Don’t Be Bitter, Be Better (Uncertainty Part 3)

In the Impenetrable Pall of Uncertainty, I wrote, “Measure progress in terms of the number of times you get rejected.” 

I would like to rephrase that to, “Measure progress in terms of the number of time you learn from your rejections.” 

One thing I picked up from ALX is structured reflections. It’s actually ingrained in the ALG culture as I used to see my ALU-graduate of an intern always walking around with his notebook, reflecting. Now, having entered the network myself, I get it. Reflections are one of those things you just can’t get away with not doing. We even have reflections on our reflections.

Which is good, because you’re always forced to think, “How did that go? How could it be better next time?”

Often you’ll see people get rejected, and instead of reflecting on what went wrong, and how to fix it the next time around, they just complain and whine about the government, the state of the market, their boss…etc. 

While I do understand there are extrinsic factors that might put hurdles in your way, I don’t see why anyone would spend hours moping about things they can’t control when they can invest the same amount of time working on things they can control. 

I spoke to a very inspiring Kenyan lady recently, and she was telling me how my post, “When Your Toxic Boss Is The Bane of Your Existence,” resonated with her because she was in a toxic job situation a few months before. Despite the toxicity of where she used to work, she noticed how there were employees who had stayed at the same job for over a decade. 

She was grateful to have a stable job as she had a mother at home to support, but at the same time, she was determined to not be one of those people being humiliated day in day out for a decade by a boss who only cared about his ego. 

So she spent time after work taking online courses to upskill, and applying for other positions. She did an interview for one company where she got rejected. Instead of complaining about the rejection, she followed up with them to understand what went wrong. When someone from the hiring team reviewed her application, they noted that her presentation was actually one of the best, but she was dismissed because of a technicality [some box she didn’t check]. But given her energy, they decided to give her an offer. 

I loved that story because it shows: 

– She was proactive about everything, and didn’t just go with the flow. She could have complained about how the market was looking for someone with better skills but instead, she decided to upskill to match the market demands. 

– It’s not over until it’s over. This was a person who fiercely turned a rejection around just because they wanted to get better the next time. 

A lot of times when companies lay people off, the tone you hear is mostly bitterness, “How could they do this to me? I gave them X years of my life.” 

But it’s not about you. 

Contrary to popular belief, companies are not built to give employees job security. They are built to serve market needs. For the humane business leader, choosing to lay people off is a very difficult decision, but they don’t reach that position until they’re faced with two options; laying people off today or switching off the lights and letting everyone go in a year’s time. 

The question is, how are you going to leverage your skills and experience to survive market changes? 

As a final note, you’ll notice a lot of the header pictures for this series feature ‘fog’, because that is how it feels to live under conditions of uncertainty. It’s always foggy, but life has taught me over and over again, that clarity comes from doing something (not thinking about something), and often doing something different. It’s something you learn too soon as a scientist; you never fail while running experiments, because even if the results are negative, each one is simply a data point telling you something.

So what are your thoughts on the topic? Feel free to comment below or reach out to me via DM.

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