It is much easier to digest a failure if you don’t look at it as the opposite of a specific success, but rather as the necessary step towards some success.
Even when it takes you far away from your goal, even when it is repeated in time, even when it looks like you are just not going to make it, failure is always capable of revealing some truth.
Sometimes it’s harsh – e.g., “this is not for you” -, but it is never definitive – e.g., “nothing is for you”.
Everyone wants to be liked. But there is a different between striving to be liked in the moment and striving to be liked in the end.
To be liked in the moment means that you are betting on your capacity to escape immediate evaluation. It’s about being erratic, leveraging every situation, and since people talk, caring about short-term benefit.
To be liked in the end means that you are betting on the capacity of people to judge by themselves. It’s about consistency, authenticity, and long term.
So, the choice is not really between wanting to be liked and not wanting to be liked.
It’s a choice between now and forever.
Three things to do in order to establish emotional and professional safety in a moment of crisis at work.
There’s no app out there that does not have an active interest in keeping you in for a while longer, in having you buy for a while longer, in liking your content so you can create for a while longer.
It is a legitimate business practice and it is encouraged by our utter disregard for its negative consequences on our life.
We can’t control how others will react to us, but we can control how we behave in their presence. What and how we say and share things, how we respond to their requests, what we do when they tell something unexpected, how we are present and listen.
We over-stress about their reaction and pay little to no attention to how we can influence that. We play the part of the bystander when we actually are (one of) the main character(s).
It’s no guarantee that the other person’s will do what we hope for. But we will at least feel infinitely better.
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