How rejection can be the path to success?

If you are actively looking for ways to achieve your goals, you often need to be thick skinned. Some people have no problem with that – one might think it is their second nature, whilst others have hard times dealing with rejection

I am one of the latter group. Is it something, that you can not only deal with, but leverage the experience life gives you, to succeed? YES!

Whether you are ‘fishing’ for your precious Nemo in a world of predators (dating people in want of a life partner 🙂 ) or looking for a job, have started university or are new to a big city and looking for new friends, rejection can sometimes hit hard. Why that is not always a bad thing?

Because when one door closes, the gate (or window!) opens

Believe me or not – I do think, things happen for a reason. When I came to a 300K city from 20K town, I was very lost. All was so new to me, distances seemed unbelievable. Adult, so-called mature stage of life was making me feel so not ready for it! At the time I was doing many different things for a living – worked for some companies full time for few months, part time for some other people in a meantime, studying in the capital city and attending weekend classes when I could. All that time it was me looking for things I wanted to do. And somehow I knew, I wanted to work in IT, but honestly at that time IT college I was attending, was at the stage of teaching Turbopascal and some C++ basics, with the main focus on graphic design profession in Photoshop. It was good at the time, but also challenging to squeeze all of that into 24 hours that we are all given every day. Whilst going through my crazy beginning of the adult life, I had some thoughts about shaping my career at some point, but had no courage whatsoever to even think, that it will ever happen.

Then I got my first IT job!

Was it a job of my dreams? In some aspects yes, but it also had a lot of customer service, office admin, secretary, PA, also being a bad news messenger to our public and private sector healthcare customers. Can be pretty ungrateful and underpaid as I was hired by a self-employed person, on early stages of their business market positioning. Eventually that led me to the conclusion, that the money is elsewhere probably and time to move on. And so I left my dreams of working in IT for a looong time. Through different jobs and experiences I ended up coming to London to expand my perspective of life (mainly professional, but also personal). Main goal was to improve my English skills, earn few extra sterlings and go back home, to start fresh, with new experiences brought back with me. Did that work?

Not according to plan, but..

Reading the above, what do you think? Was I dreaming to work in IT in a company of a global reach? Never. I started with very basic jobs – garden watering, babysitting, cleaning, and after few months someone offered me to come and be interviewed by a big company – some of you (especially Londoners) may know – with delicious coffee, sandwiches, salads, wraps and other yummy stuff on the go. Having had worked as a PA, customer service, civil servant etc. I thought this will be a piece of cake to get this job. I got all dressed up, equipped in enthusiasm, smile on my face, I’d read about the company, I thought of my motivation as to why I want to be part of this particular establishment etc. I was very hopeful also because the lady interviewing me was of the same origin, so I thought that even if I struggle with my language skills, she will support me.

Ok, great. Let the new stage of my life begin! – I thought

Interview was… okay. I got rolled in to the trial day – was told to keep myself busy so I did – dressed up as I was asked, I was left, right and center on the shop floor, also in the kitchen, where I heard some comments about my work pace etc., which I found pretty peculiar on my first (trial) day, but hey, you want the job – you cope with it! I thought. It was meant to be my step from no regular work routine, to first full time job abroad, so I was really trying.

It was getting closer to the END OF MY shift and so I got called to the office

I was pretty enthusiastic and hopeful, that my abilities and attitude will get noticed and rewarded by winning a contract with them – in my head I felt confident knowing, that I was working as a PA for three companies at the same time, working part-time elsewhere and studying 200 km from home at the same time! All things considered – deep down I was perceiving as relatively quick and easy win, something I was definitely capable of. The bigger my disappointment was, when the manager called me to tell me – thank you, here is your money, good luck elsewhere! And I was the kind of person, who was finding it hard to deal with any rejection. That was how I felt – in my head I thought ‘I was too sure I will be fine this time, and ended up not getting it. Why is it happening to me again?’

That was the beginning of my route to where I am right now. Rejection led to humility = but also stopped me from trying to do random things in my life. In fact I never fancied working in a coffee shop, my heart was always with IT. Since then I had other jobs, each of them taking me closer to where I am today – helping people from life science sector purchase online, testing new functionalities, improving processes and learning from very talented people. Since that ‘rejection’ day, I was able to find my own. little, personal goal – learn the language, get more confident and believe in myself, my abilities and talents. Rejection turned into acceptation – first my own self-approval, then going through the plan step by step, regardless the obstacles.