In today's episode I am going to share with you how to handle job rejection with 4 key tips I share with my clients to land their dream job (even during a recession!).
Get on the waitlist here for my Epic Work & Life Program.
A 6 month transformational program for high achieving corporate women like YOU that wants to ENJOY going after their big career goals AND have an even more fantastic life.
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Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/podcast
In today's episode I am going to share with you how to handle job rejection with 4 key tips I share with my clients to land their dream job (even during a recession!).
Get on the waitlist here for my Epic Work & Life Program.
A 6 month transformational program for high achieving corporate women like YOU that wants to ENJOY going after their big career goals AND have an even more fantastic life.
Sign up to my mailing list for free workbooks to help you love your job again!
Follow me on:
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/podcast
00:00
Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. And if not, I got you, at least you are here. My name is Michelle Kevill. And I help high achieving corporate women feel passionate about their job again.
00:11
It is one month away from my wedding, you're gonna hear that like coming up every single week with details about my wedding, I cannot believe it is coming around. I've been planning this for almost two years. And it is so close. And I'm literally like, wow, it is, in a month's time, we're going to be married. And what's interesting is a lot of people like, Oh, hey, like, Do you need help? Are you super stressed. And it's actually been like Touchwood, I'm hoping I didn't jinx it. But really, so far stress free. And I think that's because probably like, obviously, I've been planning this for two years, but earlier in the month, or that's when I was doing a lot of just like getting stuff out of the way because I absolutely hate doing it at the last minute when people you know, need things by this deadline, etc. So it's been pretty good, smooth sailing. And everything is going pretty smoothly. And I'm very excited. And I'm so excited as well, we are going to have some new people in the cohort for 2024. For the epic Work and Life program. Things are just ramping up. And I'm so excited because after the wedding, I will really just be back into it, you may have noticed that I have been very quiet on social media probably for the good honestly, like three to four months, it has been crazy with wedding work. And I have stepped, I've been doing what I need to in the business and also support you amazing followers and listeners out there. And I have just mentally decided to coming up with especially towards Christmas, like you know what, I'm just gonna take a little step back. And that's totally fine. And I'm just planning stuff in the background for the new year and some exciting stuff for that. Let's get into today's episode. This is a good one. This is a really good one, I was talking to a client about it. She was having some drama with this. I've had drama with this. And again, I'm always still figuring out the headline. But it's about how to stop being angry at work, right. And I'm what I'm talking about anger, I mean, absolute anger, like white hot rage, just so mad about something. And I really want to give you some tips on how to deal with this, because
02:25
I'm gonna go into detail on anger, anger is such an interesting emotion. And I'm going to tell you how anger is not going to be your best as you would know, from how you would feel when you're angry, it's not going to be the best emotion to have when you are making decisions. So I'm going to explain why that is. But I'm also give you gonna give you some tips, obviously how to get out of that. But I'm going to give you such a key question that's going to reframe how you feel in the moment, I always use it for myself as well, to kind of just almost like snap your fingers. And you kind of get out of that anger a little bit, you take a step back from the emotion. But let me set the scene. Okay.
03:09
Let's say you're, maybe you're a project manager, and you are organizing a project and you're leading this project, and you're working with different groups to get this project out the door. Right? This is something that I also funny enough to myself, I am an analyst, but I also work with a variety of people. So we can, you know, we have to work with different people to get the end to achieve the end goal, basically, right? So let's say you're in that situation, and you're going through it, things are going well, you're all staying on track. And you get up to a point where maybe you're having a meeting with everyone to like sort some stuff out. And it's just not working. There's been miscommunication. You're wondering why it's coming off this way. Things are now starting to get delayed. There is now a very evident Blocker with a certain group of people and they needed to go sort stuff out. But they should have done that earlier. And you are sitting there like I am just trying to do my job and get things through. Why aren't people following up or doing what I should be doing? And you start to feel very frustrated. This is something that a client actually went through recently, which she has given me permission to share a little bit about here.
