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It Only Takes One Match to Burn a Bridge Down · The Daily Writer

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to this episode of the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is the sixth entry in our mini-series on dealing with rejection.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: When your writing has been rejected, or at least when you perceive that it's been rejected, you respond emotionally.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's totally natural.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We all do this.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We all respond emotionally whenever we feel hurt or criticized or rejected.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what do we do when we're hurt?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we lash out.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We want retribution.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We want to find a way to strike back at the person who we think has hurt us.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a mistake that you want to avoid though.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Don't lash out on social media or elsewhere in public at the person who has criticized or hurt you or rejected you.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: You could also do this on a blog, you could do it in a podcast episode, a speech, or some other medium.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just social media where you can make this mistake.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it in a bunch of ways.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The point is this don't say anything to burn a bridge.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, unless you have an extremely good reason, I don't think you should publicly criticize an individual or an organization.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of reasons for this, including you'll look petty and vindictive, you'll damage relationships, you'll create tension, you'll probably harm future prospects and opportunities, and basically you're just going to repel people with your negativity.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: People don't like to hang around negative people unless they're also a negative person.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might say, well, Kent, there are some people who do make a living criticizing other people.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's absolutely true.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of pundits, YouTubers, and podcasters who base their whole platform just ranting about other stuff.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: All they talk about is what they're against instead of what they're for.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's certainly your choice if you want to take that approach, but I don't recommend it because I just don't really like that way of going through life where you're just ranting about stuff totally.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, why spend your life as an angry ranter?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't get it personally.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, here's what I do recommend.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you're angry, if you're feeling hurt and criticized and rejected and you're just mad, what I recommend is that you vent somewhere in private.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what good friends, therapists, and journals are there for.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: But for goodness sake, don't say anything that you're going to regret in public.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: In our age of instant worldwide communication, you can literally ruin your whole career with just a few sentences.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you remember a few years ago, this is exactly what happened to Roseanne Barr whenever she got herself fired from the revival of her own TV show Roseanne.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: She posted a critical and a racially insensitive tweet, and she lost her show uh really, really quickly.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the media and ABC was very quick to come down on her because she posted something that was really stupid on Twitter.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So don't think it just happens to celebrities, it can happen to you too.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, it only takes one single match to burn down an entire bridge.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So in the moments when you feel mad, you feel angry and frustrated, and you just want to vent about something, have the discipline to hold your tongue.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: The damage that you will do to yourself and to a lot of other people is just not worth it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here's today's question When is the last time you said something that you later regretted?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what did that moment of satisfaction cost you?