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You’re listening to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. This is episode 42, the no spiral versus the no vehicle.
Hey there. Welcome to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you and your career. On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six-figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right place. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. As usual, we have another very exciting topic and I have mapped out these podcasts for several weeks in advance, because I’ve just had so much stuff I want to share. And So many things and concepts I want to teach you. I’ve been having so much fun and I just can’t wait for you guys to hear them all because they’re all so useful. So the one for today is a common pattern that I see happening all the time, and it’s just a part of our life. It’s always going to be a part of our life. So my goal is to make it the most effective that it possibly can be because we all go through it. The thing that I see is that why this problem exists is because we think that getting a no, is a problem. We think that it’s a reason to get upset or to get down on ourselves.
But what I want to introduce here is what if it wasn’t a problem at all? What if it actually meant you’re on the right track? What if it’s a default part of the process, of any process? So if it wasn’t a problem, then what else could it be? If it’s not with interviewing, it’s going to be with dating. If it’s not with dating, it’s going to be with something else in your life for sure. Someone is going to say no to you, and it’s totally fine. So the reason why we always think it is a problem, our response just intuitively is always going to be a bad feeling. Right? And I believe the reason it’s because no one taught us how to think more productively about it. No one has taught us how to actually think about getting a no, or a bunch of nos in the most productive way that we could think.
So we’re just wired to think from our primitive brains, which makes sense, because this is how we’re wired to survive. So we’re wired to think we don’t want to be ostracized from the pack. We don’t want to be rejected. So we take the rejection super personally, we take the no’s super personally, and it’s just our automatic response. Because if we were ostracized from the pack, we would die in the caveman days. So we take it now to mean like a stab in the gut, or we take it to mean something about ourselves. And what we do is we run that spiral in our head every time it happens. So we run the no spiral. And the no spiral is the same every time and it’s very, very unproductive. And it sounds like, “I messed up. I should have said this. I wasn’t good enough.
I didn’t have the right type of experience. I didn’t measure up. I didn’t cut it.” Whatever it is you tell yourself in your nos spiral. If we don’t do that, then we avoid it. We’re like, “Well, I don’t want to go out there and do another interview and get another no. That’s going to be more uncomfortable. And I don’t like that. So I’m not going to go do it.” And we’re not even consciously thinking of it, but it shows up in our behavior. So if we’re avoiding that, it’s because we don’t want to go and get another no, because it’s not going to feel good. So we keep either quitting. And we don’t like to admit that we’re quitting, but we take long breaks or whatever it is that we do. And then we don’t move forward because we’ve essentially let the nos spiral be where we are.
Or another thing that we do is we keep taking the action forward, anticipating the no before we even get it. And that is showing up from a place of disbelief in yourself. And when you show up from a place of disbelieve in yourself, the likelihood is others aren’t going to be believing in you easily. So the reason why this doesn’t work is because we don’t use the nos as a vehicle to get where we want to go. We use them as a reason to spiral into self-pity and feeling sorry for ourselves. And that’s where we stay a lot of the time. So we go into the spiral of self defeat where we feel deflated, discouraged, not good enough
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and we take the no as something to fear, something to be afraid of or ashamed of. We take the no to mean, “Oh, this is just more evidence to show that I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t do it, that I’m not able to measure up or answer how I’m supposed to.”
And then what that ultimately creates for us is compounding beliefs and compounding the identity that we’re not good enough, that we don’t measure up, that we didn’t cut it and that we might never. So this is a common thing if somebody is stuck in the no spiral for a while. They’re just going to start to believe that that’s where they’re always going to be. And their belief is stronger for like, “Am I ever going to get it. Is it ever going to work out?” And then we start to make our reality that of always hearing no, because we don’t think we’re deserving of the yes. We don’t think we’re capable of the yes or whatever it is. So we kind of make that true for us. And we’re like, “Well, probably not going to get it.” And I’ve seen this, I’ve caught some of my clients in this.
And the reason why they do this is because our brain wants to be efficient. So it wants to predict the future based on the past. And it thinks that this is the most efficient way to think. Thinks this is setting you up for protection. It’s like, “Well, if we protect ourselves and we don’t get our hopes up, then we won’t feel as disappointed.” But then we feel that disappointment anyway. So the thing that we’re afraid of is feeling disappointment. So in order to avoid that, we will tell ourselves, “Oh, well, it’s probably not going to happen anyway.” So we kind of set ourselves up for disappointment. And then we think we won’t feel it when it happens as much. We’re trying to protect ourselves. It’s all a version of trying to protect ourselves. And in the caveman days, this made sense.
