How to Overcome Rejection & Self Doubt ?

TOPICS IN THIS EPISODE

• What stops us from achieving our goals?
• How can we deal with rejection and negative feedback?

HELPFUL  LINKS

• About the Host  - Ela Senghera 
• Speak to Me - Book Here
• Get Free Brochure  - Be True You in Your Relationship
• Audiobook - Finding Love
• Parenting Book (2nd Edition) - Teach Your Kids to Build a Positive Self-Image

Transcript

Ela  00:11
Hi Cel, how are you doing today?

Cel  00:55
Hi, Ela. Thanks so much for having me on your podcast, super, super excited for the conversation that we're going to have.

Ela  01:02
I'm also very excited. Thank you for coming here today. Please, can you tell us who you are? And what is it that you do, Cel?

Cel  01:10
Sure, I am a huge advocate for Youth Success. I am a youth personal development author, speaker and trainer. And as a result of the workshops and keynotes that I deliver, students, graduates and young professionals, they find themselves more confident and who they're becoming, playing to their strengths, and communicating effectively to achieve their goals.

Ela  01:37
Fantastic. And I suppose there is a story of how you came across this, how you got inspired into doing what you're doing. And we will get to that in a minute. But I wanted to ask you, this is very significant; what we are discussing today. And especially considering the difficult times that we live in, the times where you can be quite confused about what is it that they want to do in the future, unsure of their strengths, and perhaps filled with that self-doubt. And that might be indeed based on some previous rejection that they've received or they faced. Can you tell me how do you define success? What does success mean to you?

Cel  02:30
Okay, success. For me? Well, let me start off by saying that success looks differently for everyone. And so I would never tell a student or graduate or a young professional, who they need to be in order to be successful. So back to your question, I personally define success as living in my truest expression. And that means allowing myself to do the things that I love to do and the things that bring me joy when I do those things. And that basically means that the thoughts that I think, the visions that I have, the dreams that I have about myself, in my head, are in agreement with what my heart feels, and what makes it happy. So if, for example, a person dreams of being a mother, and that is their dream, that is their vision, that is their goal, to be a mother, and they manage to have a kid. And being a mother to that kid makes them feel happy and joyful. That, for me, is success. In the same way that if a graduate dreams of working in a big bank and that is all they dream about. And they managed to secure that job. And they go to work every day feeling happy feeling so grateful that they get the opportunity to actually practice banking. Yes, that to me is success as well. So whenever our brain and our hearts are in agreement, I define that as success.

Ela  04:16
That is such a wonderful definition. I love it. I think I've read or heard something pretty similar somewhere some time ago. I can't remember who from, some public person, but it was very much in line with what you said. And I love how the aspect of being true to yourself is included here because I think it's something that is so often ignored by us for many different reasons. Right? But yet there is a very strong, there's lots of research and very strong scientific evidence that shows that when we do indeed forget about who we are, and what is it that we want to achieve, and what our dreams and goals are, everything starts unfortunately deteriorating, including our physical health, our mental health, our relationships. So that aspect of the concept of being a true version, staying true to yourself, and being authentic is fantastic. And I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. And so we were speaking today about rejection and self-doubt. And like I said earlier, it's a topic that often touches on the lives of young people. And can you tell me a bit more about how does your work help young people?

Cel  05:51
Sure, I am mainly in the personal development space, as I mentioned before, so my personal development workshops help young people to be more intentional about living in that truest expression of themselves. So it kinds of kind of helps them move towards allowing themselves to become that truest expression of themselves. And personal development, as you know, is a very personal journey. And it's a lot about self-discovery. And when we look at the people I work with, which are mainly students, graduates or young professionals, and where they're coming from, generally speaking, it's university or an apprenticeship. And that by itself has probably taught them a course, a degree, or technical skill that they've learned, which ultimately is meant to give them some level of confidence to be able to do whatever they aspire to do in the future. That's fine. However, unless we start working on personal development early on, we as in the young adults end up finding out that they might lack the self-esteem to actually use the skills. So they learn the skills, they have the knowledge, but then inside, they don't feel as worthy or as ready or as prepared or as capable to be the one who can execute that specific task. And that's because no strategy or course will ever work if our thoughts and emotions are not in agreement with the things that we're doing. And personal development for me is very special because it's helped me so much at many different stages of my life. But ultimately, what I've seen is when we invest in ourselves, we're investing in the future. And that's why I choose to work with young people.

Ela  07:52
Wonderful. It's almost like to you and me, this is obvious, but I'm sure many people would probably question it or don't realize it as much as we do. It almost feels like everything starts from a healthy self-esteem, doesn't it? And if it really is, healthy self-esteem really is the basis for good mental health, for positive expectations, for supporting build supportive beliefs, and for executing on your dreams. So for having the courage to take steps towards the future that you will really want. And I'm personally also very passionate about self-esteem, which is actually why I wrote a book about it. Teach your kids to build positive self-image, which is a book dedicated to parents on how to raise their children, seeing the good, the positive sights in themselves because this really forms the basis. So in your wonderful introduction, earlier, you mentioned what is it that you do and the fact you're working with young people, and why you decided to work in this line of work. And can you tell me a little bit about yourself in terms of when was the time when you were perhaps facing rejection? When you faced rejection or when you were filled with self-doubt? And how did you overcome that? How did you transform your life then?

