 In
Reflection: Artfully Managing Mistakes and Rethinking
Rejection
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Happy October!
As many of you know, I write new articles every other
month, using the “leap month” to respond to questions
and comments from past articles and suggest ideas in
preparation for those upcoming. This is a leap month!
For those who did not get a chance to read last month’s
issue entitled, “Artfully
Managing Mistakes and Rethinking Rejection”, you
might want to check it out before reading this issue.
I have chosen to respond to some of the questions and
comments from readers of last month’s issue which I
thought would have the most universal appeal. Enjoy!
Hearing the compliment in criticism!
Dear Denise, I found your suggestions on artfully
managing mistakes both enlightening and inspiring. To
be honest, I am not very good at taking criticism,
although I like the idea of all feedback being important
information. My challenge is how not to take it
personally so that I can be more open to criticism. Any
suggestions?
-
Human Resource Specialist, Minneapolis, Minnesota
I think most of
us would agree that it is difficult to take criticism,
and it is doubly hard to grow from it! There is truth
behind the saying “Faced with the choice between
changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to
do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof!” I
think we are equally loathe (or at best reluctant) to
changing our actions and behaviors, despite the most
honest and humble offering of feedback from loved ones
or valued customers. Let’s face it, at our very core,
we aren’t really very teachable because we put great
stake in our being right!
So back to the
question, how do we take criticism less personally so
that we can grow from it? Strangely, I think we need to
take it more personally! In fact, I think we should
treat honest criticism as a sincere compliment! Think
about it. With whom do you bother sharing your
thoughts, ideas and opinions - people who you figure
aren’t worth your time and effort, or those whom you
respect and honor enough to take the time and energy to
communicate with? We have all been in the company of
people whose views or behaviors bother, annoy or
aggravate us, but whom we simply choose to ignore or
disregard because it didn’t feel worth the trouble to
express an opposing view or to offer feedback. When
people take the time to give us constructive criticism
they are saying, in effect, that we are worth the
effort! They are casting a vote in the direction of our
willingness to grow and change.
As a job
developer, I always knew that the employers who were
willing to voice their concerns and objections about
hiring people with barriers to employment were actually
the ones who were most interested in doing business with
me. If they weren’t interested, they would have said
nothing at all or politely handed me a business card and
told me they would be in touch. We need to grow thicker
skins and listen for the question lying at the heart of
an objection, and the compliment hidden in what appears
to criticism.
Don’t give up looking for the
right address!
Dear Denise, I was
excited to share your insights about “rethinking
rejection” with my job seekers who have disabilities, as
many get discouraged and give up too quickly! Your
prior issues on “How to Keep On Keepin’ On” were also
very helpful in this regard. Is there anything else
more specific you would say to job seekers about not
giving up in their job search when they are turned down
time and again? Thank you for your ongoing inspiration!
-
Voc. Rehab Counselor, Atlanta, Georgia
One of my
all-time favorite writers, Barbara Kingsolver, once
wrote in an interview to aspiring writers, “That
manuscript of yours that has just come back from another
editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it
rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the
editor who can fully appreciate my work’ and it has
simply come back stamped ‘not at this address’. Your job
is to keep looking for the right address.”
What a wonderful
perspective! I always advised my job seekers that their
job was to hire themselves the right employer! When
they approached a business with an idea or an
application and the business did not respond positively,
rather than consider it a kind of failure, it might have
been exactly the feedback they needed to know that this
was not their right employer! Who knows, perhaps we
often don’t get hired for the right reason – meaning,
the place or the position was not the context for us to
fully bring our gifts or it wasn’t the employer who
could fully appreciate our work. We didn’t necessarily
fail an interview, we just interviewed at the wrong
address.
The important
thing is for us to keep believing in ourselves and our
possibilities long enough for our best efforts to work,
and to not give up before someone has a chance to take
us up on our potential. Being able to go from
application to application, and interview to interview
without a loss of enthusiasm is an essential ingredient
to eventual success!
