EP 8: REAL CONFIDENCE- Why Everyone Could Use a Little Rejection Here and There (Dealing with Disappointment)
If you're smart and work hard but aren’t where or who you want to be welcome to your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of brain science, some surprising social secrets and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. Let's get to it.
So, I'm up early because I've been thinking about what happened yesterday. And I applied to speak at a conference, one of my very favorite conferences all year. It's a women's conference. And I applied after speaking with the organizers, because it would be my fourth year and wanted to make sure I was still presenting something that was of interest to them. So yeah, I applied, and I got accepted and it's a big honor because they get hundreds of proposals. And I always get really good marks there and get a lot of business out of it in terms of follow-on keynotes and workshops and make a ton of friends. And it's just a really positive vibe that happens. Now, mind you, this year was virtual.
Last year was virtual, but I actually was asked to record from campus. So, it was a little hybrid for me, but this year, totally virtual and of course put in a whole bunch of preparation, a little bit of a different type of presentation, but all the prep to learn the technology, a lot of sessions. I wanted to do live coaching. So, we're trying to recruit people. It turns out I couldn't do that because of the technology wouldn't allow it. So, there was a lot of juggling to get ready for this. Let's just say I was all psyched, a lot of social posts, the whole nine yards. And go to present and everything seems to be rocking and rolling for the first few minutes.
And then like a thud, all the chats are like, can’t hear Alyssa, can't see Alyssa, what's going on? What's going on? Anyway, long story long. Sorry about that. Thank you for listening to my frustration. I talked to the tech people and the organizers. We tried again, they got on for another five minutes. Technology blah blah blah.
So moral of the story is I had to record the version of the session, which as always, I build these incredibly interactive sessions, so not so easy to do to a screen technology only, at least having somebody to chat back or a host. So, my session moderator offered to do with me. And it was really good. And honestly, I think the recording came out really well, but in fact, may even better than the live session because she did then do some of the live coaching with me that I had originally intended and wanted.
And it, so, you know, in the end, I won't say it was necessarily better experience because I'm not, I don't know people are gonna watch it after all of that. We had 380 people online, so, you know, I really, I do hope that people will watch it, but you know, you make the best of it, and you look back and it's frustrating and annoying and disappointing as it was, I’m like, yeah, it wasn't my fault. It was the technology.
Of course, I'm like saying to my husband, I've got to get a new PC cause thinking it's my fault. But reality is that happens. Tech issues happen. It's like having planning a big event outside, you know, a wedding or bar mitzvah or something, and then having it rain or snow, right.
There's only so much you can control in those same ways. And even though you're profoundly disappointed and frustrated, it’s not something that you necessarily take personally. And in that way, you know, it's maybe I don't want to say it's easier to overcome. You're still going to be frustrated, like I am 24 hours later. But you know, you don't really take it at that personal confidence level.
So, I don’t know, but it made me started thinking about disappointment and how it rattles around in our brains. It keeps us up at night, obviously makes us wake up early the next day. And in some cases, disappointed, man, takes the piss out of us. Right. We get de-motivated. We don't want to do anything. We don't want to talk to anyone, we’re just grumpy and aggravated.
At the same time, disappointment can make us motivated to work harder. It can push us to a place that says I've got to do better. I've got to have more plan B’s. I've got to have more preparation. And I don't think either one quite honestly, as always, is the right answer. There's something in the middle.
Now what I described with the conference, or even a rainy day event. Alanis Morrissette would say it's ironic, but it's not. It’s just out of our control. Our rejections that or disappointments that really pull it our sense of rejections personally. Right. So, you know, I will tell you that fresh out of college, I applied to go to Harvard business school.
That's I figured go to the best of the best. And when I didn't get in, months took me, months to recover. When I finally hounded down the admissions officer. Now this is back in the day. Quite frankly, we didn't have a lot of email, internet kind of stuff. So, you know, really was calling, calling, calling almost tempted to go and bang on the door.
The admissions officer said, well, you know, you're a B plus average at Wharton wasn't good enough for us at Harvard. And I thought at that moment, well, screw you. Right. But it didn't necessarily give a salve to my hurt feelings of not being accepted. Right. And I'm sure you have stories on forgive me for being so hoity toity about it.
But I have thousands of my own stories collected of jobs that I applied to that not only didn't I get through the stupid systems, the resume systems, or got to an interview where the junior person, he was like, no, you're not right. Or even got through the process. And boy, I'll tell you a story, maybe in another podcast where I was hired, because other people that they had made offers to hadn't accepted yet.
Yeah. I mean, you know, all kinds of crap I can tell ya, let me, let me, let me be perfectly blunt. The hiring game stinks, especially as it kills people's confidence. I would probably be extraordinarily rich for every speaking gig that I was not accepted to. And oftentimes you don't even hear back. Like you, you take all this time, you put in quote an application, much like a job application.
And you don't even hear back from these people running events. And then sometimes you hear back with this standard, you know, we got thousands of applications and yours just wasn't selected. I'm like, yeah. Right. Did you even look at mine? Did you even check out the videos? You know, I mean, I know there's good speakers out there, but let me tell you, nobody has reviews like I do.
