How to specify a custom path for my .zshrc file?

One alternative to a symlink is to put this in ~/.zshenv:

ZDOTDIR=~/.dotfiles

If you want .zshenv in ~/.dotfiles as well, you can look into setting ZDOTDIR in one of the global configuration files (/etc/zshenv is a good choice).

You can symlink:

ln -s /path/to/original /path/to/symlink

For the zshrc you can do something like:

ln -s ~/.dotiles/.zshrc ~/.zshrc