Because as I mentioned, if we were ostracized, rejected, left outside of the group on our own, then likelihood is we would die. But nowadays that’s not how it works. So we don’t need to be afraid of the no. The no is just maybe a feeling that we’re going to feel that we don’t like, that’s the worst. But we think it’s way worse than that. Our brain makes it a big thing to fear. So it starts wanting to protect us, set ourselves up for feeling less disappointment. And what this does is it creates us to show up from the place of disbelief and we don’t get to show our full potential or have our full capacity show up in the interviews. So therefore we’re less likely to get the yes, and we’re not feeling very good about ourselves anyway, because we’ve made the no mean that there’s something off with us.
So this is how people end up in this no spiral. So what I want to introduce is the no vehicle instead. The no vehicle is essentially a different way to look at the same path and a much shorter way to look at the same path. Because when we’re looking at the nos like a vehicle to get to where we’re going, we’re looking for things that we’re not going to find if we’re in the no spiral. Because the no spiral is just essentially spinning over and over in the same thought process. And if you’ve gotten a lot of nos, after nos, after nos, which a lot of people comment on my YouTube saying, “I’ve been rejected 50 times,” or, “I’ve been rejected 100 times,” or whatever, then this is likely what is going on. So I don’t believe that that’s necessary at all.
And it’s unnecessary suffering, really. Because if we’re able to look at it as a vehicle, then you decide how you’re going to look at it differently. So the spiral is going to keep you frustrated and is going to keep the same thing inevitably happening. So that’s what a spiral is. It’s just spiraling in the same direction. Or sometimes it can even like a hole. Like you’re spiraling, but you’re also just shutting yourself down before you even go into the interview. So it’s like a hole that you feel like you can never get out. But normally, since we don’t want to be the person who gave up, we hate that. We don’t want to admit that we’re somebody who would give up. We don’t want to tell anybody else if we’ve given up even if mentally we’ve really given up and we’re exhausted and we don’t want to keep going and we’re slowing down, then this is where the problem lies.
The problem doesn’t lie in the no itself. It lies in your attitude towards the no. So the alternative is looking at your goal like you’re getting into a car and you can expect the journey to be full of stops,
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which are nos. You don’t know how many, and you don’t know how far along the way they’re going to be. But you can expect there to be stops. Okay? So you’re getting into a car and you’re going to stop along the way. You’re going to get out. And you’re going to do an interview. You may get a no. Then you can use that know to fill up your tank with gas, like metaphorically doing an evaluation and taking all the lessons that you could possibly take from that no. And then you simply get back into your car and you keep driving. No, it doesn’t mean you quit and you just sit there and think, “Well, my car is broken.
I guess I can’t go any farther.” Or you don’t just accept that you’re never going to arrive at your destination because of this no or because, say you’ve had five stops. You’re still farther along. Just get back into your car and you just keep going. So no is not a problem. No is an opportunity for inquiry on a few different things. So the first is you get to inquire about yourself. Where would you like to have done something differently in this interview? Where did you get clarity from this experience? So a lot of my clients will go on interviews and they’ll gain major clarity on what it is they want. And they get that clarity by seeing what is out there and what exists. You get the opportunity to evaluate what you wanted and how you want to feel about it.
And you get to decide how you feel about the no. You also get to inquire within yourself on identifying some of the key things that you really liked about this opportunity or some of the key things that you really didn’t want. And then you get to inquire about how you want to intentionally feel about the no and what you want to make that mean if you get a no. So essentially you need to choose to see the no differently. See the no, as a marker forward on your journey that you can use. Choose to view it as a learning that could have been worth so much money to you. Give yourself credit for getting these nos in the first place, because many people don’t even get that far. A lot of people are afraid. They won’t even go to more interviews. And that’s one of the two things I see.
They’re either failing ahead of time not going or they’re going and they’re just spiraling in the no, instead of learning from the no, and using it as a vehicle. And therefore they’re not getting where they want to go because they’re not actually moving. They’re driving their car around in circles. So the no is actually an opportunity for clarity. And if you feel disappointed because you didn’t get a job offer that you really wanted, it just means there’s something that you aligned with with that company that you liked. And the good news is now you have clarity on what you want. It exists and it’s available. So you can get to work on narrowing down now the opportunities that you want with wasting less time on the opportunities that you didn’t want. No is an indication that you are in the arena doing the work.
No is an opportunity to love yourself no matter what happens, no matter if you think you screwed up, no matter if you think you could have done it better, you get to sustainably tell yourself that you are doing a great job. And this is the best way to do any kind of challenging thing is by always having yourself throughout the whole thing. Because to tell you the truth, on the way to getting to where you’re going, you’re going to mess up. You’re going to fall. You’re going to have things that you wish you’d done differently. You’re going to show up robotic and over rehearsed sometimes, or you’re going to make a mistake. And you’re going to say something you wish you hadn’t said, or you’re going to wish you had an answer that you didn’t have. And you’re going to feel uncomfortable. Sometimes they’re going to ask you something and you’re going to feel defensive or intimidated.
