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You’re listening to the, Get a 6-Figure Job You love podcast. This is episode 54, Worthy Rejections. 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 to the podcast today. Today, I have a topic that I have developed over coaching a lot of people, and I’m just seeing so many common themes and things that come up over and over again, which has really helped me in developing the process that I’m very, very proud of to be able to walk anybody with a human brain who wants a six figure position through to get it. And one of the biggest things along the way is rejection. Not being selected. Whatever you want to call it. You can call it something that feels better to you. If not being selected, feels better, call it that. I call it rejection because I’m not afraid of it, and I have been rejected a lot and it’s fine. I’m kind of proud of the way that I now am able to handle it and teach my clients to handle it, and just knowing that it doesn’t define you. So, this concept that I want to introduce today. The concept of worthy rejections comes from coaching a lot of people on them going to interviews and trying to be what the person wants, right? Trying to say what the interviewer wants them to say. And I’ve had clients say to me, because I’ll ask a lot of questions in the session and I’ll be like, “So what were you thinking? Where was your head at? Where was your attention when you answered this question?” And they’ll just say, there’ll be like, “Well, I was trying to figure out what he wanted to hear. I was trying to read the cues and I was trying to give him the answer that he wanted.” Right? And if you’re not solid in yourself already. If you don’t know your value. If you don’t understand and you haven’t done the work of digging deep on what it is that you do really well. Why your thought process are valuable. Digging into the past results you’ve created and the massive value that those have created. If you haven’t done that, and you’re just going into interviews trying to say what they want you to say, then you’re essentially operating on the light version of yourself. So we call it the light version of you, because it’s not really you. You’re just trying to figure out what someone wants from you and give it to them, right? And sometimes this is good. Like if we can do this, it’s good, but we need to make sure that we are solid and grounded and certain of ourselves and who we are. Know who we are and what we want first, before we start to manipulate the words we use and what we say. And this comes naturally when you go through this process with me. But anyway, so most people haven’t done this work, because it hasn’t been a necessity until they start wanting to up-level in their career. They find themselves in a place they don’t want to be, or out of a job, and they’re like, “I need to figure this out.” Then they’ll come to me and they’ll do this work. But other than that, there’s no real reason to do it because there isn’t. You don’t need to. There’s no consequence if you don’t know your own value, except for maybe being underpaid for a while and not even knowing it. So, what ends up happening is when we’re rejected after an interview where that’s what we were doing, was trying to be what we thought they wanted, or we’re trying to answer questions in the specific way that they wanted to hear them. Answer in the way they wanted. And even saying things that don’t feel totally right to us, but we’re like, “But that’s obviously what they want, so I’m going to go along with it.” Or you kind of start to pick up on the way that they’re doing things and you kind of just start to adjust yourself to that instead of questioning it, and being like, “Wow, this is really what I want.” And I’ve been there because I’ve done it just automatically. I used to be an automatic people-pleaser. It wasn’t even something I thought about. It was just like, I was agreeable to everything, and I just wanted
 
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to tell them what they wanted to hear. And that was all I cared about, right? And so I’m going to share with you a few examples of this and the results that play out, because there’s only certain results that happen from that behavior. And then how you can do it differently and what that takes from you and then what you get from doing it differently.
So, when you’re operating from that space of, I need to say what they want. I need to be more like the person they’re looking for. I need to be more like, fill in the blank. If it ever comes to that, if that’s what you’re ever thinking, that’s a red flag right there, because you’re thinking about them first and putting their needs above your own. Right? And so, that essentially is being needy already. That way of thinking is already being needy. And even if you do it really well, because some people can be successful at this, right? You could go in and you could be the version that you think they want. They could buy it and then you get hired. And then the result of that is that you end up in a place that’s really not meant for you. It’s actually not the right fit for you. Right?
So, it could be like a reflex and you’re just doing it, and that’s exactly what happened to me. I was just in a reflexive state of agreeing. Being agreeable, because that’s what people like. Right? Or so I thought, that is just a thought. So, how we try to cope with it is we will either go to interviews and I’ve had many clients that go to an interview. They’ll be trying to do that. Trying to be something that someone else wants. Trying to put themselves in the character of the person that this organization wants. Right? And then, they won’t even get the job. They still won’t get the job, right?