04:28
And maybe you're thinking I just wish people would just do their fucking job. Do what you're supposed to do. Why is this happening now? Why are you being told all these issues these problems these blockers now so close to the project? It is due so soon? We don't want to delay it any longer. Oh my god, what if it gets delayed? Then my boss is going to be mad. This is ridiculous. It's not even my fault. It's going to look like it's my fault and no one takes me seriously. I'm so sick of this. You start to you know, ramble and go off and maybe you likely start
05:00
to almost blame yourself as well, like, no one treats me with respect. No one is listening to me this is actually this is ridiculous. And funny enough, this whole thing that I'm talking about themes from from the last episode where I talk about, like letting go, there's a bit of a theme here with some of these episodes that I'm building up towards.
05:16
But the issue isn't the fact that these people, whether it's true or not, like haven't necessarily done their job. It's to do with the fact that this blogger has now appeared, the deadline is coming. And you can't control the situation, like you're frustrated, you've done absolutely everything within your power, you've checked in with people, you have, you know, sent those emails, you've done, what you've had to do, you've highlighted things early, and yet, this has happened, this has fallen through the cracks, a person hasn't done to your standard, what you're expecting them to do, and you're frustrated, that is a completely normal motion. Maybe go straight into planning mode, you're just thinking this is what we need to do. Maybe you're checking in a lot more with this person, you're really trying to foster things through or trying to, like you're doing more of what you were doing before like checking in, etc. And you might be feeling like nothing is moving, and you start to get extremely angry with the whole situation where you come home, you vent to your partner, you're so mad, you're mad at everything, you're just like, why are people are doing what I expect them to do.
06:22
And what seems to happen is, so for this client, like we were just going through, like kind of kept happening, right? Like we were messaging in between it and like it's building up. So the anger is building the resentment towards other people is building and it is leading to thoughts and ways of handling it. Which outside in what looking like the best hence why again, getting coached is so important. Understanding your thoughts and being able to distance yourself from emotions are really, really important in the corporate world. So before I get into all the tips, also how I help my clients through the same tips I'm going to show you share with you is I want to just give you a little bit on anger, because it is such an industry interesting emotion. I think it's interesting because for me personally, it is something that I have typically repressed. And I think a lot of women have repressed to their anger. We have been taught, like, anger isn't really you know, don't be angry as a woman Don't be you know, too much, etc. So I'm really good at dealing with emotions like grief, sadness, anxiety, when it comes to anger, it's really interesting, my body immediately will repress it, like I can actually feel my body repressing it, it's very weird. It's like I feel it in my throat, and then my body immediately, like pushes it down. Very interesting. When you get very in tune with your body what it's starting to do, I've started to become more aware of it right? Now.