And it doesn’t mean anything. It just means you’re on the right path and that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen because you’re doing something challenging and you’re moving in a different direction. No is the chance to recommit and double down on your commitment. No is another opportunity. It actually stands for next opportunity, because if you did get that opportunity, then you wouldn’t be moving forward to see what’s next out there. All the nos that lead to the yeses will be your success blueprint that then you look back on and say, “I did that and this is how.” So if you go through these nos, you’re going to have a very clear indicator of everything that you learned along the way and what it was that
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led you to the yes. And that indicator is very valuable. That process is so valuable for you and it’s going to be so much sweeter once you arrive.
The more nos you have, the sweeter it is once you arrive. No is an opportunity to give yourself credit for getting out there and putting yourself in a situation where you could be judged by others, where you could be rejected by others, where you could be not approved of. And putting yourself in those situations over and over again is the first step. And then it’s using those situations to your advantage instead of spiraling in the same spiral of self-pity, and shame and you’re not good enough. Because that leads you nowhere. It just leads you driving your car around in circles.
So why using the no as a vehicle worked so well is because when you think of it as being a vehicle, instead of a detrimental failure, you see things differently. So when no is no longer something that you need to spiral in and feel bad about you no longer feel the need to spin in confusion about why you didn’t get it, or feel sorry for yourself or be in self-pity. When you’ve decided ahead of time how you are going to handle a no, what you will do that then frees up your brain to be super productive about next steps.
So you’re able to do really productive evaluations. You’re able to get super clear on what you want. You’re able to be the person who is just moving forward. Somebody who sees themselves so confidently that they know their value is intact and it isn’t thrown off and it doesn’t change with a no. They just pick up those lessons very intentionally and they keep driving. So questions to ask yourself when you feel like you’re stuck in a no spiral. We kind of think that we should have the job by a certain amount of interviews or a certain amount of time. But when we think about it, how many years will you be working in this thriving new career at the pay that you want? How many years of your life do you have left to do that? And what is it worth to get there? Is it worth it to get that new career that you want?
Is it worth it for the years of quality of life that you’re going to have afterwards to experience those nos now? What is it worth it to you? And what are you willing to do to keep going until you get it? Because until you get it, you are not done. Until you get it you have not tried everything. Are you willing to get 100 nos? We can see a lot of people who have gotten way more than 100 nos and they have been incredibly famous. So Tiger Woods is an example, I think he failed for 18 years. He literally practiced and failed for 18 years. And then Colonel Sanders, he got like 300 and something nos. Nobody wanted his chicken recipe. Or Steven Spielberg got a bunch of nos and he almost gave up or something. I think it was Steven Spielberg. And his wife actually took out the manuscript from the garbage and said, “Just go back out there because not enough people have seen it.”
Or JK Rowling. We listen to these people. We know about all the people who have had all these nos and then they’re super famous now because they kept going. And that’s the only reason. But we don’t even pay attention to all of the people. All my clients, for example, who go through the nos and get their job. And that’s happening every day all the time. And that can happen for you. So how many different ways of approaching an interview are you willing to show up for? Where my clients end up is they make this work for them because they come down to the point where it’s like, “Nobody’s going to save me. This is up to me. I will make this work because quitting is not an option.” Quitting feels even worse because then if you’re like, “I quit.” Then what? If you’ve tried everything, then what? And likelihood is you’ve probably already come super far.
You probably already have a lot of lessons that you could harvest from the nos you’ve already gotten. And if you’re just starting out on your journey, then you want to expect them and just decide ahead of time how you’re going to handle them. So what ends up happening when you start treating it as a no vehicle instead of a spiral, you don’t see it as a reflection of you. You just see it as a milestone in your progress. So a no is actually a milestone of progress. When you get a no what do you want to do and how do you want to feel about it so it doesn’t slow you down? Have you committed ahead of time to go
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through these nos and learn every ounce you can? Take all the learning available from each one that is there. So you don’t waste time in worry or concern that you’re never going to get it because you already know you will.
It’s just that the nos are part of the way there. And you’re just so much more productive and focused because you already have decided on all of these things. You already know how you’re going to handle it. So, no is not a problem. The problem is your attitude towards the no. And there we have it, my friends, the no spiral versus the no vehicle. And when you work with somebody who can really dive in and tell you what is going on, we are able to uncover your blind spots. As a coach this is what I do all day every day. So it might seem like a really big problem for you. You’re like, “I’m getting these nos. I don’t know why.” Maybe you’re in the no spiral right now. And this is something that I have spent all my time figuring out as to why my clients get into these no spirals, what they’re thinking, what is it that’s leading them to get so many nos.