Nobody talks about the subject that I do, and it fits with your conference perfectly. And so, when I suspect, suspect that, yeah, I do hound people down and I want to know why. We'll come back to feedback in a minute, but you know, job rejection speaking, rejections. How about just relationship rejections?
You know, people who, you may have had a romantic relationship or wanted to have a romantic relationship. Gosh, and with my teenage boys and not really teenagers really anymore, 18 and 22, I talked to them. I talked to my friends who have kids, you know, they're terrified of asking somebody out and being rejected. And I, you know, I've been married too long to remember that feeling, you know, kind of intrinsically, but I get it, I get it.
You know, it doesn't take a romantic relationship to rock your confidence in that sense. How about just a business relationship? Somebody who's not, you know, connecting with you, you don't, you know, you reach out either online or otherwise, and they're just like not responding or they're not being giving you the love, you know, they're giving you that kind of cold shoulder.
Yeah, it happens all the time. Even platonic, totally platonic friendship relationships, you know, maybe you're on a nonprofit board or, or a committee or something like that. Or you are hanging out with your kids at a kid's soccer game, trying to talk to the other parents. You know, it doesn't matter that sense of, they don't like me.
You know, I did that podcast first up that whole rejection part on our confidence really takes it down. So, disappointment in things that you want, people you want to be with achievements, goals, things like that. They all kind of fall in that bucket. Believe it or not. You know, how many times have you sent an email and waited and waited for an answer and somebody doesn't get back to you and you just assume it's because they don't like you or not interested in reality, they just didn't get email.
They're, you know, they're buried happens to me, myself. I get several hundred a day. And, you know, I feel badly when I don't get back to somebody, but I'm sure they're sitting there stewing. And then you get an email back that says, just want to make sure you got this and hoping to hear from you, you know? And you feel, you feel badly, but imagine what that other person's feeling like.
Right? Because it happens in both directions. The ultimate disappointment, and I say this because it's so ridiculous. I am being a little sarcastic is social media. You know, you post something, and it doesn't get as many likes or shares or doesn't get a comment or gets a comment that's not so good. Right?
Huge disappointment. I remember my birthday this year. Oh yeah. So, you’re sitting there, and people are wishing you a happy birthday and you're like, oh, that's so nice. I got 5, I got 10, I got 20, whatever the number is. And somehow some way you see that other people are getting hundreds. And you feel like not just fear of missing out, you feel like a fear of being the biggest loser on Facebook.
Yeah. So, you know, disappointment comes in all kinds of flavors, and it is more often than not tied to that rejection fear. The one that really is the core of all our confidence crises. Again, maybe the rain or the technology we can blame for the failure, if you will, of or the disappointment of something specific, but in reality, underneath all of it, there's still that kind of rejection reaction.
What did I do wrong to deserve this? So, I want to offer a couple ideas and, you know, at the conference that was yesterday, and I mentioned it was all about resilience. That was the theme. And one of my personal heroes, Angela Duckworth. She's another great author. Her book is Grit, and she is a U Penn faculty member. So I get to kind of see and be close to it. I really enjoy her work. I enjoy her. I think she's one of the very few wonderfully authentic people out there, but she talks along these lines of resilience, very much similar to what's in my books about, looking at failure, looking at disappointment, not from a personal perspective, but quantitative data perspective and learning from it.
Not just because we say you should learn from your failures, but really use it as an opportunity to get feedback, to examine what went wrong, to examine what went right. And to decide if you're going to do it again better, differently. So we're going to take a really quick sponsor break and we come back. I'm going to tell you precisely how.
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So, I want you break those down into really clear steps, because if you have had a recent disappointment, I'm hoping that this will help you. Not just get over it faster but get back on the horse if that's the right thing to do, or tell the horse to just go away, get it out of your brain so you sleep better and can move on.
And if you haven't had a major disappointment lately, maybe you can apply a past one just to see how it feels and works. Maybe it's a cognitive cycle still playing in the back of your head. Here we go. Step one, whatever your goal, whatever your process to prepare for it. Try and be realistic. Now it sounds really easy, right.
But look, if you're going to apply for Harvard business school, go find out what their requirements are. Right. If you're going to apply for a particular college or job, do your homework, get information, find out what's really required. So, when you apply and you're not accepted, you recognize that, you know what, they didn't even look at my resume.
They didn't look at my speaker reel. Right? Don't be one of those people who submits things expecting that the organization, the junior recruiter, the low-level event planner. Is going to make an exception for you, right? You're great. Then that doesn't take anything away from your greatness. It's just a, it's not realistic.
So, find out what the rules are, find out what the requirements are and do something about it. Prepare, get ready, have a plan B. Have a plan B. Yeah, plan B yesterday was to record- not always the ideal plan B of course, but have a plan B. So then when plan A doesn't go, well you have something to lean on.
When I go to present in live scenarios, I joke with all event planners, I have plan B, C, D E, and F. I have bags full of cords. I have things on flash drives. I have all kinds of ways to make sure that I'm successful, even with the things that I can't control like AV. So, step two, if you really want something you prepare, you know, what's required.