07:49
What can happen though, is it builds up over time in your body, and it can just come out, right and it can come out, I think for regardless of gender, in subtle ways, maybe it's a passive aggressive note to a colleague, maybe it's a slightly raised voice in a meeting, which again, slightly raised voice in a meeting with someone or being like direct, nothing wrong with that. But I always say to my clients, like you've got to work out where this is all coming from. Because as this anger and resentment is building, it's going to lead down to more, maybe decisions that aren't necessarily you're going to align with or you're going to look back on and be like, Oh, maybe I should have I shouldn't have done it that way. Personally, I absolutely hate the tape. Because you hear this all the time, in the coaching psychology world, whatever. And it is true. Anger, really at its core is sadness. There is like pain underneath anger and you're not able to deal with that pain, therefore the anger comes out. My take is I don't fully agree with that. Okay. Because I think what happens is we can sometimes if we're not expressing how we feel like that frustration, it just gets bottled up, and it just needs to come out. And I have dealt with pain, sadness, etc. I've looked underneath anger, there is also a part of me that is like, I want to be fucking mad. And I want to be able to kind of like a boiling pot of water, like let the steam out. My view is women have typically been told to just keep it all together. That by telling women to keep it all together, they just it's almost like, you know, like the twitching eye kind of thing. It's like no fucking No, I do not want to keep it together. When people to go down, listen to me. I want things go my way I want this control, which is what I'm getting into now. Understanding where the anger is coming from is really important. Because anger ultimately, is just triggering your fight or flight response. And if anything, I think anger and some of the actions you might take from anger is triggering a little bit of what I like to call a corporate fight response, which is what I was going back and forth with my client on when I was noticing some of the actions in our unintentional model. I'm like, it's a bit of a corporate fight and I'm starting
10:00
To feel like this resistance, right? Like this, I need to take a stand, I need to put my foot down, etc. My actual take is, there's nothing wrong with channeling anger into the right way. But again, you want to be aware of it, and then know how to use your anger, not let anger be running the show and be taking actions that are not aligned with you, and maybe not going to be good for what you're doing in the corporate world. And a very obvious example of that, let's say, it's just someone like shouting, like shouting, raging in a meeting room. Guess what it does. And I've seen this happen, people go quiet, people pull away. And I feel it was really interesting. When this happened just happened years ago, my corporate career wasn't to me, I was observing it. Everyone was quiet and kind of pulling away.
10:54
And everyone was almost trying to subdue this person. And I, in my mind thought, this person thinks they have power right now because everyone is quiet, etc. But actually, the opposite is happening. I've lost so much respect for this person. And I know that this person is now operating from a place of whether it's like real fee pain, etc. I actually, in that moment, whilst I wasn't appreciative of her, like he shouldn't have been doing what he was doing. But in a weird way, also felt sorry for that person. Because I'm like, I know, underneath everything, there is some frustration. But that's not being handled in a professional way, right now, I'm not saying you are going to do that, like, Oh, my God, if I do that, and I let my rage like not anger not be controlled, this will happen. Very unlikely. Just knowing the clients that I work with, who are also aware of, you know, their emotions, etc, and just trying to work things out. Very unlikely. In saying that, it's good to know because you will get your power back, and you're not going to be driven by anger. And so and this is what this is where I was getting to with my whole little story, that anger, it's triggering us fight or flight response, you can't think will make rational decisions, you're not thinking pragmatically about the problem. And what the best thing to do, what I was working with my client through was all this frustration, it was around like, there's a lack of control, it then went internal to its me, they don't respect me, because I'm a woman, etc, like oil thoughts, and we probe them and we all explored them. And really what it came down to is the end of the day, these people, whether it was intentional or not, like you can think whatever you want, right, you can think that this person was just should do the job, they intentionally are sucking and trying to ruin my life. Or you can just empathize and be like, you know, what is miss something or trying to do the best that they can. And this has happened, and you need to be focusing on just how do we get that fixed? How do we get that sorted? How do we showcase that there's going to be some progress made here, this has happened and like thinking, instead of Oh, my God, this shit has happened. It's getting yourself out of that into how do we just fix the problem? You can't do that when you're angry. So what we realized was the end of this was there was a fear of disrespect, there was this belief around, you know, it's all going to come back on like, purely her like she's managing this project is going to be all on her fault. And we went through some ways around how from also a corporate perspective, how to like kind of how to actually manage the situation just outside and separate from coaching. But she was only able to do that once she realized that she was just putting the blame onto them. And then assuming that no one respected her and just finding all she was doing was finding all this evidence, when really outside in as a coach, what I could see was a lot of stressed people working together. And someone Yes, has dropped the ball.