Because I tell you, it’s not necessary and it’s not fair. A lot of people are so good at what they do. They could add so much value. They’re so amazing. And they’d be able to add tremendous value and be such a huge asset to that organization. But they just don’t know how to communicate their value in an effective way that lands and then they’re getting nos. So blind spots are there. We all have them. And that is why having a coach, working with somebody who has done this is going to be speeding you up dramatically. And that’s what it’s done for me. I’ve worked with a coach to speed up my results. I understand how it works. So I can help you with that. So that’s basically what I have spent my entire life doing up until now for these past few years.
And if you think that that’s something that you could use help with, then listen on to find out how I can help you. Thank you so much for listening. And I look forward to the next episode. If you’re resonating with what you’re hearing on the podcast, I want to tell you something. If we ever talk or work together or interact in any way, I will not even for a minute buy into the story that you can’t get the job you want at the pay you want and deserve. I will not buy into the story that the recruiter said you needed to have more experience, or that you were told that you needed to get another degree or certification before you could be considered, or that there are so many other great candidates out there that are more qualified who have already applied, or that you need to check with your accountant first or whatever the excuse you have that robs you from your power.
I will not buy it, because what I know for sure is that if you’re not being valued and if you’re not being paid at the level you know you can and deserve to be, there is a clear reason why. And it is a reason that is completely within your control. If you want to learn what’s really been holding you back so far and you’re ready to get some help, head on over to www.nataliefisher.ca/apply.
I will be able to help you identify why you’ve been stuck so far and exactly what you need to do to move forward. And I will help you do this by showing you how to take control of your career, how to set the frame for what you want instead of thinking that you have to be at the mercy of what you have. And as we all know, if you don’t believe that the job you want is available and that you can have it, you will always settle for the jobs you don’t want. If you are ready to move out of that space and into a better situation, I am here to help you. I’m going to teach you exactly what to do with lots of examples. Head on over to www.nataliefisher.ca/apply. I’ll see you over there.
I would say you helped me… you had a different perspective and I always appreciate getting a different perspective. And you helped me think a little more outside the box when I was struggling to find a new route. For example, I struggled with figuring out how to do the cold emails. And you said, “Well, I’ve got some scripts that you can start with. And then you can try searching this way and you can try searching that way.” And because you had more expertise and experience with how to find the people, and the connections and the information that helped me. You were a really good resource in that regard, but it
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was also a matter of having that negative voice and all of those well-worn pads in my brain, having someone to help redirect me back to the positive path that I was trying to create. And that helped a lot. I had spent decades wearing those same pads into my brain, and you need help to get out of those [inaudible 00:24:07]. They’re deep.
I was searching for jobs hoping that once I graduated, I would just start. But that wasn’t the case. So I literally was searching for a year. I took all your advice and the major thing that, I think there are a lot of major things. One of the main thing that helps when I started your whole course, when I saw your video, when you were talking about, you have to create your own opportunity. And I realized that I do have a lot of network. And I understand exactly where you’re coming from when you were talking about, “You need to create your opportunity. You need to try and see getting in touch with people that you know that would probably help you out a lot.”
During this one interview, which actually is the school that I ended up getting, when the principal had to jump in to the interview and say, “Guys, we have other people to interview.” Because they could not stop. It was like they couldn’t get enough of me.
Because they were having so much fun with you.
I was just like this magnet. And you know, that’s me, my life. Even at work and the relationships that I have at work and outside, it’s just that I just have that type of magnetic personality that needed to come through and it did. You know? And it was again, a conversation and he had to interrupt and say, “Hello, we got out of the people. Ms. Grant, do you have any more questions for us?”
When you leave me an iTunes review and send me a screenshot of the review directly to my email at natalie@asknataliefisher.com, I will send you a free gift as a thank you. And this free gift, I usually sell it for $100. So it’s $100 value and it contains 50 examples of behavioral interview questions. So if you’ve ever stumbled, second guessed, rambled in an interview, not sure exactly what to say, I have this free guide that’s going to give you so many examples that there’s no way you’ll be confused at the end. It’s helped thousands of people land jobs just from understanding so clearly what needs to be included.
So if you don’t know how to tell a good story, inside you’ll find the exact words. If you don’t know what stories to tell, you’re going to see the components of a successful story in action and 50 of that. You don’t think you have any good stories to share. Don’t worry. There’s 25 questions in there to ask yourself to pull the stories from your own brain. To get your hands on this all you have to do is leave me an iTunes review and send it to me to my email and I will respond with this guide. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you soon.