Latest / Becoming Irresistible / Season 2, Episode 24: What to do on Day 1 after a Major Loss or Rejection

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Season 2, Episode 24: What to do on Day 1 after a Major Loss or Rejection · Becoming Irresistible

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Becoming Irresistible.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Jay.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain moments in life when you realize that the future you were expecting is no longer the one that's available to you.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've spent years planning to go to a particular college.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've taken the classes, you've studied for the big exams, you've volunteered, you've done the research.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've even started to imagine the life you're gonna live when you begin working in that profession or live in that city.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then the letter comes, the rejection letter.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you didn't get in, or maybe you're an athlete and the entire year you've worked so hard, practices every day in the hot sun and perfected your craft, and then you injure your knee, and suddenly everything looks completely different.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend ends the relationship you thought was the one.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your family suddenly loses an income, a job that really was the basis of your entire lifestyle.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your parents tell you they're sick, or they're getting divorced, or maybe it's something far, far bigger.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: A serious diagnosis, an accident, or in the worst case, the death of someone you love.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're all different events and very different levels of loss, grief, and sadness.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one thing they all have in common.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: The day before your mind contained a future that no longer exists the day after it happens.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk a lot about what happens afterward: resilience, recovery, finding meaning, developing a new plan, turning the setbacks into opportunities.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I've been thinking about a different question.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you actually do on the first day?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not six months later when you have some perspective, not when you figured out your backup plan.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not when you can look backward and tell everyone how everything worked out for the best.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do when you have absolutely no idea whether it's actually gonna work out for the best?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: When all you know is this isn't what I thought was going to happen.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't plan for this.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: How could this happen to me?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now I started thinking about all of this recently after hearing about the death of Cindy Crawford and Randy Gerber's son.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna spend this episode talking about that.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's too sad, it's too tragic.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know them, but I certainly send my heart out to them because I can't even imagine what they're experiencing right now.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But hearing about a parent suddenly losing a child made me think about this broad question.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: When we lose something important, we don't only lose what existed before, we also lose every day that was going to exist.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a grief that we completely underestimate.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think human beings are unique in that they partially live in the future.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: A high school student isn't simply taking a chemistry class.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: She's becoming a doctor.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: That athlete isn't just practicing every afternoon.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's playing his next season.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And parents do this too.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: We look at our children and we imagine graduations, careers, marriages, grandchildren, Christmas 20 years from now.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And none of those things have happened yet.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But psychologically, we've already been living in them.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We've already been occupying that space.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: We create what I'm going to call an assumed future, not a guaranteed future, an assumed one.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time we don't realize how attached we become to that future until something removes it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why sometimes an event can feel enormous.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if your son or daughter doesn't get into that college, the one that you wanted them to get into, and someone says, well, they can apply again next year.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they can, but that's not what they're going to be experiencing on that first day after that rejection.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: They may be experiencing the collapse of an identity they've been building for years.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So talking about what they can do next might actually be addressing the wrong thing.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because before you can build your backup plan, sometimes you have to just recognize that your plan A just disappeared.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what can you do?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think we make a mistake when we immediately try to solve the future.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a thing goes wrong, and then almost immediately we start asking ourselves how to fix it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We begin asking questions.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do now?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where else can you match that opportunity?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: When can you play again if you've been injured?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Should you just change your career entirely if you got rejected from a program?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going to start dating again?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: What is this backup plan that's going to save you from this moment?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand why we all do it, especially as parents.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make things better.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: If our child is hurting, our instinct is to find the solution.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe the first thing we need to understand is this day one is not necessarily a problem-solving day.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes you don't have enough information yet to solve the problem.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of immediately asking, what am I going to do with my life now?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's ask a different question.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: What does today require?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not what does the rest of my life require?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not how am I going to recover from this?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not what does this mean about me?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just what does today require?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there are five things that can help us answer that.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, let's separate the event from the meaning.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to getting into law school, for example.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The event is, I didn't get into law school this cycle.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fact.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But watch what the mind can do with that fact.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not smart enough.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I wasted four years.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone else is moving ahead.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've disappointed my parents.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never going to become a lawyer.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: My life is off track.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I failed.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Those aren't the actual events.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those are interpretations of the event.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of those interpretations might contain some useful information.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you do need to improve your application.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to do an internship.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to retake your exam.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you ultimately decide law isn't what you want, but you don't know all that from the rejection itself.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So on day one, separate these two questions.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: What happened and what am I deciding that it means?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is incredibly important because an event can change your circumstances without getting to define your identity.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get into law school is just information.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I am a failure is a verdict.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And those are not the same sentence.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And just like we talked about in our episode about limiting beliefs, we have to be very careful to tell ourselves that we have we have to be very careful to apply information that is just information to our identities.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about doing this for other people, but we also have to be very careful about doing this to ourselves.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when you don't get into law school, that's information.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't automatically mean that you're a failure.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is a statement that you're applying to your identity.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: That information is not the same as a conclusion you're making.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we need to shrink the time horizon.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: When something goes wrong, our brains have an extraordinary ability to travel light speed 20 years into the future.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take the example of you hurt your knee, and suddenly it's if I can't play this season, I'm gonna lose my scholarship.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I won't get back to where I was, and then it's gonna ruin everything.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never gonna be a professional athlete.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or if someone in your family loses their job, suddenly it's are we gonna lose the house?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need to change schools?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go to college still?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to our family?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now some of those questions may eventually need answers, but you probably don't need to answer all of them on day one.