Author: UnitedHR

Retelling the Stories of Disappointment

Disappointments are a part of life. We can retell the ‘stories’ of disappointment we tell ourselves to grow and move forward through them.

image depicting ways to retell stories of disappointment
  • Ankita had a look of utter disappointment on her face. Her proposal about a project had been rejected. She had worked hard for it, and although she did realise the few gaps in her work, she felt it was still good enough to be considered, with some minor tweaks.
  • Anu had been giving interviews the entire week and none of the companies she interviewed for had called back. She was starting to think if she even had the bare minimum qualifications, given the lack of positive response to her interview.
  • Adit had just been sidelined for a position, in the final round of his interview. Till the very last stage, he had been ahead but the last task gave the other candidate a major edge, which ultimately was their gain and Adit’s loss.

Do these scenarios evoke a stressful negative memory in you? We all must have faced disappointments like these or worse. A project we worked hard on didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to be. Expectations crashed. Or an interview we thought we had aced only to realise we missed out on the job by an inch. Or a professional networking relationship we had invested in, hoping the client will accept the pitch we provide utlimately, only to realise the client chose a different pitch.

Disappointments are a part of life. Professional and personal. How someone else- a person, a panel or a committee responds to our ideas, or how our ideas land in a situation is beyond our control.

What is in our control though is the story we tell ourselves. And how we use that story to progress and improve ourselves. In our earlier articles, we have talked about the power of storytelling in pitching, networking and ideating.

We can harness the power of a different kind of ‘storytelling’ in how we look at our disappointments as well, because at the end of the day, we are all telling ourselves stories about what we do.

Ankita told herself the story that her project proposal got rejected, the one which she worked so hard for, and that which she thought was enough to get accepted.

  • She can retell the story in a different way: Although her project proposal was rejected, she has this draft of the proposal ready the next time she is asked to pitch in her ideas. All she will need to do is fill in the gaps which she has spotted already. And suddenly, she feels motivated and ready with something for the next time. She moves forward through this disappointment.

Anu told herself the story that none of the companies she interviewed for have called her back yet.

  • She can retell the story in a different way: Although she hasn’t heard from any of the companies she had interviewed for as yet, she has gained so much experience in giving interviews this past week, and has her name in the databases of all these companies, and any day she may be contacted, if not right in the near future as the first preference, then as a silver medal candidate. This retelling helps her release some negativity from her mind, and also gain some confidence in her skills, which might help her to crack the next interview, who knows.

Adit told himself the story that he just lost out on the position in the last round, and another candidate edged past him.

  • He can retell the story in a different way: Although he lost out on the job, he has developed a possible network of seniors and colleagues who have actually seen him progress through the rounds of the interview, the rounds where right until the end he had been the top performer. They have seen his strengths and weaknesses. He can actually approach one of them as possible mentors perhaps. Or the visibility he gained through the rounds of the interview itself opens doors to many possibilities. Possibilities of networking, future opportunities and mentorship. Again, he moves forward through this mindset, whether it’s seeking mentorship to improve upon himself, or finding opportunities elsewhere.

Note that in any of these examples, there is no reality denied. At the same time a sense of possibility is not denied as well. It is not toxic positivity- it is looking at things as they are from a different frame of mind. It is a story that helps one move past the disappointment. It is a story that helps one to move forward.

Disappointments are a part of life, but how we frame those disappointments in our minds decides the long-term outcomes of these disappointments. Disappointments can remain stories of disappointment. Or we can retell these stories and find ways to make the best of them. We can grow and move forward through them.

Trusting the Truth in You

Have you ever felt that no matter what you do, someone always ends up getting disappointed? And then you end up feeling like you are always wrong? No matter how many perspectives you take into consideration, pleasing everyone is a next to impossible task, and at some point, the steady inflow of disapprovals and disappointments get to us.

Meena was going through something like this. 

‘I tried to take all perspectives but…’

Meena trailed off with this sentence, into a dejected mood. She was conversing with her friend Supriya, someone who she saw as not just a senior colleague but also a mentor.

