My boss goes to a lot of conferences as part of her job and the industry in general, not to mention an impressive number to receive awards. One of the things she likes to do when she gets back is schedule staff meetings to watch videos of the various keynote speakers.
She breaks out a bottle or two of wine and our operations manager will bring in snacks.
We did this Friday afternoon. #lovemyjob 🙂
The keynote speaker was Jia Jiang.
It was a “my story” speech and very inspirational.
He shared his story of coming to America as an exchange student and landing in rural Louisiana. Landing in a town of about 500. He came from Beijing, a city of about 15 million at the time. I’d say that’s culture shock, LOL.
But his speech was about rejection. At some point he found himself living the “American Dream.” He was working for a Fortune 500 company but had no passion for the position. He was married with a baby on the way. His wife gave him six months to follow HIS dream. Four days before his son was born, he quit that Fortune 500 job.
Would you have the guts to do that? I wouldn’t.
Long story short, his dream fizzled but his wife wouldn’t let him give up. Thus he went on a journey to desensitize himself from the pain of rejection. He even created a blog of videos journaling his road to overcoming rejection.
There are so many levels of wow in that to me.
Here’s a shorter but similar speech ~ ENJOY!
Raelyn Barclay 
As writers, you’d think we’d have an understanding of what it’s like being rejected. Yet it’s still a difficult thing to digest.
I guess we run our own rejection experiment…every time we send a project out into the world 🙂
Hope you’re enjoying your Sunday.
Wow! A boss that not only lets you watch videos but serves it with wine. I love it!
The fear of rejection is usually more soul-crushing than the actual rejection. You worry about what people think or if you have the chops to continue. It grinds at your self-confidence and stops you in your tracks.
On the other hand, an actual rejection paves a road.
You begin to realize, okay, this didn’t work. Let’s try this way. It opens up opportunities.
Rejection sucks, but it also teaches, and I’m a lifelong student. 🙂
The job does have it’s moments 🙂
A point he brought up in the video we watched was that we, as humans, tend to take rejection personally, and it’s not. He also talked about making concessions, turn no into yes. But you can’t make those concessions without asking why to every no you receive.
We’re all lifelong students, or should be.
Hope you’re enjoying your day, Maria.