75. How to rally from rejection

Fear of rejection is one of the main things holding people back from getting out there, using their voice and being heard.

So in this episode I share five stories about times I've felt rejected in my life, and the lessons I learned.

Transcript

Hello, hello! Welcome to Episode 75 of That Voice Podcast. And we're getting a little bit personal this episode. So if it's the first time you're tuning in, you're about to get to know a lot about me in a very short amount of time. And even if you've been listening for a long time, I guarantee you haven't heard these stories because, you know what? I don't even know if my friends and family have heard all of these stories. It's all about how to rally from rejection. Because you know, it's easy to be confident and slaying it when you're on top, but when you get knocked down, do you get back up again? How resilient are you? When a public speaking gig turns to shit, how do you get back out there? Now, I do have heaps of hacks for this. If you go to my website, sallyprosser.com.au, you can download my free one-pager "Seven Mindset Hacks to Speak with Confidence".

But for today's episode, I want to go a bit deeper and talk about resilience. I believe you build resilience through life experience. And today I want to share with you five quite personal stories about times I've felt rejected. Believe me, there have been a lot more than five times. I'm really cherry picking my rejection stories here. As you'll hear, I didn't handle them all with total grace and composure. But I believe that with each rejection you become stronger, you learn more about yourself, and in hindsight you can usually see why it happened. So, as I'm telling these stories, think about rejection in your own life and what you've learned from it.

But first.

Are you sick of getting nervous before speaking tired of saying "uhms" and "ahs" and tripping over your words, frustrated your voice sounds weak or boring?

Imagine being able to confidently speak when called on. Hitting record and not doing 100 takes. Captivating an audience with your voice... Sounds great, right? Then join My Six Week Voice Makeover! Over six weeks we dive into the fundamental steps you need to make an impact every time you speak. How to hack your mindset, how to tap into your body, control your breathing. Literally speak from your heart, form your words and phrases clearly, and top it all off with beautiful expression! To make it happen, join My Six Week Voice Makeover by heading to my website, sallyprosser.com.au or just click the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there!

And of course, we spend the whole first week on mindset in My Six Week Voice Makeover, so you get a chance to dig deeper into your mindset around public speaking. And my guess is that feeling of rejection is in there somewhere. Alright. Are you ready to venture into the depths of my rejections? Let's go chronologically.

Story one.

It's probably no surprise that growing up, I did a lot of speech and drama. In fact, I've got my speech and drama licentiate so I studied right up to my twenties, which is why I know so much information about voice and speech. So throughout my childhood, every year I'd go in the city of Wollongong Eisteddfod and it was a big deal for me. I practiced a lot and I cared a lot about it and I was pretty good. So even though I didn't get a first place for a couple of years, I always placed or got a highly commended. I was always up on stage. 13 years old, I'm in the Australian poetry section and I'm doing a poem by Judith Wright called "Halfway", about a tadpole stuck in a sheet of ice. It's a beautiful poem. The section finishes, and they're calling out the results. They call the highly commendeds, not me fourth, not me. Third. Second. So when I hadn't heard my name by that stage, I really thought I'd won. No. First place went to a friend of mine who had done a poem that I've done the year before. Now in that moment, I could just feel this horrible, gooey noss, just sink into my stomach. And I walked out of the theater trying to keep it together. No one wants to be like a crying baby. But even just with all my might trying to stay composed, there were tears streaming down my face. I was so devastated. I know it sounds trivial when I'm recounting the stories, the 35 year old. But at the time I was just gutted. And of course, mom, you know, she was like, Oh, Sal", you deserve to be up there. You know, you were good." And then I got home and dad asked, you know, how did I go? And I was really, really upset.

And he said, "Sal, this is what happens when you go in things that are based on people's opinions. And if you're not happy about the opinion of one person", That being the adjudicator, "If you're not happy with the opinion of one person, then get back in the pool and race against the wall, race against the clock."

So, right. I did a lot of swimming growing up and with swimming is there's not really any arguments. It's whoever touches the wall first. And even if you don't place, if you do a personal best, then usually you're pretty happy with that. Whereas of course the Stedford's totally based on the opinions of adjudicators, which I should know because I was an adjudicator. And I know that there were times when everybody was great and it could have gone either way and you just make a judgment call in that moment. And so the lesson there was straight from dad didn't make me feel any less upset that night or the days after. But in hindsight, the lesson was great. When an outcome is based on the opinion of others, you have to be able to suck it up.