And so that’s where I came up with this concept of worthy rejections, because I say, if you’re going to be rejected, be rejected for a purpose, right? At least be rejected for you. At least have the courage to show up and be your full self. And then if they say, no, totally fine. Right? But it’s a bummer when you show up as trying to fit into a box. Trying to be someone else, the light version of yourself, and then you get rejected. It’s a very different feeling, right? It’s like, “Oh, I didn’t even want that.” A lot of the times, that’s what people will say to me. They’ll be like, “Well, I tried to put on the show. I tried to perform. I tried to say what they wanted. I tried to be the person they wanted me to be, and then I still didn’t get the job.” Right?
And so that’s what I call not a worthy rejection, because you didn’t even have the courage there to show them who you really were. Who they would actually be working with, and you put on a performance and that didn’t work. And that’s not what the interview is about. It’s not about putting on a performance. And that’s a big misconception people have. It’s not actually the point for everyone to fall in love with you and hire you. The purpose is actually to sort out the right fit for you. And really, I know that the right fit is like this big buzzwordy thing, but I mean, truly the right fit means that you feel aligned with what they’re doing. You feel excited about working for them, and they feel excited about hiring you. You’re getting a pay for which you feel really good about, and they feel good about paying you because they think they’re getting a great deal.
And you’re supposed to repel the companies that don’t do things in the way that are aligned with how you want to do things. You are supposed to repel the companies that are not aligned. Right? And then you’re supposed to attract the companies that appreciate the specific way that you think. So here’s an example. You know that… So in my mastermind and in my one-on-one, I teach about the whole interviewing concept. And I also have a podcast, kind of is a condensed version of what I teach there. But you’ll know that you’re effectively applying the whole interviewing method when you get feedback like this, or you end up in a place where this is what it feels like.
So I have a client, she does graphic design for example, and she’s an unconventional thinker. And she has very like solid ideas and beliefs about what she wants to do when training employees, how that should work, and the experience they should have. And so, she’ll talk about that in the interview. And
 
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then that’s how she ends up in a company that really wants her to take this on. They’re excited for her to be in charge of this because they love what she was talking about in the interview.
So, you’ll get feedback like this. “We loved that you talked about unconventional thinking in the learning industry, and the idea of bringing fun and higher engagement into our learning process. We really are looking to step away from PowerPoint into a more progressive way of training our employees and our customers. So, that really spoke to us when you were talking about that, because that’s exactly what we’re looking for.” Right? And so, that’s not for everybody. Everybody’s not going to have that idea. There are companies who are more status quo inclined, and they would literally want to hire someone who will be happy to update PowerPoint slides 24/7, and they’re not going to want innovating of the learning process. Right? Or they’re going to want to just do things the same way, but make them bigger. Right? They’re not going to want the innovation.
And so, I’ve had friends who have gone into jobs where they’re like trying to innovate. They’re like, “Oh, we could do this better. We could do this more efficiently. We could do this so that it would be more fun for people.” And the management is just like, “No, just sit down and do what I told you to do.” Right? And that’s a classic example of the wrong fit, right? They’re not meant to be there. That is a waste of their brain and their talent, right? They are not supposed to be in a place that is stifling their creativity. That is stifling their thought processes, right?
So, you want to be able to repel those people by how you talk to them in the interview. What discussions you bring up. What you tell them, the stories you tell them. You want to tell them that stuff. Because if you’re rejected for that, that is a worthy rejection, because it really wasn’t a right fit for you. And truth be told, you would have rejected them as well. Right? And a lot of the times when you start to rise up to this level, you end up rejecting first, or you end up not taking opportunities. Not even entertaining time with opportunities that you don’t feel are the right fit. Right? And you get better at seeing what’s for you, what’s not for you.
So if you were to hide your true ideas, and the things you believe in fear that maybe that won’t resonate with the interviewer, you increase your chances of ending up in the wrong fit, or you’re rejected for not even showing up as your full self. So, you either end up somewhere you don’t really need to be, with a waste of your brain, your thought processes. A waste of you, or you get rejected for not even showing up as your full self. You don’t even have that opportunity to be fully self-expressed in who you are.
