Ep 32 Everyday Emotional Murders
Alyssa Dver
If you're smart and work hard, but just 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. So, let's get to it.
As we talk about everyday emotional murderers, I love that title. We're gonna look at both sides of the equation here because we've all had confidence killing in our lives, both is as a victim, but also as a villain. And what I mean by an emotional murder, it could be just a comment that somebody makes to you or that you made some to somebody else. You know, maybe you said something to a friend or to a colleague and you didn't give two seconds thought, but they're stewing in it. We certainly know that that's happened to us, you know, how many emails have you gotten? Even recently that you're like, I can't believe they were so rude, or they were so curt, right that they didn't explain something, or just wrote it in a way that was so short, that it was almost obnoxious. We do it all the time. We do it all the time. We just don't think about we're moving so fast. And again, we do to others. And it gets done to us. And I think we forgive it. It's just that's the way people are. But more importantly, those micro traumas, that micro, whatever you want to call them, because I don't think they're intentional. So, they're not micro aggressions. They're not something that people are doing with any care with any thoughtfulness with any mindfulness consciousness. But there are situations that we do take in a way that maybe we're overthinking or we're taking them very personally, and we shouldn't, we shouldn't, because it really is thoughtlessness, that's all the person is doing is being thoughtless. However, those don't bother me nearly as much personally, as full-blown rejections in like, for example, how many times have you asked somebody out on a date, even if it's a friendship kind of thing and they're not available? Or they say I can't, inevitably women, and I am stereotyping, forgive me, will give you some excuse why they can't, men are like I can't. And it's funny for those gender, reasons, maybe we don't take offense. But if you have a female friend who's like, I can't. You immediately go to that place. She doesn't like me. So please don't do that, my friends. If somebody can't, they can't, they might have a reason that's just not shareable.
But a rejection of all forms can hit us really hard, can hit us really hard. Now, let's take some more extreme examples. You apply for a job or a school or you apply to do a speaking gig, you know, I apply all the time. In fact, some of my fresh wounds are from some TED Talks. And when somebody basically comes back and says, no, we don't want you, it literally means that. It means we're not interested in what you have to offer. It's more not interested in the person you are in you participating or being part of whatever we are. And that is really hard to take, that rejection, I don't care what it is or who you are. You can dust yourself off pick yourself up and be like, well, they don't deserve me. You can say to yourself 300 times in and around bad timing, or I didn't apply myself completely. There's 1000 ways that you can kind of soften the blow in your head, but the reality is it's hard. Rejection is hard. Rejection is hard.
I joke with a lot of people sometimes depending on what career you're in, you know if you're an entrepreneur or not, is there are times where things are very personal. Like applying for a job even if your resume get just gets kicked out by the applicant tracking system, the ATS system. You say to yourself damn keywords, you know, I didn't have the right keywords or the darn system or whatever, but in your heart you're like, they didn't want me. And you know, that probably human didn't even look at your resume, you know that the job description or the keywords they put into the system could be completely convoluted. But it's still a personal rejection. It's even worse though after you have an interview. It's even worse when you send in a speaking app or TED app. Because literally, somebody's looked at it for whatever reason said no.
Now, I'm a feedback whore. I admit to that, because if somebody tells me No, I want to know why. I want to know why because, yeah, I'm competitive. I want to know why because I want to learn from it and grow from it. And often, I want to know why, because I want them to learn. Because I want them to realize that if they didn't read my application they should have or if they read it too quickly, or made a decision that was too rash, that they should learn from it, too. So, I have all these relatively selfish reasons, but they're legit, while chase down people, when they say no, thank you to really find out now I've talked about this another podcast, but here's the reality. It still hurts. It still hurts that it's emotional murder, when somebody tells me “No, thank you, Alyssa, we don't want you”. So, if you ever feel that, or you are feeling that, trust me, you're not alone. You're not alone. What about the trauma of having a really crappy boss? And I see the trauma because really bad bosses may be totally thoughtless and ignorant and all and they've been put in a position just because who knows, maybe they were great at their previous role, and somebody thought they make a great manager. Maybe they don't have training, there's 1000 reasons why bad bosses exist. But a bad boss, for whatever reason, the boss is bad subordinates are going to be traumatized by that person. They may be so traumatized, and I have clients like this my coaching clients that had been so traumatized by bad bosses, they can't work for anyone anymore, because they're scared. They're so scared. They were like, well, what if it happens again? That bad boss told me I was a piece of poop. And I don't have any more my self-belief, I have no more self-respect.
I had a boss won't say who it was a young entrepreneur and young, really young, right out of business school, started a company hired me. I was all but about 40-45 at the time. And I remember going to the New York office meeting with all the other employees that were there. And I was by no means the only one over 40, but I was one of the first and certainly one of the most senior. And I remember the young president saying to me, oh, the old people sit on that side of the table. And he was joking. Ha ha ha ha. Certainly not what I would consider the most legal or diverse minded, regardless again, justifying it inside and outside. It's still burned me it still made me almost jumped through my skin to go what do you mean, I'm the oldest person here? And looking around? Yeah, it was it was probably the first time I realized that, but it made me paranoid. It made me so paranoid that even to this day, when I walk in a room, I'm looking around to see who's older than I am. These days, maybe not so many. But it is a comfort to see people who are of my age now. But just from that trauma. So needless to say, bad bosses. Yeah, they can do some pretty big damage and pretty good emotional murdering. When I say good, it's not good, it’s not good.
