‘Job rejection taught me how to pivot’
Things don’t always happen “for a reason” but it helps to echo the energy of my fellow Nigerians who can often be heard saying, ‘We move!’
Dear Reader, it’s my birthday this weekend (31 July) so this post is FREE! If you want to give me a birthday gift, please do consider upgrading to become a paid subscriber for as little as £4 a month (or £40 a year) to receive new posts and support my work. Tola x
I learned to pivot aged around seven when I joined the netball team. It quickly became my favourite sport at school and I went on to play in tournaments and was netball captain of my secondary school. (This is a half truth; there was an official sports captain but because the role was mainly split across lacrosse and netball and I led on the latter, I personally saw myself as owner of that appointment.) But I digress! To pivot - for those of who you did more interesting things in your school years than freeze on tarmac in tiny but supposedly appropriate sportswear - is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as:
An adjustment or modification made (as to a product, service, or strategy) in order to adapt or improve.
In netball, it’s when you get the ball and, since you can’t move (oh honey this ain’t bball), you have to swivel around on the spot looking for a space to pass the ball. One leg stays put while the other darts around moving your entire body in a 360 movement.
Recently I interviewed the children’s TV presenter, Gemma Hunt for Woman Alive magazine. We talked about how Gemma got into the industry and she revealed that she experienced a lot of rejection initially, including from the BBC, the organisation that eventually gave Gemma her first gig. When I asked how she dealt with it, she said, ‘We were taught at university that rejection was part of the deal so it never fazed me, I just kept applying.’
As someone in the same (media) industry, I’m not sure I feel this was communicated quite so keenly in my own studies. We were taught that if we learned enough and passed all the exams, then we’d be chased down by companies desperate to hire us. I took every rejection badly, seeing it as a failure. Not just of my ability to execute my craft, but also, a rejection of myself.
The thing is, when you’re applying for a job, you put your best self on “paper”. You lay out your achievements and your wins. Why wouldn’t a letter that starts with “Thank you…however…” make us feel less than? There’s a lot going around online about manifesting (read ‘God is not a blue-hued genie in a bottle’) as if the only way to get ready for an application is to imagine getting the job. But something I did when I last applied for a new job was prepare myself mentally for the outcome - whatever that looked like.
I told myself that if I did get the job, it would be because it was God’s will for my life and therefore part of my journey. And if it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t. Yes this is very simplistic and I realise if you’re reading this and you’re not a Christian then you might wish you could throw whatever device you’re reading this on, straight into the bin. But there is something about understanding that there are many paths we could take in life and not all of them are for us. A well-known scripture is Romans 8:28 which reads:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.
Isn’t that kind of encouraging? Not that it happened “for a reason” but that God can work it out for our good either way. This means I was not relying heavily on that job to satisfy any kind of desperate need or desire (which incidentally can affect how we perform in interviews and not necessarily in a good way) and knew that a “No” would not break me (or my soul, thanks Beyonce).
Whether it’s a job or any other kind of rejection; learning to pivot means adjusting our plans and making new ones to find out what we can do next. It means saying to ourselves, ‘okay, well where do we go from here?’, avoiding the rabbit warren of working out what you did wrong. Maybe…nothing? Unless you feel you could learn from something that went wrong in an interview, maybe there’s nothing to be gained from musing over how you might have “failed” in one particular situation. Sometimes, in hindsight a past rejection can look like an ‘aha, I get it now!’ moment. But not always. We may never know in this life why things didn’t work out the way we thought. But if you find yourself stuck - or blocked as we often do in team sports and life alike - hold onto the metaphorical ball (your nerve, your energy, your passion) and pivot to find another direction to pass it on.
Remember, there’s always something else to consider, somewhere else to aim. Don’t let anyone - including yourself - convince you otherwise.
Tola x