Meena continued, ‘I try to take everyone’s perspectives in mind while making important decisions, but nothing seems to please anyone. At work, I consider the perspectives of my colleagues, team-mates and better experienced seniors. But sometimes, pleasing one group ends up making the other group feel disrespected. And then I feel they are disappointed in me and I am left feeling wrong in my decision.

‘At home, I try to take into consideration the perspective of my husband, in-laws and kids. Same story there. One person may like what I do, and someone else may not like the outcome. I end up feeling like I am always taking the wrong decision.’

Supriya listened to her carefully and thought about it carefully. Then she asked,

‘Do you always only take other perspectives into consideration, or do you ultimately listen to your self?’

Meena’s gloom cleared up as she thought and recollected hard, and she said ‘I do take other perspectives into consideration but ultimately, I do what feels right to me…’

‘There you said it!’ Chimed Supriya barely as Meena finished her sentence, and continued,

‘Dear Meena the story you are telling yourself needs to change. Rather than telling yourself that what you do always ends up being criticised by someone and how you end up feeling wrong, maybe you can tell yourself that you ultimately listen to your inner truth. After taking everyone’s perspectives and weighing them, if you yourself do what feels right to you, and the outcome is the most sensible and the best from what can be made, how is that a wrong decision? You do what feels right to you, and how can that be wrong?’

A calm, knowing smile came on Meena’s face as she was finally feeling the confidence that she had lost.

Often many of us, especially many women tend to try to please everyone. We are afraid of disapprovals. We are scared of disappointing people.

But is pleasing people more valuable than sticking to our core values?

Listening to one’s inner truth -and trust us, this inner truth is most of the times telling you the right answer- ultimately leads to an outcome that is right for everyone. Perhaps the immediate results may take a while to show up.

Think about it. How many times have we taken a turn at the last moment, and realised that this was indeed the best direction to go into?

How many times have we hesitated before taking a decision, and if we went ahead with it, we have realised that we should have listened to our intuition that showed up through that hesitation?

How many times have ignored our inner truth and wished ‘I should have listened to my first instinct only!’ When we encounter anything that needs a decision, whether it’s going ahead with a task, or whether it’s about networking, or whether it’s about the need to think about a next step, our inner truth mostly tells us the exact thing we need to do. We know almost automatically that what is it that aligns with our core values, and what is it that doesn’t.

Our inner truth made up of our core values guides us constantly, and the beautiful thing is that the more we listen to it, the more we learn how to listen to it better.

Listening to our inner truth enables us to live our life authentically. Man or woman, we all have had the experience of just knowing something should or shouldn’t be done, no matter how much approval we take from others. Respecting this knowledge from within the self, enables us to build solid foundations for an authentically lived life. A life that does what feels right, respecting its core values and isn’t swayed by short-term disapprovals and disagreements from outside.

Note that this is not to say we can never be wrong. Being open to and respecting other perspectives is great. But what about being open to and respecting your own perspective? In a world that trains us to seek approval and literal and metaphorical certificates from others, not disappointing our inner self that knows the inner truth, and nurturing it should be high up on our priority.

This Women’s Day onwards, let us channelise and nurture that shakti, the super-power within us to live our lives authentically without fear of disappointments or disapprovals, and resolve to always listen to that inner truth within us.

Love Thyself

We often look or wait for love to walk into our lives. But what about the love that has to be directed towards our own selves?

Esha was just looking around a bouquet for her husband when she noticed Aliya looking over the other counter. It was the week of Valentine’s Day, and the flower shops were looking picture perfect with a myriad of flowers. Just as bright the shop was looking though, equally dull was Aliya’s demeanour.

Esha guessed the reason- Aliya was single, and this time of the year, many single folks felt that sense of loneliness. As Esha inquired into this, Aliya agreed, and confided, ‘Everyone seems to have someone. I just feel left out. I wish I too had someone to love.’

‘Well, you have yourself, don’t you?’ Esha asked enthusiastically.