Consider your
“resume of great mistakes”!
Dear Denise, Your
newsletter arrived just in time for me to add some of
your wisdom to my Life Skills workshop! To me, having a
healthy attitude towards making mistakes is critical to
success in any endeavor. Working with women who have
been abused and have terribly low self-esteem, it was
neat for me to share your perspective with them. The
best part was that it gave them an opportunity to look
at mistakes they’ve made in their past as stepping
stones to where they have arrived today! Wow! Thank
you!
-
Life Skills Instructor, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
This wonderful
message reminded me of a story I share in my book, The
Wholehearted Journey: After a long, hard climb up the
mountains, a group of spiritual seekers found themselves
in front of a great teacher. Bowing deeply, they asked
the question that had been burning inside them for so
long: “How do we become wise?” After a long pause, the
teacher replied, ”By making good choices.” One of the
students asked in turn, “But teacher, how do we make
good choices?” “From experience,” responded the wise
one. “And how do we get experience?” asked another
student. “By making bad choices,” smiled the teacher.
It’s just so
true. How do we learn who to trust in life, but through
the experience of having trusted the wrong people? How
do we learn to follow our gut instinct, but by ignoring
it one too many times? How do we learn to invest our
time and energy in the relationships that matter, except
by losing a friendship for want of our time and
attention? Who hasn’t learned to choose work
opportunities more carefully by working in places that
didn’t work out well in the past? It’s lovely to
realize the extent to which all of our mistakes in life,
all of our blundering and bluffing, and even our great
losses, have all served as a grand apprenticeship to
things we did not yet know! From this perspective,
wouldn’t it be interesting for each of us to come up
with our personal Resume of Great Mistakes, knowing how,
in the end, those mistakes worked to teach and enlighten
us as much as any formal education we might have ever
had?
Wrestle only with that which is
worth the struggle!
Denise, thanks for last
month’s issue! I have many staff who love to complain
about everything, and everyone, and all the ways that
their lives are impossible! You put things in a proper
perspective and your last newsletter helped me to
communicate to them to stop sweating the small stuff!
Please keep it coming!
-
Training Director, Olympia, Washington
Last month I
wrote about the importance of language and advised
readers not to label as a “failure” something that, in
fact, is really only a disappointment or a minor
letdown. In like manner, this woman’s message prompts
me to make the same point with regard to what we
consider a “problem”. Robert Fulgrum once said, “If you
break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your
house is on fire, then you’ve a got real problem!
Everything else is inconvenience.”
Life is short.
We all stand in a very shallow puddle of time. There is
so much vying for our attention and focus, and we only
have so much to give this world. With that being true,
we need to keep our focus in check, ensuring that we are
putting our power in the service of our deepest
purposes. Among other things, that means picking our
battles carefully. It means having the discernment to
distinguish between what is a bother, what is a
nuisance, and what qualifies as a true challenge worthy
of our time, attention and energy. What in your life
would you consider to be a true burden or a genuine
crisis, and what would you consider to be a minor
drawback, a petty concern, or a slight hindrance? The
difference matters!
Rainer Marie
Rilke rightly reminds us, “Winning does not tempt that
man. This is how he grows. By being defeated,
decisively, by constantly greater things!” You gotta
love it! We don’t grow by winning – we grow through
defeat – but not just any defeat! It’s got to be big
enough, important enough, to qualify as a “constantly
greater thing!” Sometimes I think we are so
over-qualified to deal with the kind of petty and
unimportant things that we allow to take center stage in
our lives. We need to cultivate the discipline to only
wrestle with that which is worth the struggle – here,
now, today - because we may not be here tomorrow.
Happy Autumn!
~ Denise
© Denise
Bissonnette, October 2007 (If not used for commercial
purposes, this article may be reproduced, all or in
part, providing it is credited to "Denise Bissonnette,
Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com." If included
in a newsletter or other publication, we would
appreciate receiving a copy.)
Read Denise's
previous (September 2007) newsletter...
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