In one of your 10 Qs you talked about adversity, I’ve never read you mention that any other time (happening in your life). If you don’t mind telling us what was the biggest thing you’ve had to overcome in your life? (or the general idea of it)
Have you ever experienced failure/rejection? (e.g. Love, career, etc) If so, how did you deal with it? Would really appreciate any tips or insights you have on how to be tougher in discouraging situations. Thank you!
Did you ever face any real rejections(like from a job, school, anything)? If not, how do you imagine you’d deal with it so you could move on?
How do you deal with failure?
How do you manage to handle failuresandlosses? What are the things you do to get back up?
Have you ever experienced failure and rejection?
There isn’t enough server space on Tumblr to catalog all my failures, challenges, rejections, and losses. Of course I’ve failed, I’ve failed my way to success, and I’m proud of each and every single one because they’re part of my journey and my development to becoming a badass motherfucker.
Some of my most spectacular and epic failures, rejections, challenges, and losses in life:
Growing up in poverty also meant I grew up in a rough lower income neighborhood with frequent robberies and stabbings. I got jumped and bullied a lot at school so I quickly learned how to fight. I was never picked on again.
I almost failed middle school then I almost failed high school. I was almost held back in 10th grade. I failed two must-pass classes and had to attend summer school to make them up. I was an academic underachiever in high school while dealing with a lot of personal issues. A decade later I was accepted to every UC university plus USC, graduated UCLA summa cum laude, and graduated USC magna cum laude.
I was kicked out and forced to transfer from my first high school due to severe behavioral problems. My teachers told me I wouldn’t amount to anything because I had “a bad attitude, was combative, and lazy.”
I was the problem child in my family. A lot of my extended family didn’t want their kids around me back then (I have 18 aunts and uncles and 32 cousins) because they thought I was a bad influence and I was the pariah at family gatherings. Now, they all reach out and flood me with requests to mentor their kids on academic, career, and life matters– I’m suddenly a role model.
It was a dream of mine to play basketball in college but in 11th grade they discovered a developmental deformation in my bones and that dream was over. I had major surgery to have my hip sawed in three places, my pelvis shifted, and nailed back into place. I went through an excruciating 6 months of physical therapy where I had to piss into a catheter bag, I was temporarily wheelchair bound, I had to re-learn how to walk using a walker, and my severed thigh nerves had to be stimulated with electricity. I have an 11-inch thick rope scar on my right hip.
I’ve had 6 (yes, six – seis – sechs) psychologists to help me with my anger management and mental health issues. I wrestled with depression all throughout my teenage years that culminated in a very dramatic and very unnecessary attempt on my life when I was 19.
I was financially disowned by my parents and had to drop out of college for two years. I attended community college and worked 3 jobs, one of which was as ajanitor. I’ve scrubbed shit off toilets and barf off floors to make ends meet, I’ve had a knife pulled on me as a cashier at Target, and my body has been 90% salt and 10% water from all the ramen packets I ate because that was the only food I could afford.
In 2011, I had to have more surgery. My parents and I weren’t on the same page at the time so my fucking amazing friends (Anthony, I know you’re reading this <3) accompanied me during the recovery process. They helped change my drains, clean my bandages, feed me, carry me to the bathroom, drive me to and from the hospital (an 800 mile round trip). I returned to school immediately after still wrapped in bandages and walked across campus to my classes with the help of a cane for 2-3 weeks. Never missed a single class that quarter, finished with a 4.0.
My parents couldn’t afford MCAT and GRE prep courses (~$3000) when I was applying to medical school and grad school so I started a small business in my dorm room buying and selling video game and anime soundtracks to raise the cash. I ended up giving the money I made to my family to save their home and instead bought a bunch of books and just self-studied instead. I scored in the 99 percentile for both tests anyway and I was accepted into the majority of the colleges I applied to.
I was rejected from all the consulting firms – all – that I applied to after undergrad. All. Not even one callback. At the time they wouldn’t even extend the courtesy of a rejection email. Two years later, the same consulting firms that rejected me all extended offers and competed against each other to win me over.
And those are just a fewexamples, that’s the abridgedversion.
How did you deal with failure, rejection, and losses?
Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.
