Real You Leadership

day 2 of 30: oversharing observations I’m noticing or know about reimagining leadership, ambition, work, self-knowing, creativity, healing, and being human.

Normalizing rejection as a part of life by making failure a practice of self-love and self-trust.

As a full-time biz owner and negotiation coach for 9 years, I’m no stranger to rejection and have transformed my relationship with it.

But to get here, I have to actively resist years and generations of conditioning to bypass feeling my feelings and the default to people pleasing, perfectionist, and hyper vigilant habits that limit me from creating more options and possibilities for myself.

My desire is for all of us to resist and ask ourselves:

1/ What’s my relationship to rejection today?

2/ What do I want my relationship with rejection to be like?

day 1 of 30.

I’m challenging myself to share one observation a day for the next month—a thing I’m noticing or know about reimagining leadership, ambition, work, self-knowing, creativity, healing, and being human.

Today’s observation:

You get to throw yourself a pity party.

Especially after rejection. No need to rush towards strategy, lessons, and redirection. No need to find the positive silver lining right away.

Today I found out I wasn’t getting a 5-figure opportunity I’d been waiting on for 6 months.

I’m disappointed because rejection sucks. My money trauma is beyond a wee bit activated, because of course I could’ve used that money. And I’m sad I’m not continuing this leadership partnership with a client I absolutely adored working with all last year—I know she’s disappointed we can’t continued to.

And I’m observing my brain do what most of our brains do after rejection and failure: trying to make this outcome mean something bad about me — which is completely unhelpful and limiting.

It reminded me of a session I had with a client last week who was processing a job rejection after putting herself on the market for the first time in a decade.

She shared she didn’t want to let this rejection solidify the narrative her brain kept trying to plant:

“This is proof that I’m an imposter.”
“May be I can’t make it somewhere else.”
“May be I’m just not good enough.”

But when we threw her a pity party, we created space to observe how rejection felt in her body. To get curious about how she wants her relationship with rejection to be. To set aside that voice and really understand what was underneath that narrative.

Underneath her imposter syndrome being activated was:
This rejection is painful.
I’m disappointed this opportunity is gone.
I’m actually embarrassed.
I have grief that the future I envisioned is no more.

Throwing a pity party is a chance to understand the real emotions that come with rejection, instead of the meaning we attach to rejection.

So throw yourself one, too, as needed.

Be big sad.
Throw an angry fit.
Feel the sting.
Don’t bypass the hard s**t that comes with not getting what you wan

I just want to coach, open my dream cafe/vintage shop/community art space for q***r BIPOC folx, have a quiet life offline, be fluent in Spanish and Tagalog, write boundlessly, publish a poetry book (or three), speak on more global stages, learn how to up cycle and alter my own thrifted clothes exactly to my vision, be a lover girl, kick it with the homies, float like an otter in the ocean, and see my family more often—is that too much to ask?

I will always believe in therapy, coaching, community, and having external support to hold us through life.

These last two years have been vibrant and wonderful, and they’ve been filled with of grief, uncertainty, loneliness, expansion, and a lot of monumental changes.

Having three incredible therapists throughout my 20’s and 30’s, and countless coaches, I’ve learned that I personally need big integration period in-between “by myself” (I say that loosely, because I’m never alone with my friends and family).

Space to grow naturally, snail-like, based on intuition, and rooted in what I learned with external support, resources, and tools I had the privilege to invest in for years throughout my life.

I needed time to see who I was outside of everything I knew. To experience it fully. To hear myself clearly.

I needed space to see if I can consistently keep trying to do what I say I want to do:
- Be the fullest expression of myself
- Be relentlessly kinder to myself—even if my inner haters, anxieties, and fears get loud (as they always do), I’d do anything and everything in my power to make my love and trust for myself louder
- De-center productivity and my business being my primary source of fulfillment and value
- Create new possibilities and bring more dreams to life without self-abandoning ever again

I know this integration period, making these big values-aligned life changes, and creating a strong foundation as I root in my new home wouldn’t be as joyful and as sustainable without allll the investment and work I did with amazing therapists, coaches, and leaders who held me.

Every step, session, learning, unlearning, practice, shift matters and added up to this point.

Onward in my blooming.