13:54
And you can think that's intentional. Like you can think whatever you want. You could this is what I was saying. Like it could be intentional. But does that story serving you right now? Because right now you're stuck in this place of like resentment, you're angry, you're coming home, you're getting frustrated, that's going to show within the project that's gonna potentially like be seen by your manager, etc. Like it has this flow on effect. Instead of just focusing like, it's almost like there is a boulder that's you're walking on a path a big ol Boulder has appeared and you're mad at the boulder. You're like, I cannot believe this boulder is on my path. And I'm on the outside in like the boulders just been a boulder. The Boulder was there to begin with the boulder. Isn't sentient. It's not trying to ruin your life. It just happened to be there. We just need to focus on getting rid of the boulder. It sucks that we have to do that. We need to like climb it or dig through it or get more people in it. Yeah, it's gonna like slow things down like you're thinking that way. And this is where having a one on. One coach is so powerful because she very quickly within a matter of days, was able to just recuperate and she got through the project successfully. She got praised from her boss, but
15:00
She even said to herself like this. Once she kind of knew in her mind where everything was coming from and how to handle it, she felt so much calmer. And that energy even came off when she was managing the project and working with those people when she was able to just empathize with them. It seriously like it has a flow and affect how you are showing up with your emotions in meetings, etc. It does have that effect, right. It's like the example I gave the person who was like angry in a room like that anger was getting everyone to be subdued. But it's also can be the opposite, where you're calm energy, etc. can do the same thing, like the good effect. Really. Okay, great. Michelle, you've told me a happy little story with your client, but like, what am I supposed to do with my anger? Firstly, if you are feeling the anger, I want you to get really comfortable with it. I want you to notice when anger is popping up, I want you just see, if you also repress it. And you'll know for yourself takes a while takes a while just let yourself get angry and just see what happens. I it took me quite a few months to realize that I would get angry, and then I would immediately it's like a physical pushing in my body. And it is because growing up being mad was not good. It was not safe for me, I was not allowed to be angry. It's allowed to be sad, anxious, happy, whatever. But I could not be angry. And anger Funny enough, I fear it. I do not enjoy it. I feels weird allowing it to exist. And it's the work that I am doing. And I have made strides in. So when it pops up and you start to feel this, it could start as frustration. And then as it starts to turn and change. I want you to be with an emotion you need to get very comfortable with anger. So then you can know in the moment when it's popping up and starting to cause a whole heap of shit. The next thing is when something like this happens, the same situation, I want you to be thinking in your mind. Why am I angry right now? Right? What is making me so angry? And how does that relate to my abilities? So what is making me angry? How does it relate to my abilities? How does it relate to me, or anger is, and this is really for any emotion. What I've noticed weirdly with anger about a situation is it's like, which I absolutely hate. Sometimes it comes down to pain, and it comes down to your brain being like, I need this situation to change, I need it to be different. I'm going to express this emotion, because I don't want this to either come back on me, I don't want to be thinking this way etc. Like there is basically a thought underneath all of this that is creating and causing this chaos that you need to start getting comfortable with. And what I have a consistent pattern I've noticed with myself and all my clients is the anger comes back to how they are viewing themselves. In that situation, like a big example would be the control. There is a lack of control, there is a frustration. Oh my God, no one is listening to me. It's because they don't respect me. That's the reason and you're finding evidence for that. And what I say to clients, too, is even if that's true, it's not helping you right now. Right now you're in the thick of it, you're trying to figure out this project, you're not. This is not a helpful way of thinking and feeling. So you want to figure out what is the reflection on you for so for this client, it was a lack of control, it was something slipped through. And you she was making it mean that it was her fault, and it would look bad. And ultimately it was coming down to what really went really down the ladder. Like I'm not good enough. This is just evidence I'm not good enough. You know, people will then get angry at me. And it's like, okay, see? See, it has nothing to do with what the people are saying or doing. It's all to do with you and your thoughts? How is this thought coming in and trying to shit on everything right now. Instead of just, you know, you're taking your anger out on the boulder, instead of focusing on how do we just shift the boulder. That is a completely different way of thinking that is coming from a completely different set of thoughts and emotions, like a complete different mindset shift. But before you do that, some of you don't want to process your goddamn emotions.
