I assume you don't like me

When I say “I assume you don’t like me” I mean that in a very literal sense but with very little emotion attached to it.

But when I picture someone reading that statement, I can’t get the emo brother from wedding crashers out of my head as how they would read the tone of the statement:

I don’t follow up the statement “I assume you don’t like me” with anything like “why don’t you? I want you to”. But my default assumption is that you don’t like me and that is fine.

Professional and amateur psychologists amongst us (I assume of my readers, more amateur or hillbilly psychologists than professionals) may start to diagnose this as low self esteem, low sense of self worth or a result of some sort of child hood trauma.

Maybe, but I can actually pinpoint when I developed this default setting.

You see when I started in recruitment, I was 24 and I’d been placed by recruiters a few times. Didn’t think much of it other than “It must feel nice to place someone in a job”.

Not long after I started in recruitment, I found out how much hate there is for recruiters. Being hung up on, being told to f*ck off before you’ve finished saying your name through to threats of personal visits for rejecting someone (more often passing on the message of rejection) in the first 6 or so months, I realised I’d chosen a profession with a bad reputation.

So a normal person (I use normal very loosely, I don’t know many people I’d class as normal, we’re all a little weird in different ways) would feel some level of optimism going into a call, email or meeting and then when there is rejection, feel bad.

In recruitment, the reality is you will face more rejection than acceptance especially if you count the no replies to emails, messages and LinkedIn connections.

That’s when I figured it was smarter to assume I wouldn’t be liked or wanted, so that when I was, the result was a pleasant surprise.

By assuming negative, the rejections were expected. Therefore, I didn’t give a F when i was rejected. Makes rejection much easier to handle when it’s expected but I hear you, it’s a negative state of mind.

And I felt that effect years later, I wondered why I always expected to be disliked & I think I had conditioned myself almost too much. You might see the number of followers I have on LinkedIn or the number of likes I get on a post, I don’t see that and think “all these people like me” but that they like the thing I wrote.

It’s extremely helpful for keeping ones ego in check but almost like a lead balloon in it takes a massive amount to lift it up.

Where on the other side of the spectrum, I met up with a friend recently and the way they spoke about work, if someone smiled at them politely they immediately thought “they love me, I’m amazing and great at what I do” which is a state of mind I’m not sure I’ll ever get too without a solid amount of LSD.

Again, I don’t share this in an attempt for a flood of messages of people telling me they like me (although I won’t hate it if you do ??) but more for those who find themselves making the same assumption to relate too. It can be a strength in being able to handle rejection but it’s also not an approach I’d recommend for everyone, or anyone for that matter.

There were probably healthier and more balanced ways to approach how I handled rejection but 10 + years might take another 10 + years to undo.