Being rejected does not mean you are worthless!

When the world closes its doors on you, keep the faith, be patient.

A young man, who we have been coaching (through our ‘Let’s Talk Happyness’ Program), called up yesterday. He was excited. His boss had awarded him a spot bonus. And had felicitated him at a town hall with the whole team. The young chap, an engineer in his late 20s, said, “I am amazed. Just four months ago nobody wanted to even look at my resume. For months on end interviewer after interviewer kept on rejecting me. They made me feel worthless. And now, suddenly, my talent is recognized and I am being celebrated. I don’t get this. Even when I was going through a trial by fire, through that spate of rejections, I was still talented. Then why does my talent get recognized only now. Why was it not valued then, when I so badly needed a break?”

 

Well, such is Life. Vaani and I have learnt from own experience (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal.) that we are put through a trying phase in Life only so that we evolve through it. Clearly, Life’s experiences do not erode our talent. Even when one department, one door, in Life shuts on us, another opens. Always. The truth also is that talent and trial are totally unrelated. Being talented does not guarantee you a Life free of challenges. Talent is what you are endowed with. And trial is what you have to face, what you must go through, per your Life’s inscrutable, and unique, design. It is important to remember that just because you are being rejected by the world, just because people don’t recognize your talent, it does not mean you are worthless. This is when you must keep the faith – in yourself, your abilities and what you have to offer the world – and be patient. This is when you must trust the process of Life. Life is very compassionate, very beautiful. Every experience you go through unfailingly enriches you from within – making you stronger, wiser and happy!

Face Life, don’t fight it!

“I am sick and tired of fighting Life,” he said as he sat down across me at a café recently. He was in his late 20s. He looked beaten. He had reached out to me and Vaani wanting to seek our perspectives through our ‘Let’s Talk Happyness!’ Program. He ordered a black coffee for himself and told us his story. His parents are separated. He has a smoking habit that he loathes. He has been rejected by all potential employers – 15 of them so far – in the last 3 years. He feels he is “cursed” and “condemned” to “worthlessness”. His girlfriend has deserted him. “I feel lost and lonely. I am sick and tired of fighting Life,” he repeated, choking as he spoke.

This young man’s plight is not unique. There are many, many out there who feel lost and beaten by Life’s challenges. They feel they can’t go on “fighting Life” anymore. Vaani and I can relate to their agony, because we have been there and felt that way. But we have also realized that fighting Life is futile. You can’t win over Life. And, interestingly, Life is not playing to win – or defeat you – either. No matter what the circumstances are, however excruciating and hopeless they are, you only have one option. Which is to face Life, and take it as it comes, one day at a time. This may sound too simplistic especially when you are in the throes of complex situations. But there seriously is no other way. You can never fight Life – and hope to win. No matter what, you must just face Life and flow with it.

This is what Vaani and I have learnt from our own experience of dealing with a decade-long bankruptcy. We believe that it is best to put your head down and go to work – remaining detached from the results. We have learnt not to complain, not to mope and mourn, not to suffer.

Facing Life simply means this – you do what you can in the given circumstance without expectations, without resistance, without grief. Eventually, each of us has to go through what we have to go through; so, we might as well face Life with equanimity than fight it with angst.

How faith helped us live through pennilessness and worklessness

What do you do when you don’t know what to do in Life?

A young lady reached out to Vaani and me recently. She said her 2-year-old marriage was breaking up. Her parents were both diagnosed with cancer. Their family property, which had been under litigation for years, was decreed in favor of her uncles. And she had been laid off at her job. “Where do I begin to fix my problems? I have nowhere to go with my ailing parents and my one-year-old child. I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, breaking down inconsolably.

Vaani and I have been in her situation. We too have felt clueless and lost. What do you do when you don’t know what to do in Life?

I remember Thursday, April 29^th 2014 vividly. On that day, we went ‘zero-cash’. We spent the last eighty rupees with us on an auto ride and lived in Chennai, in spells of pennilessness, for months on end after that. Our bankruptcy had blown up into an incomprehensible phase of prolonged worklessness and pennilessness. At one time, we endured 30 months, between 2012 and 2014 when we had no work, no income. (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal and watch this Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk.) This, despite, our best efforts to work our network of contacts, pound the pavement, restructure our delivery model, and put our business back on track. It’s a phase that we are still enduring at varied levels of intensity and challenge from time to time.

