Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may measure the reference signal received power (RSRP) of reference signals from other UEs in a time window and exclude resources of transmissions with a measurement which is above RSRP threshold. In some cases, not enough resources are identified, and the UE may increase the RSRP and search for resources again, however the UE may only increase the RSRP until a stop RSRP limit is reached. The UE may increase the RSRP based on an absolute value or a factor of an incremental power value. Once the stop RSRP threshold is reached, the UE may modify the size of the time window, shift the time window, or reduce the number of retransmission of the sidelink message to search for resources for the sidelink message.