It’s Not You, It’s Them.

Rejection feels like a personal body blow. You’re not good enough to get that job. You’re not experienced enough to get that promotion. You’re not even convincing enough for people to listen to your ideas at that all important meeting.

We live in a hyper-competitive world, but at that moment of disappointment, it is easy just to focus on you and not being up to whatever task. You tend to forget that there may be others out there a little more qualified, a little more knowledgeable or simply being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes your best efforts will be in vain because there was someone “better”. This is perfectly normal, and the sooner you accept it, the easier life will be.

I am not advocating using this as an excuse. You should still strive to be the best version of yourself that you can be. Use your rivals as a yardstick, and as you get more accomplished, your benchmark should move ever higher. This is a great way of measuring yourself against the world (yes, let’s be realistic, we all do it), but you have to realise…. there will always be someone better. Those people who are happy with this concept are the ones who will grow the quickest. They will push themselves, learn from their defeats and be all the stronger for the next time. The phrase “battle hardened” is true to life…. If you don’t fight on a regular basis, you become weak – in body and mind.

You see, for all the battles you lose, you will win just as many, or maybe more. For many of the battles you win, you will be consigning someone else to lose. In this situation, you will be the “better” person, and others will be aspiring to follow in your footsteps.

Life is a journey, we grow all the time, but for some of us, it doesn’t seem enough. We forget the path we have taken to get to where we are and obsess about the challenges that lie ahead. That is a shame….

Be proud of where you have come from. There are lots of people out there that would love to have a similar path to you, believe me. Don’t expect to win all your battles. The nature of competition / life is that you win some, and you lose some. If you learn from your “losses”, then you will grow. So, next time you are rejected for that job (to bring this post back to my professional experience), be philosophical. There was simply someone better out there. Think about what skills you need to work on. Think about how you may have handled the interview better. Consider whether the job was the right fit for you in the first place. It just wasn’t your day.

When it is your day, when you do get that dream job, there will be countless others that are disappointed. In fact, I’m confident there will be people looking at your LinkedIn profile and thinking “wow, I wish I had that job.”

It works both ways. You have come a long way, and there is a long way to go. There will be victories and defeats, but you will win every time as long as you keep growing.

Whether you just won or lost, the winners should always inspire you to win for yourself.