Is the Game Rigged Against You?

All of us know this person. We have all seen him in our workplace. We may have even seen him in ourselves many a time. It is none other than the person who gives up on life and keeps floating to survive.

As human beings, we have a deep-rooted belief that life should always be fair to us. Be it in our personal lives, or at work. But that is not correct. Life isn’t always fair.

Fairness of Life

“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you’re a good person is like expecting a bull not to attack you because you’re a vegetarian.”
― Dennis Wholey

You come to work all charged up to give your best to the job at hand. You believe, if you do the job well, your boss and all those who matter will appreciate your work. You come full of emotions.

But sadly, none of this happens the way you expected it to happen. Worse is, your boss never appreciates your hard work and instead give your work a negative rating. He finds mistakes in your work that you thought were trivial.

This becomes the reason for you to go into a shell. You take the rejection seriously. And why not? All your hard work has not been appreciated.

Maybe your boss plays favorites. His favoritism can be frustrating. But if you allow that to get you in a shell, it is very hard to be normal and balanced again.

People expect recognition for their hard work and a job well done. But if it does not happen, then doing a reality check becomes very important. Have a conversation with the boss and find out what he thinks are your improvement areas. Take the help of an external mentor to work with you and get you an honest and fair assessment of your performance.

Trust the Journey - the Game is Not Rigged Against You

“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” - Rumi

Everything happens for a reason. Expectations might have gone wrong, but make an attempt to understand what went wrong. Try to find out where your lack of understanding is.

I have gone through such challenges in my career. Even after several tries to deliver a perfect job, they always rejected me. Stakeholders could appreciate the value I delivered, but my boss refused to accept it. Surely it put me in a negative mood for some time. But I refused to remain stuck there.

I had to remove luck and chance from my belief, and work at understanding what made me fail each time. Ignoring the negative self-talk was the hardest of all. But it also forced me to move past my comfort zone.

One has to build resilience, trust oneself, and be ready to find discomfort at every corner. It did take a lot of practice and patience, but it strengthened me and prepared me to face any such challenges.

But things slowly changed. It wasn’t luck, but persistence and effort that had paid off. You have to be insanely passionate about your work. It shows in your work and nobody, not even the most horrible bosses, can ignore it.

Once I had decided not to allow my past rejections to disturb me, it was very liberating.

Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind

Our conscious mind can think outside the box, but the subconscious mind is a huge database of programmed behaviors and our negative experiences. These create the self-limiting belief. So when you find an opportunity to change these beliefs, the subconscious mind tries to prevent it. While it tries to stop you from getting into any trouble, it also stops you from any breakthrough which could be for your benefit. Therefore, it takes real effort to ignore the negative self-talk, get a release from the past and get unstuck.

So, the game is certainly never rigged against you. Do not fall a victim to all the negative self-talk and do not allow rejection to steal your happiness.

“If you are positive, you’ll see opportunities instead of obstacles.”
― Widad Akrawi