I really had hoped for and dreamed of. In fact, for me, I believe that that was the best position for any new psychologist coming out that year.

Other people might have a different opinion on that, but I know that I got to do exactly what I wanted to do throughout my tenure at ASU. So I share this with you... I know that's a long time ago. And I know we're all in different positions now because of the way the world is working, and we're in the middle of the great resignation, and we're all older, we all have other things going on in our lives, than we did 10 or 15 years ago, for sure, earlier in our careers. Brian says, "And then you became a rock star at Poly." Yes I... Well, I don't know. Did I? Yeah, I think I kinda did, I did. We had a good time at the Polytechnic Campus, for sure. And the point of this is, I want you to feel into the energy of what... The story that I shared, of how I speak about that now. Because that's part of our intuition. My feeling is that I'm enjoying telling the story, I'm open, I'm curious, I'm joyful, I'm happy to share this story with you. And synchronicities, serendipities, run on this frequency of joy. They run on the frequency of flow, they run on the frequency of delight, of curiosity. But having said that, I had to get into alignment with flow, joy, curiosity, optimism.

Because you and I both know from listening to my story, that when I'm driving into town by wine with Barb, I was certainly not in flow and I certainly was not in joy. I was gnashing my teeth and there was snot everywhere. So I had to go through and align myself, I had to get my emotions and my thinking aligned. Part of my process in doing that is actually crying, there has to be, for me, an emotional shift that takes place, and sometimes you have to wade through some of those very difficult emotions in order to get to the other side of that. Where you can, where you're thinking, and your emotions and your behaviors are all lined up, that's called alignment. And it's a big piece of the work actually. When I work with people who are looking for their dream jobs, we have to get everything aligned. We have to look at all of the competing priorities and all of the thoughts about, "Well, is this even possible?"

I know it's possible, I can see what your potential is and I can hold you there, but you have to get yourself aligned with that, and that's a big process. But once you get aligned, that's the next thing that happens with alignment, is that then you drop into the field of synchronicity and serendipity. And that's when the weird stuff happens, that's when... Weird meaning magical things that you can't explain. That's when things like that happen. Things like you get a phone call saying, "I have this position available, and there's only one and I can do a focused higher." I would say the other key to experiencing those synchronicities in your own job search, is to understand that there's a decision that you have the opportunity and the responsibility to make for yourself, that you're no longer willing to sit in the status quo, that you're willing to align yourself with what your vision is, with what your heart's desire is actually. My heart's desire at the time was to move out of Kansas and come to Arizona, I knew that that was my soul's path, even if I had all of these rational explanations for it, and it made sense and everything else, I knew that it was part of my soul's path to move to Arizona.

So had to know that first, and I had to know that I had to step into that knowing, I had to step into that decision. And then, when you make a decision, it's really interesting because sometimes we second guess our decisions, not you all, but some people do and I've always taken my dad's advice on this, he says, "Make your decision in the right decision." In other words, don't second guess it, you're here now, I've decided, so what's next, what's the next thing? And the next thing after you've made the decision is to get yourself into alignment, and that requires some introspection. You actually, I believe, have far more control... I'm not talking about clean control, but you have more energetic control over the direction of your career than you've been led to believe. And the way that I manage that control is I always ask for and intend the and better. So I have a client right now who she's actually getting a job offer later today.

And she's still got a little bit of trepidation about it. She's got a great job she's in now, but she just wants some different challenges, she wants something different in her life. And she's got some trepidation about how it's all... This all going to work, and there's a lot to it, there's a lot of alignment going on. I just spoke with her last night, she let me know that she has this offer coming in today. And I said, "Well, let's continue to intend and expect the and better." That attitude of the and better is a game changer when it comes to career. Now, you might be in a position where you're doing a job search, you might be in a position where you're actually waiting on... Waiting to hear. And the mind game that you play with yourself if you're waiting to hear if I got the job or not is, "Well, if I didn't get it, it must have been meant to be." But let's reel that back in for just a second and just say, "Listen, let's just even now, intend the and better."

And I always invite the people that I work with to do all of the inner work, the alignment work, by getting your emotions in alignment with your thinking, with your beliefs, with your practices, so that you are in the position to say yes or no, rather than taking yourself out of the game too early, like I did with the fighting artichokes. I certainly could have picked up the phone and said, "You know what, thanks, but no thanks." And I did pick up the energetic phone, I guess, 'cause I didn't get the job. But probably a more, I'm gonna say psychologically mature thing to do would have been to call and say, "You know what, I'm gonna take myself out of this. Thanks, but no thanks." To put myself in a position to say yes or no. But that's years ago. And you learn and you live. And you live and you learn. Okay, so the idea here with putting yourself in the decision-making seat, in the position to say yes or no to a position or to negotiate that position, means that the inner work, you've gotta do the inner work. You've gotta be in that place of looking at, inside of yourself and wondering, "What am I thinking about? Am I worst case scenario focused? Am I the and better focused? Am I somewhere in between?"

I'm reminded in this moment, then we'll wrap up for today, but there was another person that I worked with a couple of years ago, and she was looking for the top level position, that she could achieve in her field. And she interviewed for one of those positions that was close to what she wanted, wasn't exactly what she wanted, she would have had to move her family and uproot everybody and take them across the country, and she didn't get the job. She was one of the final candidates but she didn't get the job. And I asked her about that in our post-game analysis, and I said, "Was there any part of you that pulled yourself out of that kind of in the fighting artichokes style that I... " She knew that story as well, and she said, "Yeah." She said, "I thought about having to take my kid out of soccer and I didn't wanna do that." And so that was enough. So you don't... In other words, when you're looking internally, there are a whole lot of factors that are involved with whether you get a job or not.

But my best advice for you, if you're looking for a top level position in your field is that you just do your inner work, stay focused on what you wanna... What you want, know what you want, stay focused on what you want, and clear out all of the clutter, internally. Walking in the faith that you are aligned with your and better, making the decision that you are in alignment with your and better. Everybody's and better is gonna look different, but I don't like to limit the universe, and it certainly does acknowledge that you and I don't have a whole lot of... If we try to over-control something like that, sometimes it's like we cling too tightly. It's like that 38 Special song. So rather than clinging too tightly, just holding on to this vision that you have for yourself, for how you wanna feel for the contributions that you know that you're meant to make, here and now. And that's when the synchronicity start showing up. When you're in flow, when you're in that place of joy and curiosity and wonderment and awe about what you're doing, it's not hard work anymore, but you have to stay focused, you have to begin with the end in mind, that vision. What is your vision? What do you really, really want? What's your heart's desire when it comes to your job, your contribution? 

And you can say, I don't know where that job is, but I do know that what I'm seeking is seeking me, and sometimes that's enough to pull you forward into the field of synchronicity, isn't it? Alright, that's all I have for you today. I am so excited to continue these conversations around Career Rx, around landing your dream Job in the world we're living in today, and I'm also so excited because I've got a new initiative starting this year in my company. And it has to do with actualizing your heart's desires. A lot of times our careers are expressions of our heart's desires. And this method that I've developed over the years works for everything from finding your dream job to finding your divine life partner and everything in between. So stay tuned for more of that. I'm excited to start sharing that information with you all as well, and to start working with more of you in this methodology to bring your heart's desires into your lived experience.

Until next time, Dr. Robyn McKay here. Big love everybody, and I will see you later.