Rejected for a Job? 10 Powerful Quotes to Stop You Losing Faith and Motivation.
It’s the second class postage. The ultra thin envelope. The fact that it has been weeks since you applied.
It’s the ‘thanks but no thanks’ e-mail.
It’s the silence.
This is what rejection looks like. This is what rejection sounds like.
It feels even worse.
It feels like a punch in the guts. A really hard punch in the guts.
Looking for a new job takes effort. It takes courage.
We sum up our whole lives in a cover note and a two page resumé/CV. And then we send them off, with a good covering of our hope and self esteem.
And our hope and self esteem don’t always come back.
Instead, we begin to doubt ourselves. Maybe we aren’t that good, after all. Maybe we’ll never get a job.
We begin to give up. We ask ourselves ‘why bother?’ We make excuses to ourselves.
It’s at times like these that we need to dig in. We need to redouble our efforts, not lessen them.
Stick at it and you will prevail……..
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” Charles R Swindoll.
It is easy, when a rejection letter drops onto your doormat or into your inbox, to think that you are not good enough or that you are never going to get a job. This is fear speaking and fear exaggerates. If we listen to fear, we soon become despondent. We soon think ‘why bother’. We give up on ourselves.
So, deal with that inner fear by sticking to the facts and keeping faith. You have been rejected for a job. That’s it. That’s what has happened. It doesn’t mean anything more than that.
Keep trying and you will succeed. If you believe you can’t, then you won’t. If you believe you can, then you will.
“When one door closes another opens. But often we look so long, so regretfully upon the closed door, that we fail to see the one that is opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell.
But, what if we thought the job was the perfect job? We had pinned our hopes on it? Then, we torment ourselves with ‘if only’. If only it had come up next year. If only I had not said I wanted more money.
We grieve for the lost opportunity.
Time and energy spent this way is not going to move you forward. It keeps you static. It numbs you to other opportunities. So, move on and take action.
“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” Carlos Castaneda.
By moving on and taking action, we choose to make ourselves strong.
At the start of your job hunting process, resolve to stay strong and keep moving forward. Tell yourself this every day. Believe that you are strong. Believe that you can cope with whatever comes your way. And you will.
“I never lose. I either win or I learn.” Nelson Mandela.
You become strong by adopting a mindset that believes you never lose. This is a mindset that is open to learning. And there is always something to learn through rejection. Often more than there is through success.
You might have to think laterally, proactively seek feedback and look critically and objectively at what you submitted. The lessons will be there.
Life can be a tough teacher. And we are forever life’s students. Realise that and you’ll be one of the successful ones.
“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.” Sylvester Stallone.
Rejection can be positive. Rejection can be the nudge that we need in order to take a long and hard look at ourselves. By doing that, we recognise changes that we need to make or a different approach that we need to adopt.
Rejection is a call to action, pure and simple.
“A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.” Bo Bennett.
Success is not linear. Our working lives are not one procession of promotion after promotion or good job after good job. No. This is fairy land. We will fail, we will stall and we will have setbacks. We will make bad decisions. Without these, success would not exist. They are necessary.
Work out what is important to you in life and keep your eyes on these goals. Make them short, mid and long term. And work towards them through the setbacks and mistakes. This way, you will succeed.
“Fall down 7 times, get up 8.” Japanese Proverb.
Resilience. People talk about it a lot. It’s not something that grows overnight as you sleep. You cannot magic it out of thin air.
It’s about not giving up. It’s about adaptability.
You live it and you become it.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky.
You only fail when you stop trying. You only fail when you give up.
Being rejected is tough. Allow that rejection to put you off applying for other jobs and what happens? You guarantee that you do not get any others.
So, tough as it is, let the world say ‘no’ to you. Do not say ‘no’ to yourself.
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Confucius.
We all learnt about the hare and the tortoise. And, with job applications, it is more than OK to be the tortoise. In fact, it can be positively beneficial.
Taking your time with job applications whilst continuing to enjoy the things that you enjoy in life is healthy. That way, job hunting stays important and does not become all consuming.
“Life does not get easier, you just get stronger.” Anon.
Keep putting in the applications. Keep learning the lessons. Be clear on your goals. Take the feedback. Keep moving forward. Have resolve. Adapt. Become resilient. And you will succeed.
And the thing that they don’t tell you? Or that you don’t tell yourself? When you get that job, however long it takes, you look back and you think “I’m glad it worked out this way.”
