[xyzelement]

The unsatisfying answer is - that you have to figure out why it cuts you so deeply to begin with to really make sense and fix it. But I can provide some hopefully actionable things in the process:

- Recognize that interviews (and other things, like dating) is a high value endeavor but the failure raise of any given encounter is high. Go in wanting the job and doing your best, but recognize that the answer to any one of them is likely "no" for many reasons external to you as well as your actual match for the job. This is what they mean by "it's a numbers game."

- Especially if you already have a job and are just interviewing looking to grow, treat it like an experiment. "What can I learn by preparing for and doing the interview? How can I make it more enjoyable for myself? Is there a way to think of it as an interesting challenge/puzzle rather than adversarial?"

- Recognize that the feeling of failure is different than the reality of failure (eg: you are feeling like shit but in reality everything is fine, you're no worse off than if you hadn't tried, and in fact you're better off because you did try.) This is a thing in general - recognizing that our feelings are "louder" than reality allows us to tone down those feelings.

Does that help?

[singleshot_]

Hello stranger,

I have printed out the last substantive paragraph of your comment and taped it to my monitor.

I don’t know what, if anything you had to go through to learn this. And I figure that in my heart, I probably knew it already. But reading it once every few hours will probably do me some good. Thanks for that.

[xyzelement]

Thank you so much for making this comment. I would be beyond happy if this is helpful to you.

A few other thoughts on the subject of the paragraph that resonated with you.

A yoga teacher told me a long time ago to draw a distinction between how I feel and what I am. In English, we say "I am angry" or "I am sad" etc. - where our words literally describe us being that emotion. A more useful frame is "I have an anger", "I have a sadness" etc. It acknowledges that you may have a feeling but that feeling does not define you. Basically, the recognition that how you feel isn't reality.

Further reinforcing this point is the idea that we acknowledge that feelings can be inappropriate. EG: if someone loses their shit in anger over something trivial, we don't go "wow this is clearly a bigger issue that we thought", we just say this person is overreacting. Or if someone is anxious about something benign like flying or public speaking, we don't say "oh those must be really dangerous things", we say "it's unfortunate that this anxiety is limiting you and making you unhappy."

Likewise I think with failure. Failure in general is a bad thing - if you fuck up that can have real bad consequences for you and your community, so it makes sense for fucking up to feel bad. But reality is that most failure isn't material in this way (you and everyone are fine) but it can still feel as if it was. So recognizing that just like anger or fear can be obviously disproportionate to the stimulus, so can this feeling. Having that perspective is an important step towards keeping it in context and diminishing the sting.

Another thing is to realize that your failure is contextualized to a calculated risk you chose to take on. You decided that interviewing for ambitious jobs (in this example) should make your life better eventually. The fact that you decided to do that is a success. The fact that you then failed at a particular interview is totally within success criteria of the larger endeavor.

In general, there's something to be said for not taking ones' self too serious. The fact that you think or feel something is the beginning of the story, not the end. I find that a lot of religious growth comes from/entails recognizing that "just because you want/feel/fear/etc something - that's not the end-all-be-all"

This is probably now too much vs what you will find useful but I wanted to share!

[singleshot_]

I mean, I wouldn’t say I was looking for a guru exactly, but I guess I found one. Bookmarking your user page.

[allarm]

It does. Thank you.