And so I say, if you’re going to receive a rejection, make sure it’s a worthy one, right? Because then you have a clean cut line. You’re like, “You know what? I gave them my best, and they don’t want it. We’re not a good fit.” And you can be solid in that, and there is no reason to take that personally. Okay? You got to put the real you out there, because they would have heard what you said, and they would have thought she’s not a good fit, and they actually would have been right. And that’s what we want. That is how you want to interview.
You aren’t meant to be for everyone. I can’t say that enough. We need to stop this approval culture of interviewing because it’s not serving anybody. You’re not serving anybody when you pretend to be what they want. And maybe you’re very good at pretending. I was too. You get hired into the role you don’t even like. And then they have someone working there that doesn’t even want to be there. Isn’t fully engaged and it’s a lose-lose for both sides. There’s no favors being done here, right? And it all stems from you not having the courage to be like, this is me. This is what I think this is what I want. This is who I am. Right? And a lot of it I find is because you don’t even really know how to articulate that yet. Right? Because you’ve been busy doing your work. You’ve developed your processes. You’ve had your successes. You do things a certain way. You’ve got lots that’s working for you, but you don’t know how to articulate that.
 
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So, you need to be focusing on your own unique approach to what you do. Your unique thought processes, your beliefs. The things that work for you and your zone of genius, and you need to own that, right? And that is when you get the best opportunities. The best offers, and you get to negotiate the most money, because you’re in a place that really appreciates you. And you want to make it very easy for those who don’t feel aligned with you to say that they don’t want to hire you. You want to make that super easy and clear, just as you want to make it super easy and clear for the right fit to feel very aligned with you right away. Right? No wishy washiness, right? They’re like, “No, that’s who we want.”
And so, you’re not doing yourself or anyone else any favors by holding yourself back and being that light version of yourself. It doesn’t serve anybody. It’s not what you’re here for. So another example that I thought of was, I had a friend one time and we can always go back to interviewing and dating analogies. I love that. She was on the dating app. She was going out with a few guys. And so she was seeing this one guy, and he wasn’t really what she wanted, but he was kind of, okay. So she was like, “Yeah, I’ll keep seeing him.” And then he broke up with her. He ended it with her.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this or had a friend who has experienced it. But then she’s sitting there with me, we’re having a drink. And she’s like, “I didn’t even like him.” And then she started complaining about all the things that he did. Right? And I was like, “Why did you continue to entertain it?” And she’s like, “Oh, I don’t know. I was lonely. There wasn’t anyone else. I wasn’t getting a lot of hits at the moment.” Right? Whatever the justifications were that her brain went into that scarcity mentality of like, “Oh, I’ll just entertain this because it’s here and it’s an opportunity.” But then when they end it first, it was so frustrating because it’s like, “I didn’t even like that guy.”
So this is kind of how the interview can go too. Right? You want to be the person who decides first. You want to be like, “Is this what I want?” Right. So, you’ll know if you’re doing it. If you’re automatically just more agreeable. How do you tend to respond to people? So, for example, and this is an extreme example. It’s just to illustrate a point. It probably would never happen, although I don’t know for sure.
So, the way that we try to cope is we try harder to do it more. If we don’t break the pattern. If we don’t become aware of this, then we’ll just be like, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I don’t know how to get people to like me. I don’t know how to be the person that people want me to be.” It’s because everybody wants something different. And your job is to just be you, fully you in your best, most confident self. Know how to articulate that, and then you just keep showing up repeatedly until the person who’s matched for you is like, “Yes. Hi, where have you been?” Right. That’s your only job.
So, here’s the example. So if you’ll know this is you if, for example, someone like you go into an interview and for example, they say to you, “Okay, so this all looks great. We love you. We think that you’re amazing. We’d love for you to start. Here’s our terms.” And they list off, you have to work 12 hours a day and you’ve only got two vacation days per year. And you’re thinking, you’re already excited about this opportunity. You’re like, “Oh, they like me. This is working great.” You’re like in this approval. You’re loving the approval validation, and you’re like, “Oh, this is good. They liked me.”