The last Eighty Rupees left with us on 29th April 2014 that we spent on an auto ride

It is through this darkest phase of our Life that Vaani and I have understood the true meaning of faith.

We have understood that faith is not quite about trusting an external resource or agency, also popularly known as God. Faith truly means trusting the process of Life – and being happy despite the circumstances; which means, being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. We realized that despite our excruciating circumstances, Life was providing us all that we needed. Nothing went according to our plans. Nothing still does. But we have survived a decade of bankruptcy and its attendant, often imponderable, challenges. In this time, our children graduated – our son from an overseas University in 2012. Our daughter too is doing her Master’s abroad. Miraculously, every time we came to the brink, a helping hand appeared from nowhere and hoisted us up or ‘someone’ opened our wings and taught us to fly. That’s what faith has come to mean to us – to know that since you have been created without your asking for it, you will also be, unfailingly, looked after, provided for and cared for. We have learnt that just because we find the going tough, we must not conclude that Life is cruel. In fact, as we have discovered from our experience, Life is most compassionate – always giving you a situation only so that you grow better from dealing with it.

This is what we told the young lady too who sought us out through our Let’s Talk Happyness Program. When you don’t know what to do in Life, you simply let go and you let Life take over. To be sure, you never were in control of anything. Life was always, Life is, and Life will always be in control. Or simply, the Master Plan has no flaws. All that you have to do when you are clueless is to trust the process of Life, keep the faith, and take each day as it comes.

If you wish to seek our perspectives on a Life challenge you are faced with, please reach out here – Let’s Talk Happyness! If you have a personal story of faith, please share. Or tag someone for whom this Post is likely to be useful.

Profit from happiness, let go of whatever is pinning you down!

You learn not to carry a disappointment in you when you realize its futility.

Yesterday, I delivered my ‘Help Yourself To Happiness’ Talk at a Rotary Club. I shared anecdotes and learnings from my Life (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal), telling people that we all have the choice to be happy despite our circumstances.

A member of the audience came forward after my Talk and asked me, “What is your biggest disappointment?”

I replied, instantaneously: “I have no disappointments.”

“But how can that be,” suggested the gentleman, “when you are in such a terrible financial state, when you have no money to cover even your living expenses, when you owe so much to so many people. How can you say you have no disappointments in Life?”

I smiled and shared my learning from Life with the man.

It is not that I had not felt disappointed before. It is not as though I don’t feel disappointed when our efforts to put our business back on track fail every single time that we try. But you learn, I told him, to not carry a disappointment in you when you realize its futility.

What is a disappointment? Simple – an unfulfilled expectation is a disappointment. A lost opportunity causes a disappointment. But Life does not bother whether you have an expectation or not. If you have an expectation from Life, and it goes unfulfilled, it is your problem. Life just goes on. Similarly, you got an opportunity, and if you blew it, it’s your problem. Life gave you that opportunity, you did not make use of it. Who is to blame? And what is the point in holding on to the blame, the guilt, the disappointment – the lost moment, the lost opportunity is never going to come back. So, why hold on endlessly to this feeling of  being disappointed?

In my case, surely, there’s a lot of scope for disappointment – I need not have taken some business decisions that led to our Firm’s bankruptcy and to my family being pushed to the brink of penury. I ought to have saved money for our children’s future, when our business was doing very well, and when my wife used to implore me to do so. That time’s gone. Those questionable decisions were made. The opportunities were lost. Events happened and we are in the state we are in. What has happened is irreversible. What’s the point in being disappointed now about whatever has happened in the past?