Cel  09:32
I've had many moments of when I've faced self-doubt and when I've faced rejection, so I can't specifically pin it down to one. Because just when I think I have overcome myself, and I am now super confident then happens again, a bigger and better challenge to work with. But I can definitely share one experience that is showing up right now for me. And, as it's in my mind, a thought I'm having right now. So there was a time a few years ago when I had an idea to launch a haircare brand. And I really loved everything to do with caring with haircare. So yeah, taking care of Afro and, yeah, curly hair. I love that. And I was really good at it. I enjoyed it. Yeah. But then came the time to launch that business. And I needed some funding and managed to secure an investor, I was so excited. And a week before I was due to register my company, the investor suddenly pulled out. A big rejection moment right there. And I felt really doubtful as in, do I have what it takes to take this company forward and launch the business the way I thought I was going to do? Now that I don't have all the support, now that I don't have the cash that I was expecting to have. So that was a big moment for me. And I won't lie it, it really took me down. It crushed me quite a lot. And I stayed there for a long time. And then I realized that you know what, I believe more in the future that I'm trying to create, than the actual events that happen. So the investor pulling out should in no way affect the future that I want to live because back then I believed in that future. And so changing the way I was telling that story to myself, as opposed to oh, the investor pulled out because it was never going to work anyway, or because I'm not good enough, or because the idea isn't as solid or the return on investment isn't that huge. Changing that story to replacing it with a story of what I actually believe in, which is my future. And what I'm trying to create, really felt empowering. And I moved on, and I launched the company, did my thing, launch, the haircare business had some level of success, you could say yeah, and then I just realized that myself that that wasn't what I ultimately wanted to do. So that's one moment of rejection and overcoming self-doubt, just by changing the story and how I was choosing to see things

Ela  12:33
Very inspiring. And in one of your TEDxTalks, you actually talk about telling the story differently. And how do you think we can tell our story differently, so we have chances for creating a more positive, more fulfilling future?

Cel  12:53
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, creating a positive and more fulfilling future, it all begins with having a clear understanding of what that positive and fulfilling future looks like, for you. Not for your parents, not for your partner, not for your best friend, for your siblings. Really, what does it look like for you? And if you can create a happier future for yourself, you need to be able to see it. You need to be able to think in your head. You need to imagine it. You need to describe it. And basically, you need to see that future before it happens. And once you're in that position, in that space of describing and seeing that happy future that you want to live, the next step is to look at where you are now. How are you living your life today? And what's the distance between the future you want to live and the life that you're living today, simply by observing that you will discover that you're in one or two, you're going one or the or the other way? So you're either going down, getting closer to that happy and fulfilling future or you're moving away from it? Yeah, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Just being aware is the point of this exercise that activity understanding where you are, and then from that point of awareness, once you know, you can't not know.

Ela  14:28
Once you know you can't undo it

Cel  14:31
Exactly. You have the opportunity to change the story. So then it's down to you to decide okay, what is it that I learned by going completely the opposite direction from my happy future that I can use as tools to take me closer to my happy future and choose to see your past mistakes, your past rejections, your self-doubt as wisdom and not be emotionally at attach to all those horrible things that happened to you, but use it as tools that you could, then that made you stronger or perhaps made you stronger or better equipped to move towards a happy future.

Ela  15:13
Because we do experience contrast every day, right? We have our idea, our vision of what our life should be like, and what we should be like. And we do experience this contrast every day. And that contrast, make us want our things even more. So if it wasn't for contrast, if it wasn't for rejection, if it wasn't for mistakes, we wouldn't, perhaps have the really strong desire to do something different to try something new. For example, if we are experiencing bad treatment in our job, for example, as young people, we develop the strong desire for being respected, and feeling hurt in our next employment. And so if it wasn't for that one negative experience, we would never value our individuality and respect and equality in the workplace as much as we do today. So I think you are right, this ability to tell ourselves, more importantly, than actually, anybody else, tell ourselves that story differently, is key to moving on, and truly transforming our lives. I totally agree with that. I also love your point about how we need to describe that future that we want, how we want to hide the fact that we want to we need to visualize it and imagine it. Because how do we know when we achieve something? If we don't know what is it that we want to achieve? And unless we describe it to ourselves, unless we find the courage to describe how we feel, when we get that got when we reach that goal, when we get that job? How are we gonna celebrate when we get that deal signed? Or contract signs or new clients? What are we gonna do? And how are we going to feel and embracing the feelings related to that? Unless we do that? We will it will be harder for us to bridge that gap between our life today and our life in the future, isn't it? I love that topic. It's one of my favourites, transforming your life. How do you do it? And thank you so much for being on the show today. I really love our conversation. I've heard somewhere a wonderful phrase that I just want to quote here is the most important words are the words we say to ourselves when others don't listen. Absolutely. And that is the positive inner voice. I have the last question for you. So what are the three key steps we can all do to be more in charge of our future? What are those steps for you?

Cel  18:22
I love that you ask this because it really just summarizes everything we talk about. So three steps that we can all take in order to take charge of our future. Step number one is to understand what you love, and what brings joy to your life. Step number two is to define what success looks like for you, not anyone else just you. And step three would be to decide what small, daily steps you can take that will move you closer to that goal that you want that future that you want to live in. That's pretty much it.

Ela  19:09
Very simple. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. So thanks for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom and your experiences with us. I really enjoyed talking to you. And I hope we can speak again.

Cel  19:28
Of course we will! Thank you so much for having me. Have an amazing day. Take care!