Come up with a plan B maybe even a plan C. Next, when you don't succeed. When it's disappointing, when you get rejected, lick your wounds for a while, give yourself some, self-compassion allow yourself to feel shitty for a while. Maybe it's 24 hours, maybe it's 20 minutes, but set a clock, say to yourself, you know, I'm not going to fight this feeling for a period of time I'm just gonna let it happen. Gonna whine. I'm gonna, y’know, maybe take the rest of the afternoon off, do what you need to do to just be frustrated and angry, but allow yourself to do it with some limit. I know it sounds crazy. And, and in a way, like why would you do that? Well, because that anger, that frustration needs to go somewhere.
And if you go ahead and jump on that remedy right away, your brain cells are not all aligned. You don't have full capacity. So, allow that anger, that frustration to simmer down a bit, you know, it's kind of like writing that email right after you're pissed off at getting at somebody else's, you know, that you should let it sit in the, in the draft box, read it a couple hours or a day later, and you're going to see the anger and frustration in the words. So let the anger boil for a little bit. Let it simmer down. And then you can deal with it better.
Next, be your own forensic detective. And what I mean by that is yeah, go get feedback. Go think about what you did or didn't do to prepare and what you could do better. Figure out, find out what went wrong, why you didn't get the job, why you didn't get the gig. Why somebody wasn't interested-in you. And ask almost to matter of factly you know, I understand you selected somebody else, but I'm very interested in understanding what I could have done better so that I can improve going forward.
Now, will everyone give you that feedback? No, they won't. They won't take the time cause they're not that nice. They may not give you the feedback because they're embarrassed why they picked somebody else. Really? I mean it. But you'd be surprised. I don't know what the percentage is, but I do get a fair amount back with some legitimate explanation. When I say legit, legit for them, I don't always agree. I will say that.
We were looking for somebody a little and then I'll say to them. Yeah, but that presenter, have you ever seen her present? She stinks. She's boring. Anyway, you have to kind of at least take the data and just go, okay. It's data. It's what it is. So be your own forensic detective, anytime you get disappointed and learn from it of course. Yes.
The last thing is, I want you to really deliberately consciously decide once you have that information, do you want to do this thing again? Do you want to apply to a job like that or a gig like that or try and have another relationship with that same person or somebody like that and just make your confidence choice right then and there, hmm, based on what I know based on what I did, based on what I'm willing to do to do it again, do I really want to do this?
And I give you full and utter permission, in fact, I want you to take that control to say, yes, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it differently and here's how. Or nah. I'm not going to do it again. I'm not gonna apply to business school again. I really, I don't want it bad enough. And allow yourself to live with that decision and also change your mind later. So, for now I'm not applying. I don't have it in me. I don't want to do it. I don't think that I can live up to those requirements and needs right now, but maybe six months from now, a year from now, I might try again and allow yourself to do it then. It is that power, that ability to choose that mindfulness about what you value, what you want and saying, if I really do value and want that thing, that relationship, that job, that person to respond to my email. That you will either learn or figure out how to get it, that resilience, that persistence required.
That's a confidence requirement right there, or I really don't want it that badly and I'm going to free myself, my cognitive cycles, my energy, my time, my money. And I'm going to do something else. I'm not going to do that thing again because disappointment takes energy. Avoiding disappointment, preparing takes energy.
And if you decide consciously to take that energy, that spirit, that mojo and apply to other things that maybe you feel won't be so disappointing that you can put all your brain cells behind. That's really liberating. That's, that's where your confidence explodes positively. That's where it grows. And you say I've made a decision to do that.
So, my friends, I'm hoping that you're looking at disappointment now, maybe a little differently. You know, I, one of my favorite Alyssa-isms is that life is a laboratory. You know, I've said this in a prior podcast, Edison, one of the great inventors, you know, said 10,000 ways to find out what doesn't work to only find out the one way that does- a lot of disappointment in that comment.
Right. It's easy to say. It's easy to think kind of esoterically but then when it happens to you, when something happens, and you get the piss punched out of you. It hurts. It hurts emotionally. It may even hurt physically. So don't think that I want you to avoid disappointment, be little it, think that it's not normal. I want you to just look at disappointment is part of life.
It's part of the human experience. It's part of what we have to do like it or not to learn, to grow, to be our better, best selves. And if we can use disappointment in a way that's more productive and just ruminating and telling ourselves we're losers, that's where our confidence get has a chance to become what we want it to be.
That's where our confidence, our ability to show others that disappointment doesn't have to be the end, but rather just part of the process. That's going to wrap up this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if so, please like, or share the podcast on whatever channel you're listening to now, because you know, that getting confidence the best way is to give it to others. So thank you for doing it. You can send a little confidence my way with your feedback, any topics you'd like to hear in the future. Best way to reach me is [email protected]. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver. And again, thank you for bringing confidence to the world.
This podcast was produced by Mindful Media. All rights reserved by Alyssa Dver and the American Confidence Institute. Music written and performed by Jeff Weinstein.