And then they go and tell you that the terms are really not really aligned with what you want. Right? And they might say, so you’ve got to work 12 hours a day and you only get to three vacation days a year. But we got a really great Christmas party and we got all these things that we’re going to offer you, but these are the terms, right? And say, you’ve already decided. You’re like, “Oh, but they like me.” And that’s the most important thing to you.
And you’re like, you kind of already decided in your brain that because you’re like, “Oh, I’m so happy and reveling in this approval.” That instead of thinking, no way, this is not going to work for me, you start to think, huh, well maybe I can make that work. I don’t really mind working 12 hours a day. I was kind of doing it at my last job anyway and two vacation days, yeah. I can make that work. I get the weekends
 
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right, and there’s the long weekend, so I don’t really need more vacation days than two. Right? So this is an extreme example, remember, but these are the two minds, right?
So the person who’s going to be showing up as their full self and they know who they are is more likely to respond with, “That’s not going to work for me. Do we have flexibility on that? Could I get two weeks at least?” But the person who’s very like driven by the approval and is very, very interested in being approved of and doing what they want, saying what they want. Being very agreeable is going to start to justify and start to try to adjust what they want to that.
And sometimes a compromise can be reached, but we know that if you ended up having to work 12 hours a day and only got two vacation days a year that you would regret that, and you would not be happy that you decided to take that. Right? And that those justifications weren’t really true to you. Right? They were just for the approval. They were just so that you wouldn’t ruin the lovely energy of them liking you and approving of you. You’re like, “Okay. Yeah, I can handle that. Okay. That’s not very much, but I can make that work.”
So you want to pay attention to how you respond in situations like this, right? Because this is just how we’ve been conditioned, right? We’re not conditioned to be like… And we want to balance of both because we don’t just want to go in there being like, “Oh, I want this, and this is what I want. And I’m not going to take any less, and I deserve this.” We want to also be like, “But I do feel it’s important that we both come to an agreement that we both love so there’s a win-win situation here. I’m going to provide massive value for you, and I’m asking you for this salary here. I think that’s reasonable. Where are your concerns? What do you think?” Right?
So we do want to provide an environment for a win-win conversation, always, but I find most people are more automatically drawn to that approval. The wanting of the approval, which creates a lot of unworthy rejections. Right? And then it creates lowered self-confidence. And then it creates just this perpetual cycle of like, “I’m not getting anywhere. I don’t know why.” And then frustration and in your brain, your value ends up going down when of course it hasn’t really. Right?
So, even if the requests or even if the terms are completely unreasonable and you find yourself justifying as to how you’re going to fit that into your life. How you’re going to make that work. Right? So, I had a client recently and we worked through this process, right? Where they wanted her to be in the office a certain amount of days per week, and they were not going to move past a certain salary. And it was simply too low for her and her skills. Right? She was going to do way more for them than that salary. They were offering her 80K, I think, and she was much more in the 120 range, right? For the value that she offered it.
And so, really, like this is what I do, right? I’m like you have the courage and the option to walk away from that and hold the belief that your 120K offer is coming and that it’s going to be more aligned with you and she got it. So now she has this position paying her 120K where she gets to be a 100% remote. And she’s leading this whole department where she gets to do stuff she’s really good at and work in her zone of genius, right? But if you’re coming from approval culture. If you’re really, really interested in approval and getting what you think that you can get, right? So it’s kind of like the only thoughts that would cause you to take that lower offer are, “Well, I don’t know if I can get anything else.” Right? It’s always going to be a lack of belief, right?
So, that belief is challenging to have, right? It’s a process, right? So, if you’re really using the whole interviewing method, your behavior will reflect that and so will your income, and so will your future earnings. And there are just endless examples of how people have responded to some of my clients, and whether or not they are solid in their own value. And if they know who they are and what they want to their core, then they’re able to show up in those situations that matter in a way that they can be proud
 
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of and walk away and be like, “That wasn’t for me.” With no harm done, right? Just understanding that’s the way of the world.
