Everyone is Broken

Author: Richard B., Product Manager (Virginia, USA)

I hadn’t reflected much on the cycle of rejection prior to hearing Jia Jiang’s wonderful Ted Talk. I’d been aware of a life-altering rejection early in life but hadn’t delved in to how it had influenced my behavior.  Taking time to deconstruct the cycle led me to try new approaches with positive results.   Here’s my story.

Up until the age of seven I had a close relationship with my Dad.  We’d take walks together most evenings. His attention and time made me feel confident, happy, and special.  In my seventh year, this closeness changed as, for several reasons, my dad turned into an angry, impatient, distant, uncommunicative person.  The transformation was gradual, but soon there were no more evening walks.  No more conversations.  I took this as rejection of me rather than a sickness of his and concluded that I had done something wrong.  The rejection was crystallized in a specific moment.

Dad had picked me up from basketball practice and needed to swing by K-mart.  We were in the home appliances aisle where he was looking for something.  I, always curious and verbal, saw a hair dryer labeled Vagabond and asked, “why’s this called vagabond?”

He wheeled around, loudly berating me in front of the entire aisle: “Why do you always ask stupid questions?  Who cares why it’s called vagabond?  What difference does it make?  Stop being such a dummy.” It was humiliating.  I wished I could sink through the floor, safely disappearing like a cartoon character.  

Flash forward to a professional career in Fortune 500 companies for 20+ years.  Consistent feedback has sounded like this: “Rich does not always ‘read the room,’ speaking before thinking.  At times he pushes his thoughts or views inappropriately.  He sometimes makes it all about him, dominating conversations and can come across as a know-it-all.”  Meanwhile, my internal voice after meetings would be saying: “Rich, you’re such an idiot.  What a dummy.  Why did you say that?  Dummy!”  Rinse, repeat.

When discussing these behaviors with a great coach, I made the connection that I was playing out that rejection event over and over:  feeling overlooked and left out, needing to be noticed ; needing to prove I was smart and so speaking impulsively.  Previously, when considering the feedback, I chalked it up to it just being the way I’ve always been.  Considering the rejection cycle, though, it was clear.  It wasn’t a fixed personality trait; it was a pattern; and therefore fixable.

I didn’t go to a donut shop and ask for Olympic ring donuts 😊.   Rather, I laid out for my team the important insights I’d found and apologized for having come on too strong in the past.  I committed to listening more and speaking less.  I also asked a few colleagues to be “watchers,” keeping an eye on me during meetings and either giving me real-time safe signals or following up with feedback.  The reaction I got to being vulnerable like this; owning my flaws surprised me.  It made me more relatable, more human; more trusted.  They didn’t reject me for being imperfect; they embraced me for being real.

There are two key takeaways for me then, and hopefully for you too.  First, we are not permanently fixed in our feelings or behaviors.  We can change, we can re-wire our habits, patterns and emotional cycles – even in our 50’s!  It’s never too late to make the effort to change.  Second, like Radiohead sings in Telex:  “Everyone is broken.”   It seems we all go around trying to hide this fact, protecting our sense of self with various behaviors and projections because underneath we’re afraid of being rejected.  If we dare to lead with our brokenness, we may very well find that others do the opposite: they accept and embrace us.