Sometimes, being told “no” is exactly what you need to succeed.

Dan Hicks
4 min readJun 22, 2020
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

2019.

It was a great year for me. I traveled to tons of new places I had never been like New Zealand, as well as road-tripped around much of the Pacific Northwest, like Whistler, B.C. I also fell into a temporary position at work that allowed me to do some of the best work of my life. I was very invested in the work I was doing, and I felt that I could inspire positive change within our four walls. Eventually, this lead me to discover a potential career path within the organization, and at the first opportunity I got, I went for a bonafide position. I had the best interview of my life, felt super confident, and went into the job thinking I was going to get it.

I could not have been more wrong.

I remember coming into a follow-up meeting with my manager thinking that this was my big moment, but it wasn’t. I didn’t get the job. I felt in a fog for the rest of the day. At the moment, it felt like life had taken a turn that I wasn’t expecting and I was left without a plan. To add insult to injury, my temporary posting would have me working very closely with the person who actually got the job.

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