Story two.

Ever since my first day of year seven, I wanted to be school captain. I'm laughing because I am very fun to have a drink, with don't worry, but I really wanted to be school captain. My sister was school captain. And I was in all of the extracurricular activities: the choir and amnesty and going above and beyond because I just really wanted to be school captain. My friends listening to this episode right now will be cacking themselves because they know this story. Anyway, we get to year 12. And of course, I go for school captain. I feel like it was my right in some way. I've just wanted it for so long. And I didn't get captain. I didn't get one of the two vice positions. I got the role of a bloody prefect.

Now I might sound like a bit of a primadonna here and maybe I am, but I was absolutely gutted. And what made it worse at the time was that the school captain and the two vice captains were all daughters of teachers who were at the school! The captain and the two vices, all had mothers who worked as teachers at the school. So, I was feeling particularly miffed about the whole process as you can imagine. Again, devastation, total rejection. How could this happen? And in that situation, I was probably a bit vindictive in what I did. I waited for my photo and the announcement to come out in the school newsletter. And then I walked into the principal's office and dramatically resigned saying something along the lines of, I didn't want to have any part in her corrupt nepotistic administration.

Anyway, I don't know if that was the most graceful way I could have handled it, but you know, that did feel pretty good at the time. I'll have to admit. And the lesson there, I think was sometimes like, don't take rejection, lying down, stand up for what you believe in. And also since that happened, I ended up becoming a much more pleasant person to be around. And I started to look at life outside of school, which was very helpful of my life in general

Story three.

Fast forward to my mid-twenties and I'm running the Channel 7 newsroom in Central Queensland based in Rockhampton. And I worked with a lot of young journalists who were in the regions. And so hello, special, hello to you if you're listening in today. Oh, it's a really challenging but fantastic job. You know, it's go, go, go. And I could do a whole episode on the challenges of being a regional news reporter. This story though is about rejection. And this is not the kind of rejection that you experienced quite often, which is doors being slammed in your face and people not wanting to talk to you and screaming at you in the street. This was when I asked for a pay rise. So I'd been in the job for quite a while and we were going really, really well to give you an idea we were winning the ratings for the first time ever in what was called Win Heartland, it was looking good on paper.

So I thought if there was a good time to ask for a pay rise, it would be now. And I would had the meeting with the news director at the time and oh, look, I probably wasn't eloquent enough in my phrasing. That could have been improved, but I essentially asked for a little bit more money and he kind of scoffed at me like, "No. No, you're joking, right?" Like, and in his defense, it was just not something that was going to happen for anybody. I don't believe they just didn't have the money or I don't know. And the way that it was just so quickly shut down, hits right to my gut. And I was devastated and felt completely rejected, completely unappreciated. And for the first time ever in that newsroom, I actually went down to the toilet and was crying in the toilet. Just this overwhelm of emotion feeling completely rejected.

So what did I do? Well, I didn't do anything straight away. Probably went out for a few drinks and bitched and moaned to my colleagues. But that experience did lead me to quitting, to be honest, a few other factors were at play there, but I was like, I don't want to continue in a job where I'm just feeling really drained and under and unappreciated. And so that was really a lesson in rejection is merely a redirection. I look at all the wonderful things that have happened for me since I moved to Brisbane and all the opportunities I've taken up and none of those may have happened if it wasn't for that particular conversation at that time. Rejection is merely a redirection.

Story four.

I've got to put a bloke story in here. There are many, many, many times I've been rejected, but this one probably takes the cake. So, I don't want to give too many details because I don't want to get hit with any kind of defamation case over this, but I'm seeing this guy. Everything's going quite well. Things are moving quite quickly. I mean, look in hindsight, there were lots of red flags. Let's be honest. But at the time I was like, "Wow, he seems to be really into me!" And he said, "Oh, Sal, I want to take you away for a couple of nights. When are you available?" And he'd booked this really nice resort away. And I was like, "Hmn, this is nice!" And my business was fairly new as well. And I didn't really want to take the time away because I was still really hustling for sales and you know, really wanting to take clients whenever I could. But I'm like no, I'll block out the days. I blocked out three days and I packed my suitcase. It was at the end of my bed. I was like, pretty excited for this little romantic getaway. And I get a phone call at 7:30 the night before we were supposed to leave. "Uhm, uh, so I've been thinking about this and I don't really like you. And I don't think we should go."