John Wooden
I fought back. I don’t know what to tell you except to fight back. You tried, you failed, you fell, you’re rejected, you lost, and it sucks, you’re hurt, you may be crying, and you’re feeling awfully sorry for yourself– okay I get it, but now what? Is that the end of it? It’s not. You get back up.
More thoughts:
It’s not an ENTJ thing. That’s the first thing I want you to understand since most of you know me through the MBTI community. There’s nothing sparkly, special, or inherently superior about ENTJs that gives them more grit, makes them tougher, and makes them more resilient than the other types. There’s nothing about your MBTI type, your cognitive function order or stack, your zodiac, your enneagram, your Chinese zodiac, your birthstone, your birth month, whether or not the fairy spirits accepted your sacrifice of lavender and skittles, or whether or not Saturn was humping Pluto when you were conceived that prevents you from getting back up after you fall. That is a choice you make that you must take ownership and responsibility for. So make the right choice.
You can do everything perfectly and still fail. Failure is inevitable so you must have resilience, minimize your chances for failure, and maximize your chances for success. A valedictorian straight A student in high school with 50 extracurricular activities and glowing letters of recc can still get rejected from Harvard University so what chance does a B student with 1 extracurricular activity and no letters of recc have? An upper middle class white collar worker who responsibly manages his money can lose all his savings and his home during the recession so what chance does a similar person with shit money management skills have? Don’t sabotage yourself: prepare, be disciplined, be timely, be persistent. Ensure that everything that’s within your control is done to the best of your ability.
Don’t fail for free. When you fail– make sure you get something out of it like a lesson, more wisdom, more perspective, and more confidence. If you were an idiot pre-failure then you better be less of an idiot post-failure. Learn from your mistakes and don’t suffer without getting something back in return.
The time you spend whining is precious time you waste not winning. If you’re trying to win a marathon and you stub your toe on the road, you don’t stop running, sit down, and complain about it while all the other runners pass you by. Feel free to bitch about it and curse to your heart’s content but keep running. Don’t stop. Even when I fuck up (and I do) and I need to nurse my wounds, I’m wrapping that bandage while still charging towards my goals at full speed. My foot never leaves the pedal. Don’t compound the problem and miss new opportunities because you’re dwelling on past ones.
Don’t take it personally, sometimes it’s not under your control. When I graduated grad school the same consulting firms that flat out rejected me two years prior were banging on my door with lucrative offers. I asked the recruiter why I didn’t get an offer back then and they said it was due to the recession– a simple timing issue. There were 400 applications and 7 spots, my application was number 385, and they’d already closed the screening process. I had a solid application, solid GPA, great internships, but there were no open positions at the time. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
Be persistent, sometimes it IS under your control. The same recruiter who told me the recession triggered a hiring freeze at most consulting firms also told me he was extremely glad I applied again two years later because the economy picked up and talent was high in demand. In addition to a bunch of offers, I ended up with a higher salary than the consultants hired during the recession. If I stayed pissed at them I wouldn’t have applied again two years later and ended up in a career I love.
No one is coming to save you, it’s on you to make it happen. You know that scene in Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban where Harry and Hermione are in the Forbidden Forest waiting for Harry’s dad to save them from the dementors? And when no one comes and they’re inches from death Harry finally realizes the person he saw rescued them was actually himself so he steps in and saves both their lives? Yeah, it’s like that. Don’t wait around for someone to rescue you because they won’t always be there to bail you out. Be able to get back up and step back in the ring on your own. You are your own champion.
I’ve always thought it’s charming how Pearl dances all the time, when walking, gesturing… even when she’s all alone. Seemingly just for the pleasure of it… dancing just for herself.
if i accidentally ran across Deliver Us on spotify and then subjected myself to listening to the soundtrack on repeat for five hours, i think it is only fair that you do too.
This piece features a (currently still in progress) design of my character Nickel Obol, created by Atlas R&D as a ‘back-up Penny’. In this moment, she and Penny are saying goodbye in the cyberworld as she destroys her coding, taking the hack on Penny with her (Penny does not turn human in this au).
Six years ago Hyper Light Drifter was released. I backed it on Kickstarter way back when—and while I never got experience it as a player—I was fortunate enough to be a part of it instead
