Rejection is something that we all face as human beings. If we interact with some other human being, at some point, we end up getting rejected, but we’re not taught on how we can handle rejection, how to deal with rejection. And sometimes it can end up leaving us intense traumas. And if you don’t know how to process these traumas, it’s going to be a lifelong scar. In this article, I want to talk about how we can deal with rejection, how we can overcome rejection, and not only that, how we can make it a super power moving forward so we can leverage it to take some great actions.
When it comes to issues like rejection we all get stuck. Because we feel a lot less worthy of than who we really are. So if we don’t know how to process rejection and how to deal with it, it creates more and more problems in our lives.
Rejection is hurtful to the degree of how much we are attached to something or someone. For example, if you are in a dating situation and you’re really attached to the other person, that rejection is gonna feel a lot more bitter than if you were just like asking direction to somebody random on the street and they just didn’t bother to give you an answer.
Rejection can be very painful. It might almost feel like an attack to our well being.
And the key to overcoming rejection and . It’s just a matter of like re framing it. And before I go on to give you the solution which is a very simple solution. I wanted to share a quick story with you.
When I was in college, I was an international student and I had a scholarship that was only valid until two years. But after that, it ran off, like I had to pay like out of state tuition fees, which is like double the normal, what people pay here. So our department head of films called me one day to his office and he told me about this great opportunity, great scholarship that was coming on. And he knew about my situation. So he, he kind of set up an interview for me.
The department had also told me that I was like the best candidate out of there because there weren’t actually a lot of participants. Before I left I was all excited and pumped up. I thought I was going through this one on one interview. But when I got there, it was like a room full of people in a conference room.
After a few questions, it just started feeling like they’re trying to test me a lot. And it started almost feeling like an attack. Although I did not lose my cool, they kept asking me random questions. ASt point they asked “If you had to make this movie we asked to change the entire plot line and all these things, would you be able to do it or not?” I didn’t realize that it was a trick question.
As an art student, I thought the obvious answer was “I wouldn’t compromise my art for anything else”, because that would mean losing my integrity.
And I answered it in the same fashion. I don’t know, after that everything got even more sour . After that the questions kept on coming but I wasn’t as confident as when I went into the interview.
Later when I realized I didn’t get the scholarship that really tore me apart. And in fact, the person who actually told me I didn’t get the scholarship, he sent me an email and mentioned the reason I didn’t get the scholarship as I wasn’t flexible enough for this project that they were giving on behalf of the scholarship.
It felt pretty disheartening? Even before when I had scholarship I was struggling to pay bills for my college, but now I had to pay probably about like 15K a semester, no joke. And I didn’t know how to get that kind of money.
After that incident, I started becoming very bitter. I started resenting the whole education system and I just wasn’t ready to give up college, provide didn’t there.
But slowly I somehow was able to reframe that rejection. So what I did was instead of like being resentful and giving up on life, I decided to go and find a higher paying job. At the time it seemed like that was the only option for me.
And I didn’t know it was possible before because I was getting paid minimum of minimum wages until then. And this rejection helped me make a great discovery where I found out that I was a free spirited person and I loved to live that way without too much rules of any sorts.
Prior to this incident, I wanted to go and work for somebody else right after college. I was also thinking of applying to different studios around town. But now as I had come to this realization that any kind of job where I’m working to serve others wouldn’t be good fit for me. When I started looking to do something, I realized that I could be far more better with business.
And after this, it just kind of ignited this pure kind of spirit in me, which I had never experienced in my life before.
It was a it nerve wracking at first. I have nobody else in my family who does business and this kind of things. And fast forward, after five years now I am an entrepreneur and I run my own business. I’ve I haven’t worked for anybody else for past 3-4 years.
Now that incident kind of shaped my life to become who I am today. And that’s what I wanted to share with you in this video. So I have two ways of going about rejection right here. Always, always, always take rejection as feedback, even if you don’t get answers, still take it as feedback because it is saying something about the other person as well as yourself off.
So the first way is, especially if you really want this thing or someone, you take it as a feedback, learn from it and make yourself better along the way. And when you come back, you’re just going to be the perfect fit for the situation. So, it leads us directly to the path of self improvement.
And the second way is to move on to, or something that you are more resonating with. That’s what I did, you know, on my own case because I found something else that I was passionate about. Even though that rejection was hurtful. It did teach me a lesson in many ways.
Sometimes as human beings we think that we’re not just capable of achieving something good in our lives. And especially when we get rejected, we completely shut ourselves and we stop pursuing them all together. But what I want you to think of yourself as a solid piece of coal which is caught in beneath the surface of the earth.
The weight of the earth can and will put in extreme amounts of force in you and you might yourself think that you’re about to breakdown into dust. But that rarely happens.
In fact, when you come out, you come out totally transformed as a shiny block of diamond whose self worth is invaluable.
If you start to see rejection is such a way you can easily re-frame rejection and come out more resilient at the end. And to make the process easier just this awareness helps and you will just have to re-frame it.
No matter what, of course the rejection is going to be hurtful. It’s going to sting a little bit at first, but you just don’t get stuck there. You’re either going to work on yourself and comeback to the conquer that same situation. Or you simply on from there towards something that’s more in alignment of who you are. And that’s how you deal with rejection.
I hope this blogpost was of some help to you guys. And if you thought you got some value out of it, please don’t forget to watch video for this in YouTube and don’t forget to leave a comment while you’re there.
Wishing you all the best. Good bye and Namaste!