I was like, "Right."

I think that I was sort of so wedded to the idea of going, I probably did express myself in a ridiculously desperate way for a short amount of time. Anyway, that was pretty shocking. And the way I dealt with that rejection was. Oh, look, before I even unpacked the bag, I set out on a 12-hour bender, binge listened to Natalie Lue's "The Baggage Reclaim" podcast, and journaled and journaled until I got right down to the depth of my soul and was able to rip out my self esteem and get it back to where it belonged. And so that whole experience was a fantastic way for me to really get to know who I was and where my self worth came from. And you know what, a clear rejection is better than a fake promise. A clear rejection is better than a fake promise. So, thank you, Sir Who shall not be named.

Story five.

Now this one's pretty recent. This is only a few weeks ago. So a few weeks ago, I was wrapping up My Six Week Voice Makeover. And as part of the course, I go live twice a week. Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. And I do the two sessions because it caters for people's schedules and also the time zones. And I always have people at both of these live calls because, hey, they're bloody amazing. I bring the energy people bring the questions and, if you haven't done My Six Week Voice Makeover and have not been privy to one of these live calls, you're missing out. So on the very, very last live coaching call of the course, I dress up pretty nice. I have a glass of champagne. It's like a party call and I'm all energized. I'm getting ready, go live. Zero people online.

So I'm thinking there's been some kind of technical glitch because surely someone's going to be there. So I'm checking on my phone and I'm checking all of them. All of the things to make sure that I am actually going live and is all working and sure enough, there was just nobody there.

Being more recent. I feel like I have a few more tools in my back pocket to deal with this kind of thing. And I just reframed straight away. And I said, "You know what? This isn't a live call with nobody on it. This is a pre-record. This is a pre-record. And I have to bring the energy because people are going to be watching this later. I can't be disappointed. Nobody is online because it's a pre-record and nobody was supposed to be online." So I had to make that mindset shift and deliver the class like it was a pre-record. Fortunately, halfway through, I did have one lovely student jump online. So that gave me a little bit of, I don't want to say validation, but it was a little bit easier to work with than doing the whole entire thing, especially the last call of the course like that.

And all of those thoughts do go through my mind, like "What a disaster! Have people hated it this much? Oh my gosh, they really, really hate me! What is wrong with me?" And of course that's not the case at all, but everyone just would have had something on. It had nothing to do with me. The feedback for the course has actually been amazing. Like it always is. And so the lesson here is, you know, reframe the story. Are you actually getting rejected or are you just seeing it as a rejection? Is it really you rejecting yourself?

And if you really look at all of my stories of rejection, I really did frame them as rejection. You know, not getting something in an Eisteddfod. Hello. So what? So what, lots of people didn't get prizes all the time. Why was I being such a baby? The school captain thing? Well, it was a good thing in the end. I was able to really cast my focus on some out of school activities. And it made the whole process of leaving school a lot easier.

When I didn't get the pay rise. It was exactly the redirection I needed to have a look at what was next in my life when I was rejected by that guy. Like, but for the grace of God go I, thank goodness. He was doing me a favor. Thank God! And no one showing up in the live? I've shared that story on my socials. And a lot of people are so appreciative of it. And you might've been in this position, where you have gone live and felt like a failure because no one showed up. But I think if we just share our experiences and make them a normal thing and nothing to worry about, and learn not to wrap our own sense of self-worth in these little things, then it can only be a good thing, right?

So I realized this solo episode has gone on for a bit, but hopefully you've enjoyed my stories. And you know, every week I put out this podcast and I don't want to cry poor me or anything like this, but I very rarely get any messages or emails about it, considering how personal this podcast was. I would really appreciate it if you drop me a message on Instagram @sallyprosservoice. I really believe there is so much power in sharing stories and sharing experiences. And even if you haven't taken a lesson from any of my god, awful rejection stories, then maybe you've thought of your own and thought of what they've taught you, how they've made you stronger, what they've taught you about yourself, and whether any of those feelings are showing up in your attitude towards speaking. Because the more you dig down into your own limiting beliefs, the better equipped you'll be to show up on video, to grab that microphone, to make your voice heard, to have your story and your message help others. And that's what it's all about.