So, given a few examples of the two different options here of thinking and the way that we want to go for worthy rejections, right? So ultimately to sum it up, these are the things that can happen. If you’re operating on the light version of yourself, you’ll either end up somewhere where you’re compromising your desires, and you’re not working in your zone of genius all the time, and it’s just not a good fit. Or you get rejected for being the light version of yourself, not even the full version, right? And that’s an unworthy rejection.
And then the alternative is when you develop that courage to be you and really understand all the nuances of what makes you amazing, right? And there’s lots to unpack there that you haven’t even explored because there would be really no reason to up until the time you’re looking to really advance in your career. Then you have the courage to do that, and that’s when you get to really make leaps and bounds in changes over what you can accomplish over a short amount of time. And the reason it works is, is that’s how you get to feel fulfilled, right? When we’re telling the truth about who we are, that’s when we get to feel the most fulfilled, right?
And it’s not even about the money. You’ll get the money, but you don’t just want the money. You want that wonderful life that comes with the work-life balance and a reasonable amount of vacation, or more than reasonable, right? You want to be working in your zone of genius. You want to be working with the team that you love. You want to be valued and seen and appreciated for the way that you think for your brain, right? And this is all going to happen once you have the courage to show up as you and understand all the nuances of the value that you bring and start explaining them and talking about them.
What you need to be able to do this is first, you have to have awareness, right? And so I’ve coached so many clients where this is where their brain is at. It’s automatically in the place where you’re like, “I just want them to like me basically.” Right. I don’t care about anything else. They just need to like me. They like me. I’m good.” But you need to have the courage to be a bit uncomfortable and just remind yourself that if they don’t like you, that’s totally fine because they weren’t supposed to. So you’re doing it for yourself. And yes, it will be uncomfortable when you first do that. Right? Like when I first started asking questions that I felt uncomfortable asking, but I needed to know in order to make a good decision for me as to whether or not I was going to take that offer, then people just started answering, right?
And this is another thing. If you’re afraid to be yourself. If you’re afraid to ask questions, that’s normal. If you’ve been operating from this other paradigm for a long time, right? But when you start doing it, you’ll either notice that the people on the other end are either receptive. They love it. They just answer your questions. They tell you you have good questions. They have no qualms about whatever you’re asking. They totally understand. They’re good. Or if they react in any other way, then you know that you weren’t the right fit. Right? And so you get all the information that you need right there. You get all the information that you need by having the courage to show up as your full self, ask what you need to ask, and move forward until you get the desired results that you set out to get.
So, what ends up being created is you get to up level in a much bigger way, right? Because you start to see what’s possible. You start to build evidence for more being possible when you have the courage to put your whole self out there, and you have the courage to ask for what you want. Negotiate for what you want. Collaborate for what you want, right? And you see that that could actually work out. You could actually have a great arrangement. You could actually be super excited to get started. And then you end up with this place that’s so great. They’re sending you all these things.
I’ve had a couple of clients now where they came from environments that were not so great to really up-leveled environments, right? Where the onboarding process is smooth and they’ve got their equipment
 
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being shipped to their house. They get a standup desk. They get large monitors. They get a computer. They get support, and they’re like, “I don’t know what’s happening right now. This is almost too good to be true.” Right? And that’s because their brain just isn’t used to that happening, right?
But once it happens and you see what’s possible, then imagine what’s possible after that, and what up levels you can have in your career after that. It doesn’t stop there. This is kind of like, “Oh, okay. I guess I was wrong about all those limitations I had before.” Right? So, super important to consider whether you’re having unworthy rejections or worthy rejections. And worthy rejections are things to be proud of because you have the courage to put yourself out there.
And if you’d like support with this, my mastermind is opening up. We’re going to be starting on September the 1st, and we’re going to be covering all these things. So, the first module is the intentional self-confidence module where we’re going to declutter your brain of all the self doubts and the layers of judgment, and the approval culture. We’re going to deprogram that so that you can start to really see what’s underneath, and be wowed by your own value, and then be excited to go and share that.
And the rest of it, we’ll have a link in the show notes to the page for you to apply. And I look forward to reading your application and supporting you through this process. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. If you’re ready to dive deeper into your career mindset and start creating bigger, more impactful results in your career, join me@www.nataliefisher.ca/getstarted. I’ll see you over there.