The Pain of Rejection and the Beliefs We Choose
El dolor del rechazo y las creencias que elegimos
A question about the experience of narrowly missing a job opportunity and the old feelings of inadequacy it stirs up.
The Pain of Rejection and the Beliefs We Choose
A question about the experience of narrowly missing a job opportunity and the old feelings of inadequacy it stirs up.
I just went through several rounds of an interview process and ultimately didn't get the job. I just got off a feedback call with the hiring person, and it came down to the ways in which my stories, meant to demonstrate my soft skills, fell just slightly short. There was simply another candidate who performed better in that area.
It brought up insecurities and questions, because I think of myself as a good listener, someone with soft skills. There was also another position with the same company, a more technical role, and I didn't pass the technical interview for that one either.
It was a role I was excited about, one that felt really aligned with me. I was thinking they were going to give me the job, and they admitted it was very close. But at the same time, I've struggled in my life with a sense of failure, a sense of not being good enough, and sometimes even not training enough to be really proficient at something, perhaps because of a limiting belief.
All of that has flooded to the surface with the closeness of this missed opportunity. I know enough now to recognize that this is just how it goes. They said it was close, and I need to move on, keep sending out applications, keep refining my interview process. The feedback was actually very helpful. And yet there's this undercurrent of an old feeling: not good enough. A feeling like I haven't in the past seen myself as worthy enough to go through the training properly, the kind of rigor that would be landing me these jobs. So it's stirring some old feelings in the context of narrowly missing this role.
There's a lot there to dive into.
The natural pain of rejection
Naturally, when we get rejected, it's painful. To expect that not to happen is a bit unrealistic. I'm not saying you're expecting it not to happen, but generally when we get rejected, it's going to be painful. It's natural. There's not much more to do other than acknowledging, "That sucks. I wanted that. That hurts." To try to be completely fine without any sense of pain around that situation is an unrealistic expectation. It's like not being human. Of course we are human. We're more than human, but we are human. It's not about getting rid of the human part.
From limiting beliefs to active choosing
Now, beyond that natural pain, there are the unnecessary struggles: what can be cleared or seen through. There are many approaches to this. One, for example, is the sense of not being good enough. You talked about it as limiting beliefs, as though they have been a cause or a reason why things have been the way they are. That's a valid approach to start with. When you're beginning to work with something and you've never really seen those beliefs, those narratives, and how they operate, it's a good introduction to consider them as things that are appearing and happening to you. You can see, "I have this belief. I have these thoughts. They're invasive. They take over. I can't control them." And then you're a kind of victim of that. That's an appropriate approach as an introduction.
But once you see that clearly, if you stay with that framework, that interpretation itself becomes limiting, because it removes a certain kind of possible freedom and keeps you in the position of a victim.
That's where I take a different approach, and I think it's appropriate for you now: not to see it as "I have this conditioning, this past, this thing that happens to me, and that is why I'm stuck." Turn it around. Ask: why am I choosing these beliefs? What am I getting from them? How are they serving me? You might say, "Well, it's serving me in that it's a kind of masochism, a self-defeating, self-sabotaging pattern." But look beyond that. Usually what I point to is that it's helping you not experience something. So we can move from "I can see this mind is doing something, and I've unconsciously been at its mercy," to something deeper.