19:27
You need to get better at being with these feelings is the most common thing I get from all of you in my DMs you're talking about like, I am so sick of feeling these feelings, you know how I'm feeling etc. And the advice that I'm giving constantly on this book.
19:44
And sometimes to myself is you can't just just rush through this. You've got to be feeling it I know you don't want to and I know you think that there's no point in like why should I feel this emotion like why?
20:00
To just wallow in this, you need to be comfortable with these emotions because they're just going to be part of your everyday and if you're not comfortable with them, if you either run with the emotions or run away from them, and you like repress and ignore it, it's gonna fuck up your life like used to fuck up mine, I've completely burnt out I have induced an auto immune condition from years of overworking and just not like, I will not process any emotions and not even just just at work, just things that were going on in my personal life. It's just let's just work, do work, and just focus and it will be fine. Because that is funny enough what I used to do, as a kid, I was really good at doing my homework, don't deal with your feelings, just overwork yourself until you induce an autoimmune condition. It's really what I did. Hence, I found coaching, I do this whole podcast for you. So getting comfortable with feelings, and again, hence the name of the podcast, I'm gonna I'll just hone in on it. It's really important if you're not reacting to the emotion if you're letting it exist and be there. And if you're being almost a friend to it, and then you will be creating space with it. I have created so much more space with anger than I did years ago. And years ago, funny enough, I didn't really feel anger, I'd actually feel rage because I used to repress it so much. It was like white hot rage, it will just randomly explode. After I'm talking moms of not feeling anything. My body is like at its limits. But here is the crucial question that you need to actually be asking yourself that I asked my same client that like change the whole game for her that I'm going to share with you. And that's this. Did you grow up having to control the outcome? To feel safe? I'm gonna say that again. Did you grow up having to control the outcome to feel safe? And the reason I said that is because she was so focused on control. And there was that letting you know, the resentment we were talking about. And it was interesting, because she took a while and she came to me the next day. And she was like, You know what?
22:04
I really did get berated. If I didn't do X, Y, you know, x y Zed to this perfect standard. I really was fearful for me.
22:15
Yeah. And I'm like, Okay, so there's a part of you, that is like, I want to control this and it's frustrated. And this frustration is turning into anger. And I think that anger is actually anger at yourself.
22:26
But you're deflecting it onto other people, because it's so much easier to do versus ourselves, but you are angry at you really.
22:36
And underneath all that was like there was some sadness, there was some pain. And it's like, yeah, but you can see how the whole interconnection of emotions right, you're angry at you for something that you couldn't control. That wasn't your fault. And guess what, nothing bad. Even if the project failed, nothing bad is gonna happen. Yes. Here's another thing, right? I think it's so interesting, when I love this for myself, when other people are angry at you. It's not actually you, it's them. If you take anything from this, take this. I've said this before, actually, when people are deflecting their own emotions onto you, it's all to do with them. And now, my God, I have so much compassion for people who like acting however they want, like it work, whatever, etc. Because they're just human beings, acting with their own thoughts and emotions. And they're just deflecting that out on to me. Like, I'm the emotional punching bag, but I don't have to be that I don't have to take their words, their thoughts, etc, on and then use that to also berate myself with, right, you can be the one that stops that. And you can also be the one who when we saw this pattern of this anger, gonna start you know, coming into you know, the corporate fight thing and deflecting onto others, you're able, when you understand where it's coming from, you're able to then shift and think about how do I actually want to show up for this. She got such a better outcome from it.
24:07
And then she's locked for next time as well. And she's like, You know what?
24:11
She can happen. I don't need to be angry at other people. I don't need to be angry at myself. I can give myself self compassion. I can give myself all this self compassion. And I'm like, think about how much more cohesive you guys going to work together, how that's going to show with leadership, like it's so beneficial.
24:30
So I leave you with that. I will see you next week. And process and you know, deal with those big fucking feelings, guys.
24:40
Feel your guardian feelings. Gonna hold that in the rest of the year.
24:45
See you next week.