Mulan is the year's most beautiful letdown...so screamed the headlines on The Verge. Disney's $200million production has received a torrent of negative reviews. On Douban, China's largest movie rating website, 70% gave negative reviews, compared with 13% of positive ratings.
Sometimes criticism comes in the form of such reviews. Other times, criticism comes in different forms - like an email from a client or boss, or a comment from a family member or friend and it's never a fun experience.
Everyone's grappling with some kind of challenge. It might be happening privately or publicly, or even on live TV. But everyone's dealing with something, and everyone has moments where they wonder, "Am I going to make it?" "Why are people so cruel?" I've felt that way many times. The person sitting in the cubicle or coffee shop seat next to yours - they've felt that way too.
I am writing this because I wanted to remind people (including myself) that feeling frustrated, discouraged, criticized and rejected in the course of your career is actually...very normal. Every career has its ups and downs. Everyone goes through dry spells, difficulties, setbacks at some point or another - even A-list celebrities and presidential nominees.
Let's be honest...it's not fun when you're job-hunting and you apply for 100 different positions and don't get a single response. It's not fun when you watch your colleague get chosen for a promotion that you wanted. (even though you're more qualified and everyone knows it)
But this kind of stuff happened. Sometimes, things just.....seriously suck. How can we survive moments like that? How can we stay optimistic, motivated and inspired to keep marching forward? Seriously, how?
Yeah, you might cry. Of course, you might want to crawl under a blanket and self-medicate with Netflix because you're a human being with human feelings and sometimes things hurt.
Whatever you're going through right now, or whatever you're worrying might happen next, I want you to know: You're going to survive. And the silver lining is that you're become a smarter, wiser, funnier, more compassionate person because of whatever you've endured in your life and career.
Despite its hard body, bamboo is incredibly flexible. It will sway even in the gentle breeze. Yet it will often be the only thing standing after a typhoon, its roots firmly anchored. How we react when faced with a shifting landscape - from handling more challenging assignment at work to a critical situation in our personal lives - is affected to a large degree by our sense of grit.
My life has been a long series of zig zags. When something doesn't turn out the way I think it should...I'm good at dusting myself off and saying, what did I learn and how can I use that to tackle what's next? That's the ability to bend, flow and adapt - negative experiences force me to dig deep within myself out of sheer necessity.
We face challenges in life, whether they are physical, emotional, financial or circumstantial. Why is it that some people have the grit and determination to succeed against all odds, while others do not? Research shows it's not about having nothing to lose; rather, it's about believing there is much to gain.
I am now into Wait training. Achievement of any kind, I have recently been reminded, requires patience. It means clocking endless hours on the treadmill to train for a marathon, or taking night classes for a year or two to finish that degree. And often it gets harder to stay the course. It's not easy to persevere when we don't know how long we have to wait, or whether or not our imagined future will ever come. It's why those signs in train stations that tell you when the next train will arrive are so comforting - just knowing that makes the wait less torturous. But even when the trains run on schedule, there can be derailments along the way. Dealing with them may force us onto a new track. And that could be a good thing.
Imagine failing more than a thousand times at something. Or three thousand. How many of us wouldn't give up? Well, meet James Dyson. Dyson failed more than five thousand times as he struggled to create his first Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner. The knighted British inventor finally brought it to market 15 years after his initial effort.
But how do you turn your life around when you've lost all hope?
When I'm feeling discouraged, what helps me is hearing stories about people wo have experienced a similar type of discouragement. I like reading about what happened, how they felt, how they survived the bleakest moments and how they got stronger, even if it's someone I've never met in real life before. They help me feel a little calmer. A little more hopeful. A little less alone.
No pressure, but if you do feel like it, I encourage you to share your survival story here about terrible bosses, unimpressed clients, vicious comments, betrayals, embarrassing mistakes, misery, discouragement, defeat...and how you got through it, what you'd learned. Your story could change someone's whole day - or life. So you should probably tell it.
I hope you will.
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