Aliya got into thinking mode. Looking at Aliya’s expression, Esha continued,

‘Often when we are single, we focus on the absence of a partner. But we have ourselves, no matter what! Singlehood is an opportunity to nurture the relationship with self…

‘Pursue your passions, build all that for yourself which brings you joy. No other relationship is more accessible and easier to nourish and nurture than the relationship with self. Embrace this relationship, and love might find you. Love often finds us when we are genuinely content and aren’t looking for it.’

With this, Aliya had a big smile on her face. She decided to buy flowers for herself this Valantine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day posts on social media may remind some of us of our loneliness. But we have the choice here to look at it differently. To look at singlehood differently. Self-love is the idea!

Self-love can look like:

  • Buying gifts for ourselves, materialistic, like flowers, chocolates or any other thing we like, or something more symbolic, such as making a promise to yourself to begin a good habit.
  • Working with a sense of self-love. Your career, your skills, your competence, and the efforts you take to develop them are first and foremost for yourself, and then for others.
  • Looking within, and mindfully setting/reevaluating goals for yourself that will help one feel accomplished, and giving one a sense of purpose.  
  • Explore new hobbies.
  • Strengthening personal connections with family and friends.  
  • Being kind to oneself- accepting all our flaws and humanity unconditionally, and at the same time promise ourselves to be a better person, gently.
  • Being your authentic self- celebrating your small quirks and eccentricities that harm no one and make you, you.

Love comes in all forms. Sometimes it comes to us when we are least expecting. While some of us are yet to have that special someone walk into our lives, we can love ourselves first in all our authenticity, walking to the rhythm of growth, connection and purpose. Before we look for love outside of ourselves, we must also nurture the love that we direct towards ourselves.

The Power of Small Achievements to get your ‘Big Break’

We often wait for a ‘big break’ to happen to us. Actually, we make the ‘big break’ happen with our ‘small achievements’. Read on.

image with working professionals celebrating small wins for the big break

Bindiya had joined the company around two years ago, and so far, she felt she had not achieved what she wanted to achieve. She had big dreams- she wanted a cabin of her own, a business card and an email signature she can be proud about. But so far, all she had to boast was that she was a junior associate. In other words, according to her, nothing much had been ‘achieved’.

Divya, a senior colleague and a friend of Bindiya’s walked in and saw the latter’s cheerless visage. As she asked, Bindiya confided how she had been feeling like a failure since the past year and a half since it wasn’t the career graph she had been expecting. She had been in the workforce for the past four years or so and two years with the company, and felt she hadn’t had any progress.

‘Is it so? Have you had no progress at all? Think about it. I remember a few meetings you attended in this company in your first year. You were quiet, and barely seemed to be handling the information that had been thrown at you.

Now look at you! Remember the meeting we had last week? You were asking great questions, and at one point, you also offered to mentor the interns. Isn’t that progress?’

Bindiya’s mood lightened up a little. But she still felt that this was just a random glimmer in an otherwise lacklustre career. She said, ‘Yes, but I don’t feel like this is a very significant achievement…’

‘Is it so?’ Divya quipped. ‘Remember the very first report you drafted? You were asked to make so many corrections. Now, most of your reports get the approval, and it is almost given that since you have made the report, it is going to be a job well done!’

Bindiya smiled at Divya’s optimism and countered it with…well, her pessimism, saying, ‘These little achievements are fine. I am grateful that I have learned so much over these couple of years, but I do not see the point of these small successes. I need a big break. Something that actually changes things…’

Divya at this point shared a story, ‘You know our boss, how did he start his career? He was a personal assistant to the head of another company. This wasn’t a job that many considered great. But he nevertheless continued to do his job of an assistant well, and learnt all that he could.

‘By ‘all that he could’, I mean every little thing. Just like you, he improved over the years his networking skills through the meetings he attended with his boss, which he wasn’t even a major part of for many years. He continuously found smart ways to do his job as an assistant as efficiently as was possible for him. He learnt to take phenomenal minutes of meetings which over the years gave him a keen eye for small details and a meticulous way of doing things. He was the first one the interns talked to when they had to approach the boss, and eventually, he developed a way of creating rapports with new recruits. One day, his boss himself referred him to this company for the role of a junior manager, and now he is the boss since a couple of years!’

