“You have to have thick skin”.

I received this advice early on in my career. It made sense at the time. Sales is tough, competitive. Clients are busy. They don’t want to be sold to. But it’s your job, so get on with it. You will face plenty of rejection, plenty of failure, and you need to be able to handle that. You need to have thick skin.

But what does it really mean to have thick skin? It means to not take things personally. When you get a rejection, realise it’s not about you. 

The problem was, I did take the rejections personally. It hurt to be rejected. So I started to build up a wall internally to protect myself from the hurt. The rejections started to feel less painful. “Success!”, I thought. I have thick skin! 

I realised later that while the advice was wise, I was unable to put it into practice. I needed much more confidence to not take the rejection personally, so I built up a wall and told myself it was the same thing. 

So what happened? Eventually this wall got so high, so wide, so thick, that nothing got in or out. The rejections, failures and pain didn’t get it, but neither did the good things - the successes, the love of my family, the warmth of my friends, the beauty of nature. And the pain of a bruised sense of worth was trapped inside, with no way to escape. I was left with a sinking, numbing feeling, an inability to connect. I was hardened, and not just on the job.

Eventually I became aware of what was going on, but I had no clue how to take down this wall. Even if I did, I would feel completely naked without it. It had become a permanent part of me, as essential as my eyes and ears. 

In reflection, I believe there’s a few prerequisites for having or developing thick skin.

1. A solid foundation of confidence. The ability to truly believe “that wasn’t about me”. 

2. The freedom to express emotion. I was trying so hard to prove that I had the thick skin needed to succeed, that any negative emotion became evidence to the contrary. Emotion became a sign of failure. And so, I didn't allow myself to feel. 

I’m left wanting to change the expression. I don’t want my skin to be thick. I want it to be a filter. A filter lets the wanted in and keeps the unwanted out.

Rejections and failures will happen, and therefore so will negative thoughts and feelings. We can think those thoughts, but we don’t have to believe them. We can process those feelings and let them flow out. We can let the good in - the love, the joy, the warmth, the beauty - and filter out the bad. In doing so, we can avoid building the walls that leave us feeling empty, numb and which are oh so hard to knock down.

It’s a journey, but I’m disassembling my wall brick by brick. At first it felt strange, but now I realise that this me, without the wall, is the real me. And I’m determined to get out there with my filtering skin and glow. Want to join me?