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's an important distinction between planning and prematurely living through every possible future, especially when we select to live out every possible negative future.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So shrink the horizon.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: What does the next hour require?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: What does today require?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: What actually needs to happen this week?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's your boundary.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to emotionally survive the next ten years of today.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing that can help us is don't make permanent decisions from temporary disorientation.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you don't get into law school.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, don't immediately make that mean, don't immediately translate that to forget it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing law anymore.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe eventually that might be the right decision.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: But why does it have to be made in that day and at that time?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or a relationship that's ending translates to I'm never dating again.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of these circumstances really require major changes, but there's a phrase I want you to remember.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not knowing what's going to happen next is not the same as knowing that nothing good happens next.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a gap between your first plan and the second plan.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's usually a gap between your first plan ending and your second plan coming forward.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that gap is very uncomfortable to sit in.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And high achievers especially hate that gap because we like direction.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: We like to know what we're doing.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: We like to be in control.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: We like to be proactive.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: We like knowing the next move.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the most intelligent thing we can do is just to say, I don't know yet.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't indecision and it's not laziness.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes accuracy and wisdom.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Giving yourself the space to realize the next thing you should be doing.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth thing we can do to help ourselves in this moment is to understand that when a big part of your future suddenly becomes out of your control, don't try to regain control over everything.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Find one thing that's still yours, that's still in your control.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you didn't get into law school.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can't change that rejection today, but you can decide who you're going to talk to about it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: You tore your ACL and you can't untear it, but you can show up to your doctor's appointment.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your parents have lost their job.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: You may not be able to fix the family's finances.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you can ask what actually is going to change for you instead of imagining the worst.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes somebody you love has died.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: There may be almost nothing you can control about that situation.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe the only thing you can control is drinking a glass of water and then calling somebody who will care about you and who'll give you a hug.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: When life becomes so enormous, make your action tiny.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not because tiny actions solve enormous problems, but because they restore something important, agency.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Something happened that you didn't choose, but there is still something that you can choose next.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the fifth thing to remember is don't demand the silver lining.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think this one is really important.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: We love stories where the terrible thing becomes the best thing that ever happened.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get into law school, and that's how I discovered the career I was really meant for.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I got injured, and that's how I found my real purpose.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I lost the job.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And six months later I started a company that went on to be super successful.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those stories can be really wonderful, but they're told backward.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: The person already knows how the story ends.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: On day one, you don't.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to say everything happens for a reason.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to make me stronger, or even something better is coming.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something better is coming.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: You simply don't know yet.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something incredibly wonderful about not forcing yourself to manufacture optimism when you don't actually feel it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can simply say, This hurts.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want this.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going to happen next.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to deal with what is actually in front of me today.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's enough.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And parents, this part is for you.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the parent of a high achieving young person, I think day one asks something really different from you.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your instinct may be to immediately fix things.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: If your son doesn't get into law school, within 20 minutes you're researching other programs that they can qualify for.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: If your daughter hurts her knee, now you're suddenly searching for the best orthopedic surgeon in the state before she's even stopped crying.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: If your child's relationship ends, immediately you start explaining why that person wasn't right for them anyway.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's your instinct to love.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: But before you can help your child construct a new future, give them permission to acknowledge the future they just lost.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: You might simply ask, do you want me to help you think about what comes next?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you want me to just be here with you today?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different way to understand what your child needs because eventually, yes, we want our children to become resilient.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: We want them to adapt.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want them to problem solve.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: We want them to discover that one rejection won't define them.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But resilience isn't pretending that something doesn't hurt.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it isn't replacing plan A before you even acknowledge that plan A mattered.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the most useful thing a parent can communicate is you do not have to know what you're going to do next.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: At least not today.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want you to remember the next time life suddenly changes plans.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's something relatively small, maybe it's enormous.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: First, think of what actually happened, not your interpretation of what has happened.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Strip away all the predictions and judgments.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, think of what you're telling yourself that it means.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Separate the event itself from the identity you've attached to it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Third, try to figure out what you actually really have to do on day one.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: What actually requires my attention today?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, consider what is still actually in your control.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Find one next action, even if it's tiny.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, don't force yourself to construct plan B right away simply because plan A disappeared.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And final question.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, who do I need with me while I do this?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because strength doesn't always mean handling things alone.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's something else I want young people especially to understand.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: When something devastating or disappointing happens, your brain has a tendency to put a period where there may actually be only a comma there.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get into medical school, period.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I got injured, period.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: My relationship ended, period.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: My family fell apart, period.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't really know because you're standing in the middle of the story.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Five years from now you may look backward and understand this moment completely differently.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or you may still wish it had never happened.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Both are possible, but you don't have to know which one it will be today.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's what day one really requires.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not resilience, not reinvention, not positivity, not a five-year plan, just enough steadiness to resist turning one unexpected event into a conclusion about your entire life.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because there will be days when the life you plan no longer exists.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And on those days, you don't have to immediately create another one.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You only have to ask, what is true, what matters today, what is mine to choose still.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then you make that choice.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow you can ask again.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, without realizing exactly when it happened, those choices begin to form a future.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not the one you had planned, maybe not even the one you imagined, but one that you couldn't possibly have seen from day one.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you don't have to figure out your whole life today.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: All you have to do today is just live.