Become Unstoppable Blog

Feeling rejected at work sadly occurs all too often. The question I am asking here is how do you process it after the initial shock loses its grip on you. Every painful realization needs a dedicated period for reflection to understand the hidden gem buried in the perceived rejection. Use it as a stepping stone on your march toward progress and growth. Do you instinctively retreat and play small when you feel rejected at work? Does it lead to you not speaking up in meetings because you fear overstepping your boundaries? Sometimes staying under the radar for a while gives you time to assess and regroup. Rejection often signals that something is off-kilter in terms of your perceived value or social standing in the corporate hierarchy. Your instinctive reaction to retreat is normal. Taking a little downtime for reflection is essential. However, if you retreat for too long, you deprive yourself of growth opportunities and lose valuable time in which you could have showcased your presence, strengths, and talents. Playing small for long periods serves no one, especially YOU. To come out ahead after a perceived rejection, take the time to objectively assess the situation. Often a precious gem is buried in a rejection. During moments of confusion and doubt, what you need most is clarity. Our observation skills need to be top form. Pay attention to the situation, the players, and yourself. Ask, is it personal? Know that our filters and biases may be clouding our perception. Most of the rejections we face aren’t personal and can be attributed to factors and causes we can't see yet. Here, assuming good intent will help alleviate the pain and accelerate our recovery from the perceived rejection. If you inadvertently caused it, you now have the power to fix it in the next iteration. After you have ruled out all other causes, you may conclude that the intent behind the rejection was not virtuous. Take comfort in the fact that your detractors have strengthened you, clarified your vision, and set you on a better path. Biographies of most successful people point to rejection as an inflection point in their forward trajectory. Rejection in this case is a "Redirection" to something better.

 Likability is a double-edged sword at work. Wanting to be liked is universal and nothing wrong with that. To varying degrees, most of us seek the approval of others.Let’s talk about how it can hurt us first.  When you take on a People-Pleaser identity, you start compromising your personal preferences to be liked. You abandon yourself, your feelings, and your true nature. You incorrectly assume that by being agreeable you will be seen as kind. You can’t say no, you feel responsible for how others feel, and you apologize even when it is not your fault.This behavior can backfire when others start seeing you as less confident and competent. If career progression is a goal, watch out for behaviors that can be perceived as subservient. Don’t play small just to be liked.Moving on to the helpful side of likability.When you are seen as a competent and confident go-getter, you may unconsciously take on an aura of arrogance. The conversations you have at work are all about you and your many successes. If you are constantly trying to impress people, it may have the opposite effect. It is off-putting for others in your sphere, and it has the potential to limit your career progress.Building meaningful partnerships at work needs both likability and credibility. Be genuinely interested in others and listen actively. Follow up with someone just to chat, and not because you need something from them. Your outreach will feel less transactional and more sincere. Your genuine interest in others will move up your likability score and possibly your career trajectory.I’ll wrap this up by saying, follow the Goldilocks principle when it comes to Likability, not too hot and not too cold.Do you agree?

 In honor of your bright future, plant a seed today. The path to the harvest will not be easy but know that nothing of value comes without a tradeoff or a difficult choice.Often, we give up on our dreams because the effort to get there can feel daunting.The days, months, and possibly years it takes to realize our dreams may feel lonely, and difficult. But, know that without those days there will be no bountiful harvest of our dreams realized.Building daily consistent habits will get you closer, and faster to your goal. When we act on our vision in bite-sized increments, the journey feels less challenging.Take a few minutes every day to intentionally take that one step outside your comfort zone. 🎯You are in control. You get to choose -the pain of regret or the pain of discipline. Don't you owe it to your future self?

Passed over for a promotion yet again? You put in the time and effort to grow your self-awareness after the last couple of performance cycles. You worked on sharpening your communication skills, stepped outside your comfort zone, and showed up every day with an attitude of service, and yet, here you are being tested again. This time around, the invalidation hurts.

 Team Leaders – Are you frustrated by a disengaged employee in your team? Do they appear cynical and recalcitrant to you? That is often a presentation layer of an underlying hurt.Here is something you may want to consider about the team member.  -There is a likelihood that the employee has been burned before, especially when they were passionate and wanted to serve with the noblest of motives. It is easy to lose faith after a few poor experiences.-They start believing that their skill and passion are of no value to their leaders.-When all they see is a minefield ahead for sharing their knowledge and gifts, cynicism starts taking hold. Sadly, it also leaves them with an unfulfilled desire to make a difference. These steps may help- 1.     Focus your one-on-one conversations on their passions. Be sincere. If possible, avoid scripted lines from a manager handbook, because they rarely flow out as sincerely as one would hope. People can smell a phony from a mile away.   2.     Get to know them as a person. Be curious and actively listen. 3.     Let them bring their creativity and unique selves to work. Give them opportunities to showcase it. 4.     Recognize them and their contribution in group settings. Do you agree? Care to share your observations?

Do you retreat and hide when you feel rejected at work? Do you stop speaking up in meetings? Do you try to stay under the radar?Rejection often signals that something is wrong in terms of your perceived value or social standing in the corporate hierarchy. Your instinctive reaction to retreat is normal. Taking a little time for analysis and reflection is just what the doctor ordered. However, if you retreat for too long, you deprive yourself of growth opportunities and lose valuable time in which you could have showcased your gifts and talents. Playing small serves no one, especially you.To come out ahead after a perceived rejection, take the time objectively to assess the situation.Ask, is it personal? Know that our filters and biases may be clouding our perception. Most of the rejections we face aren’t personal and can be attributed to factors we can't see yet. Here, assuming good intent will help alleviate the pain and accelerate our recovery from the perceived rejection.Sometimes, in a rejection is buried

Are you listening to the whispers from your intuition or paying attention to the little breadcrumbs the universe is laying out for you? If not, what clues are you missing?

It’s Not Fair! We have all heard children scream these words when they experience an unjust outcome. As rational adults, we acknowledge and accept that life is not fair, but somehow unwittingly get trapped in a cycle of misery and bitterness when things don’t work out ‘fairly’, in our favor. We doom ourselves to unrelenting frustration when life doesn’t meet our expectations. For example, you are burned by toxic office politics. You are exhausted watching less experienced and less competent team members get ahead. You question the futility of your skills and efforts. Most of us have been sucked into the ‘woe is me’ vortex, at some point or the other.

 Does it annoy you when people waste your time? I have to assume the answer is a resounding ‘YES’, especially when you are working on important activities. Have you experienced weeks when you wanted to wrap up an important task, only to have a coworker hijack your plan with impunity for their urgent tasks? This lack of planning on their part was a pet peeve of mine and that raised my sensitivity to the limited time of my colleagues. In fact, year after year, in my annual performance self-assessment, I would include a line about the care and respect I showed for everyone’s time. I wore it as a badge of honor. We experience this lack of respect regularly when we spend more time than we should on comprehending poorly formulated emails, or sit through a meandering meeting with no agenda. Sadly, time is the only thing in life that you can never get back once it’s gone. How are you protecting your most valuable resource? Care to share? I protect the first three hours of my day at all costs. I do have a very early start time! If I have a task I dread on my to-do list, it will be the first one I tackle, otherwise, my most creative tasks get those precious early hours of the day. As Jim Rohn noted ‘ “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” You get to choose.