W.I.N. Wednesday: Better late than never.
Early this morning the following blog post from Seth Godin showed up in my inbox.
There are two ways to process this:
The selection committee saw me, understood me, and then decided to reject me.
or
The selection committee didn’t get what I had to offer. I wasn’t rejected, my application was. It’s not that I didn’t get in, it’s that they didn’t engage with the story I told.
We can always do a better job of finding the place where we might thrive. And a better job of living and telling the story that earns us a chance to get to that place.
But the chances that you were fully seen and rejected as a person are slight indeed.
It struck me as I read it that I wish I would have had this advice 46 years ago. I was living in Edmonton at the time and trying to get hired by the Edmonton Police Service. I was rejected two years in a row. The first time they would not give me any feedback other than to come back in a year and apply again, which I did. The second time they rejected my application the feedback I received was that I wasn’t smart enough to make it through training because I had never been to college or university.
As a result of those rejections, I applied to the Calgary Police Service where I got hired, started training in the fall of 1979 and found a place where I could thrive. Since then, I have experienced rejection with applications to specialty units as well as other venues and most of the times it worked out for the best. The advice from Seth Godin would have still been helpful in advance of all those rejections.
Reading Godin’s post this morning also reminded me that I let the day get away from me yesterday and dropped the ball in sending out the W.I.N. Wednesday blog post so I decided better late than never. I hope you don’t reject the message just because it is Thursday.
I suspect the post by Godin was targeted at high school seniors who may get letters of rejection from colleges or universities they applied to. The reality, however, is that we all face rejection in life. That rejection comes in many forms, and it is easy to take it personally and assume they are rejecting you, at least that is how it felt for me.
What’s Important Now? Next time you face rejection consider that they are rejecting your application, not you.
Take care.
Brian Willis
www.lifesmostpowerfulquestion.com.
ONE QUESTION BRINGING FOCUS AND CLARITY IN THE CHAOS AND COMPLEXITY OF TODAY'S WORLD.
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