The Ultimate Rejection

They say a good salesperson is hard to come by, probably because honestly, how many people want to be in their field? How many people want to deal with rejection on a daily basis? How many people want careers where you are evaluated based on how other people feel about you? No, we'd rather have the same comfy job where we don't have that kind of pressure. We want our value to come from something less, or at least conceivably less, superficial than "what other people think of us". But is it because we truly believe it is shallow or because we are afraid to be rejected by other people?

Think about that. If success was a guarantee, how many of us would choose to be models or entertainers or involved in any field where our success was dependent on the judgment of others? How much of our decision to pursue our path is rested on the mere assurance that we won't fail?

That is how I used to play Warcraft and Starcraft. I only played the games I knew I would win, and I played those levels over and over and over again. Those games are actually extremely intricate. Experts gamers calculate hit points, hit damage, the strengths and weaknesses of each character and how to exploit those weaknesses with their own strengths. Basically, the game is way more than building units and ransacking the enemy, like how I played it. It's really a complex game of strategy and I realize that I did not know ANY of the strategy for those games. That just proves my laziness and fear. I was always afraid of competing with someone who could potentially beat me.

That's when I realized that I am afraid of competition. It is not the job, but the competition. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely jobs that just don't click with people, but it's because of the nature of the job itself that turns them away, not the passion for the job. If you love the work but hate the competition, the rejection, or whatever part that is a reflection of an insecurity, then do it. I say that anytime the sole reason you're not pursuing a career is because a personal insecurity scares you, then that's probably the job you should do. It means that nothing about the job itself has stopped you, and instead your mind had to create a reason to stop yourself from not having what you want. Those justifications aren't real. They're made up in our heads. How much power we give those justifications is an indication of how bad we want it. And that's the ultimate rejection:

"I don't want it bad enough."