Understanding and avoiding disappointments helps in any context in Life. A disappointment always brings grief and depression along with it. Together they make a debilitating cocktail of emotions that can hold you hostage forever. Instead of being a slave to these emotions, be free. Learn from your mistakes, your choices, your decisions and let go of all disappointments and guilt. Forgive yourself for what you did. Forgive others for what they have done. This does not mean you become casual about what you have caused. This is not abdication or irresponsibility. I certainly don’t see dropping disappointments as irresponsibility. In fact, in choosing to remain non-worrying about my future, non-frustrated about the outcomes of my efforts, and non-suffering about whatever pain I am having to undergo, I am actually helping myself to happiness. This state of happiness helps me focus. It helps me see the futility of being pinned down by disappointments. It helps me let go of any wasteful emotion that will weigh me down – like anger, grief, guilt, anxiety, worry, fear – whatever! It is only through focus and fervor that I can retain the faith to change my current reality. So, to me, happiness is a hugely profitable choice.

You too can profit from happiness. Just let go of all your disappointments and whatever is pinning you down. Feel liberated, find focus and move forward – freely!

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Just be who you are: don’t hide your suffering and cook in it!

Don’t suffer in silence thinking it is a very cruel world out there. It clearly is not.

Through her Facebook post last evening, a young friend wonders if sharing your story of pain and suffering, and making yourself vulnerable, is worth it. She fears that it could prove costly. Instead, she believes in suppressing her suffering and smiling in pain.

From our own experience, I would say, doing just the opposite can be very liberating. Wear your Life on your sleeve. Be vulnerable. And the compassion of the Universe will nurture you, protect you and take you along.

This learning forms the essence of my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal. Sharing this learning, and inspiring happiness by encouraging people to just be who they really are, has become our raison d’etre – for Vaani and me.

What we have learnt is that the world is full of compassionate, loving, helpful people. Someone, somewhere is always there to help us onward, to last one more day. Of course, there are those who will judge you. A few others may even dump you. And some more may just choose to avoid you. But they are a minority. A lot of people are really like you and me – caught in similar Life situations, trying to grapple with pain, trying to understand how to get rid of their suffering. So, this majority, believe me, understands, appreciates and is always willing to lend you a shoulder or give you a hand.

Even as I am writing this blogpost, we are working on a short film promoting our Life Coaching Program – Let’s Talk Happyness – which is being made at zero-budget. Because we seriously don’t even have money to cover our living expenses. But our financial handicap has not prevented us from pursuing the idea with two young film-makers who we met recently. When we told them our story, they spontaneously offered to do this film. A friend offered us the venue. And another friend is offering us her studio for dubbing. All of this pro bono. Nobody is judging us. Nobody is doing this out of sympathy either. Everyone is doing this because they know what Life is and what it means to be caught in a tight spot and be vulnerable. They empathize – truly!

We must understand three things about Life in order to appreciate that being vulnerable is not wrong, and certainly not dangerous; it, in fact, is a very normal, logical, intelligent, thing to do. 1. Pain is inevitable. You clearly cannot control what happens to you in Life. And some of what happens will always cause you pain. 2. But you suffer from pain only because you wish that the pain were not there in the first place. For instance, a headache never causes suffering. A headache is just painful. It is your desire, your want, that the headache must not be there that causes your suffering. Therefore, suffering is a human creation; it is optional, it is avoidable. 3. Whatever you suppress, or resist, will persist. Suppressing suffering and smiling in pain is just martyrdom. By doing that, you are only multiplying your suffering.

So, if you are having a Life challenge, a crisis, an enormous, extra-ordinary amount of pain, or whatever it is that you are dealing with, go out there and tell the world about it. Don’t worry about the judgments a few people are likely to pass. Don’t give such people the license to prolong your suffering. Don’t try to live two lives: one to hide your suffering and another to cook in it! Just be who you are. The Life you have is the only one you have! So, be open and declare courageously: Yes, I have intense pain, I am in a shithole, I am messed up, but this is who I am. Help me if you can and I will humbly take all that you give me compassionately. If you can’t help me, then please excuse me; what you think of me, my choices and my situation doesn’t really bother me!

Try this approach, of wearing your Life on your sleeve, and see what a beautiful world it is!

PS: If you liked this blogpost, please share it to help spread the learning it carries!