So how are we going to deal with it? How are we going to deal with it? Well, you know, I'm going to come back out to the sponsor break now. And we're going to talk about some strategies and how to deal with these emotional murders. Be right back.
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Alyssa Dver:
Alright, so inevitably, when I talk about solutions, there's always this option these three options that we get, right we get three options on how we're going to behave, how we're going to respond to any kind of confidence challenge and the three options are pretty simple. One is to just ignore it, right? So, blow it off being indifferent, push it off to the side and be like, well, whatever, I don't want to spend energy on it. And some people are better than others. Some days I'm better than others, in fact, for my own ability, and being too indifferent, not so great, but you know, having a little bit of resilience, having the ability to be like, you know what, I'm not gonna let that moron get under my skin, or I'm not going to let that situation waste any cognitive energy. It's not a bad strategy, in many cases, particularly if it's a petty issue. So, if it's just a little bit of a stabbing little bit of somebody's taking your wallet from you, so to speak, it's not a murderer, it's just a misdemeanor. Maybe we just let it go, we get in different we become a different choice number one, so we should choice that we can just ignore something, right?
Choice number two. Choice number two is to confront it. Towards number two is confined. Now, confrontation doesn't have to be angry and obnoxious, right? Hey, screw you, I'm not the only old one here? Or are you only a wish you are as old and wise as I am? Are you there's 1000 ways that you can kind of do it, you can even be funny about it? Oh, this is the older side of the table, it must be the most more valuable one, right? I mean, you joke, you can be funny about it, you can say to the person, that's not cool. Hey, by the way, that's illegal. There's a lot of ways you can confront somebody without necessarily being nasty about it, or being asked if it makes you feel better, but I don't recommend it because that other person is just gonna get defensive. But you can confront and deal with that situation for sure. Right? It takes not just confidence takes a little bit courage, because you don't know what the outcomes gonna be. You don't have certainty about what will happen with a confrontation. So, it's not just confidence as we define courage being the absence of knowing what's going to happen.
The third option you have, so if you don't want to ignore it, you don't want to confront it, it's to really cope with it, is to deal with it. And to deal with it is in our vocabulary here at the Institute is really to look at the second we'll look at why it feels so murderous why it feels so vengeful, for somebody or something to be emotionally crushing whether you got laid off, you had a bad boss, you got rejected for some reason. Like, what is that feeling? Why is it happening? What's it causing you to think and feel and be like really dig in it, get in the mud with it? What's the fear that you failed, that they didn't like you? Figure it out, call it out. And in that moment recognize that that signal that trigger is something that's making an emotional reaction for the singular reason that it's violating something that was important to you something that you really wanted something that you felt you want needed, or that you really valued, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be almost grieving over that loss, provided you recognize that there's some lesson there's some light in there that you're going to learn from and move on. Figure out how you can do something better next time, maybe it's applied for the job better figure out what those keywords are, but get them in your resume, hire career coach to help you figure that out, whatever it might be, go back, get feedback, use that signal as a message that this didn't work out, because I really wanted it and I'm going to figure out how to get it next time. You have that option. And all that activity from calling it out. Giving it a name. You know that stupid young boss, you know, making it a story with characters objectifying it that actually puts it all in your prefrontal. And when you start to think about it in an analytical way, like that stays in your prefund frontal a little bit further away from that emotional firepit of your amygdala and your limbic system in your brain. So that you can be much more rational you can be almost objective that you don't have an emotional murder, but you actually suit up with some psychological armor, which is all in your prefrontal it allows you to be smarter, strategic.
Now, can you get equally nasty in that moment? Of course, you can. I'm gonna get him. But better off, huh? That wasn't good. Did not like that. That feels like crap. Not gonna let that happen again, here's how. So, I know it sounds easy, as I'm saying it, but there is a way you can do it. And that simple way is this recognize when you have one of those moments that murderous emotional trauma, identify it. First and foremost, identify, call it out, give it a name, just like a bully, call it out, and sit down and try and figure out how you're going to tackle that. We have a methodology in our coaching library- welcome anyone to dig into that for sure. But if nothing else, without going into great depth on the methodology, what am I going to do about it next time? How am I going to deal with it in a more productive way because I don't want to waste emotional energy. I certainly don't want to be murdered or something like that. Oh, tough conversation here. Little bit on the esoteric side, but here's the truth, folks.
We all have scars; we all have these opportunities to be hurt to hurt others. And 9 out of 10 times the bottom line is people are just being thoughtless. People are not aiming to hurt you. But yet when they do, learn from it, figure out how you can avoid that. And just maybe not only will you not get hurt next time, maybe you won't hurt somebody else accidentally, too.
So, before we completely wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other episodes can be found on the website, www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence for yourself is to give it to others and you can do it so easily just by liking and sharing this episode on your favorite social media channels. You can even give me some confidence fuel by sending in any comments about the topics I've covered, or ones you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver, thank you for helping to bring more 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.
