Anyone who has been unemployed for a while knows that it can be a struggle just to keep your spirits up. There is little you can do about the dismal employment rate or the people you’re competing with, but there are a couple of behaviors you can change to keep despair at bay.

Set your goals lower

Don’t set your goals too high. Although you want to get yourself motivated in a big way, it’s a mistake to tell yourself that you have to land a job by a certain date. There are too many external factors over which you have no control — what you can control is your own behavior, so set your goals with that in mind. Tell yourself that you will send out X amount of resumes this week, or you will contact five people in your network.

Those are manageable tasks and, by completing them, you will give yourself a little boost by checking one more thing off your list.

Don’t apply for every job

You may think that applying for a hundred jobs will increase the odds of you getting one of them, but that’s not true, especially if you’re applying for jobs that you’re only remotely qualified for. In this case, the quantity of applications will only increase the quantity of rejections you get. And, let’s face it, being rejected by a company you were only “settling for” will make you feel worse.

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