Bindiya was looking at Divya wide-eyed. ‘Really?’

‘Of course!’ Divya continued, ‘I am telling you this story because I want you to understand that life is made up of small achievements, that can eventually lead you to the ‘big break’ that you are talking about. You make the ‘big breaks’ happen through your small achievements; the big breaks don’t simply happen to you.

‘Celebrate your ‘small breaks’. Celebrate how you have improved over the years. Keep learning, just keep learning. Keep finding ways to do your present job well. We often underappreciate the small cumulative improvements we make with things. Celebrate them, learn from them, because eventually, they will only help us with our big break, and to make good use of our big break from all that we have learned.’

Bindiya finally felt her mood lift, and found a new dose of motivation to keep doing her work efficiently.

Life is made up of small achievements that could lead to the big break that we all want.

The point is to:

  • Learn from your small breaks and achievements.
  • Remember the cumulative power of regular small achievements.
  • Remember that we stagnate only if we let ourselves stagnate- we can learn even from the smallest of tasks if we develop that famous growth mind-set we all must have heard of. Because what is growth mindset, if not developing a mentality to constantly learn?
  • Do our job well, and do not pore on the designation and the status wars that come with it. What our designation is, we must do full justice to it.

Eventually, the small achievements take you to the moment that will give the big break. Not only that, the lessons you learn from small achievements could be applied lifelong, even with your big break!

Transitioning from 2024 to 2025

As the new year sets in, the transition from 2024 to 2025 might feel…surprisingly underwhelming. After the parties and celebrations, we go back to work. The festive season, which kicks off in many places worldwide October onwards, now comes to an end, and motivation levels might be hard to maintain.

In fact, the pressure to make resolutions and start the new year with a bang might work with a reverse psychology- this pressure making it difficult to start doing anything, forget new year resolutions.

Amidst this, how can one make the transition from 2024 to 2025 smoothly, in a productive manner?

Keep Up the Momentum

Most workplaces globally had holidays and out-of-office days. Many workplaces though may not have had that long break, and enjoyment of festivities may have been done vicariously, or/and along with the rhythm of the work already going. In fact, many professionals and workers may have been working harder during the festive season. If generally speaking, there is no burnout and you have actually enjoyed this momentum, why break that rhythm now?

This is a great time to actually keep that rhythm going, stick to that work ethic. Keep the normalcy in your work routine intact, and keep up the momentum. This is a great way to ensure a smooth productive transition to the year.

However, if you are still someone who’d like to start things afresh or at least with a sense of something ‘new’, the next point might work out for you.

Set Your Priorities

Make a realistic to-do list. Something concrete. Sort out the tasks that are urgent, tasks that can wait, and tasks that need a change of direction. After all, just because the date changed, doesn’t mean old tasks have disappeared with the calendar flip as well!

If you are someone who feels life is going to feel mundane and boring now that the festivities are over, the next point comes to the rescue!

The Festivities of Daily Life

Why wait for special occasions to enjoy? Enjoyment at a big scale is fun and something we all must indulge in, but enjoyment through the little things in life can bring as much joy. In fact, this is a joy that can sustain. Festivals will come and go, but you can still try to see your loved ones more often. You can keep your workspace beautiful and decorative without a big reason. You can still do things like taking a different route to and from work once in a while to break the monotony of daily life. You can wear a different colour than what you usually wear. Celebrating life and our small triumphs is always an option, regardless of the calendar.

You can still give yourself the gift of optimism and abundance. Life is here to be experienced in all its shades and forms, and it is indeed this dance between the routine and the festive. Be it routine or festive, life is still a dance that can be enjoyed in countless ways. So let 2025 be the year when the version of you that you knew is now looking into a new sunrise, a new attitude to the shades of life and perhaps, you might become someone that inspires someone around you.

Team UHR wishes everyone a very happy and successful new year!