The Opportunity That Looked Wrong and Was Right
I turned down the right opportunity three times before I took it. Not because I was being strategic. Because it looked wrong. The title wasn't what I wanted. The pay was lower than I thought I deserved. The company was smaller than I'd imagined working for. Every time it came around in a different form, I found a reason to say no.
The fourth time I said yes, mostly because I was tired of saying no to things and not having anything better to show for it. And it turned out to be the thing that changed everything. Not because it was secretly perfect — it wasn't. Because it was the right kind of wrong.
What "The Right Kind of Wrong" Means
There's a difference between an opportunity that's wrong because it's bad and an opportunity that's wrong because it doesn't match your idea of what the right opportunity looks like. The first kind you should pass on. The second kind is worth examining.
My idea of the right opportunity was shaped by things I'd absorbed without questioning — what a good title looks like, what a good salary looks like, what a good company looks like. Those ideas came from somewhere, and they weren't necessarily calibrated to what I actually needed or what would actually help me grow.
The opportunity that looked wrong was wrong by those standards. But when I actually looked at what it would require me to do and what I would learn from doing it, it was exactly right. The mismatch was between my idea of success and the actual substance of the work.
The Signals That Were Actually There
Looking back, there were signals I was ignoring. The people who'd taken similar opportunities and talked about what they'd learned. The specific skills the role would develop that I knew I needed. The fact that I kept coming back to it even after saying no — that's not nothing. When you keep returning to something you've rejected, it's worth asking why.
I've been talking to other women about this — specifically about the gap between what an opportunity looks like and what it actually is. The pattern I keep hearing is that the opportunities that look right often aren't, and the ones that look wrong often are. Not always. But often enough that it's worth paying attention to.
Over at Calitoy there's been some writing about this in the context of creative work — the project that doesn't look like what you imagined but turns out to be the one that matters. Same principle, different domain.
The Ego Problem
Part of why the right opportunity looks wrong is ego. The title isn't impressive enough. The company isn't prestigious enough. The pay doesn't signal the value you think you have. These are real concerns — you should be paid fairly, you should be in environments that take you seriously — but they can also be a way of protecting yourself from the discomfort of doing something that doesn't immediately look like success.
The opportunity I kept turning down didn't look like success. It looked like a step sideways, maybe even a step back. What it actually was: a chance to do work I hadn't done before, with people who were good at things I wasn't, in a context that would force me to figure out what I was actually capable of.
That's not a step back. That's the thing. But it didn't look like the thing, and that's why I kept saying no.
The Wicked Youth community has been writing about this in the context of music — the band that doesn't look like the right band, the show that doesn't look like the right show, and what happens when you do it anyway. And josephcalitoy.com has some writing about the projects that didn't look right from the outside but were the ones that mattered.
How to Tell the Difference
I don't have a clean framework for this. But some questions that help: Does the work itself interest you, separate from what it looks like? Would you do it if nobody knew you were doing it? Does it require you to do things you don't know how to do yet? Is the reason you're saying no about the substance of the work or about how it looks?
The Girl Next Up community has been a place where these conversations happen — women talking honestly about the opportunities they took and the ones they passed on and what they learned from both. That kind of honesty is rare and useful.
The opportunity that looks wrong might be the right one. It's worth looking twice.