Rejection, the most pathetic feeling ever.
“You want to be a music director, but your parents and relatives hate you to sing songs and want you to see as a doctor or an engineer.”
Society rejection. It sucks.
“You went for the 77th interview with your updated CV and everything prepared. In the evening, HR calls to say, ‘Sorry, you have a lot of potentials but we are moving with someone else.’ and hangs up.”
Job rejection. It sucks.
“You went to your girlfriend/boyfriend to propose and in front of you he/she moved with someone else.”
Love rejection. It sucks.
“You sent your debut novel proposal to 35th publications and you haven’t heard about it for 6 months.”
Pursuing Passion Rejection. It again sucks.
No matter how much rejection sucks, but it is a part of life. Though nobody likes to face rejection but in real at different points of life, we all have to face rejection. You, me and everyone on this planet earth has faced rejection or is going to face rejection. Either in a job, business, love, family, or society, we all have faced rejection.
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Response to Rejection – Different people, different responses
With our different potentials and psychological abilities, we all respond differently to rejections. Some people become highly sensitive to it and some people turn it into strength. Those people, who become sensitive to rejection also face the same thing as the ones who turn it into strength. The difference occurs in willpower and psychological setup.
The constant rejection has different psychological consequences for different people. Some people get anxious, frustrated, aggressive and even depressed while some become calm, focused and determined. Some people stop working and moving towards their goals while some people move with more power.
We can see innumerable examples of people around us who have turned their rejection either into fear or strength. It all depends upon how they have dealt with the rejection for their future course.
6-Step Guide to Turn Rejection into Strength
Here, I have come up with a 6 step guide through which you can turn rejection into super strength.
- Let go of assumptions
- Throw out arbitrary rejections
- Realize, if it’s worth taking it personally
- Understand the reason for a rejection
- Finer your skills for what you are rejected
- Strength lies in being ready to face more
1. Let go of assumptions
While getting the rejection or realizing that we have been rejected, we often start assuming the reasons.
Do you also assume so much? The assumptions lie in absence of reason.
The recruiter hardly gives feedback as to why he rejected you. The ditching partner hardly gives any valid reason for moving with someone else. Society never gives a reason for rejecting someone. The friends and relatives only blame and never give any reasons.
In all such cases, we only have assumptions about the reasons for rejections that keep revolving around our heads. To get everything going in the right direction, it’s so vital to get off the assumptions.
For the same, I remember one of the quotes I wrote some time ago,
Don’t think too much that your thoughts start hurting you more than the real situations.
While assuming multiple reasons for the rejection, we start thinking so much that rather than focusing on what next, we keep ourselves involved in possible reasons.
So, if you are assuming the reasons for your rejection, it’s better either to ask the concerned person or let it all go.
2. Throw out arbitrary rejections
Some rejections aren’t our fault. They just arise out of bad situations.
Suppose, you have a meeting with investors. You reach there with everything prepared but on the spot, your laptop stops working. This infuriates the investors and they leave.
So, will it be your fault? Noooo..not at all.
I remember I had a scheduled call with one of my prospects. I called at the set time but firstly, the call couldn’t connect due to some network issue. Then, as we were discussing further, someone arrived at the door. As there was no one at home, I had to go and check. I saw from the keyhole and there were relatives whom I had to attend personally. I apologized to the prospect while asking for some other time. He gave me another time but since then, I have never heard back from him.
Now, was it really my fault? No, it was not.
So, you don’t need to take the stress of arbitrary rejections. These rejections are beyond the control of any person and crying over the things which are beyond the control is completely foolish.
It’s better to let them go.
3. Realize, if it’s worth taking it personally
Rejections come with the tendency of self-doubt. After letting go of assumptions and throwing out arbitrary rejections, it may be possible that you start doubting your own self. You’ve often seen yourself doubting your own because of someone else’s choice. So, the first thing that needs to be done is to ask yourself if the rejection is worth being taken personally.
While someone rejects you or your idea, it is more likely to be something about them and not about you. Before taking it personally, you must realize if,
- It can be possible that you and the other person are having different choices.
- You and the other person must be having some other perspective and opinion.
- They must be wrong about what they think of you.
In all these cases, there’s nothing about which you could be better. You only need to change the perspective from self-doubt to game change. Instead of taking it personally and doubting your own potential, you need to realize if it was you who was something less or it was them who needed something else.
Even if it’s something about you, you can change yourself. It is an opportunity for something better.
So, you just need to respect their choices and simultaneously respect your own. Rather than allowing any self-doubt to hold you back, understand what was the prime reason that was under your control and lead to your rejection.
4. Understand the reason for a rejection
Now, it’s time to realize the reality of rejection. You need to accept that you have been rejected and there must be a valid reason for that.
Whether someone has given the reason for it or not, whether you have got the feedback or not, you need to understand yourself, about what was the prime reason for your rejection.
For knowing the reason for your rejection, you need to calm yourself down and revive the whole situation that led to your rejection. You need to revive,
- What happened?
- Where did it go wrong?
- How did the situation get worse?
- Where your words or ideas got misunderstood?
- What was the wrong foot that you took?
If you want to turn your rejection into strength, you need to get answers to all these questions from your own self.
When you start focusing on reasons, you get to know the real situation and the possible solution for the same.
5. Finer your skills for what you are rejected
Every rejection is a signboard, that you can be something better. It just makes you realize that there can be something more that you can make out of yourself.
Instead of thinking that you are worthless with every rejection, if you realize that you have the scope of getting better, you’ll be excelling to heights. No matter it’s about family rejection, professional rejection, emotional rejection, love rejection, or even social rejection, you need to realize if the rejection requires you to change yourself. You must ask yourself if the change is good for you and if you need to get better.
Steve Jobs was fired from the company he founded. He said,
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
Once you start believing that you are lacking something and you can actually change it, you can’t stop yourself from becoming the strength.
Getting better every day is required by everyone but those who get rejected get this opportunity explicitly. They get to have this chance to target the specific thing that needs to be changed.
6. Strength lies in being ready to face more
The last step in turning the rejection into strength is to be ready to face more. Without being ready to face more rejections, no one can ever turn it into strength.
In order to make ourselves ready to face more rejections, we need to accept them eternally. Rejection is mandatory for everyone and it is perfectly okay to have the rejection. We all need to realize that rejections are a part of life and everyone around us is facing them. We need to be courageous enough to face more such rejections.
JK Rowling, the most famous author of the Harry Potter series, was turned down 12 times before Bloomsbury published it. She said,
I wasn’t going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen.
When we are ready to face more and more rejections in the future, we already have the power in ourselves, we already have inculcated the strength that rejection imparted to us.
Conclusion
Many known entrepreneurs have their rejection stories live on the internet. They all faced the rejections and rather than allowing it to hold them back, they turned it into strength. They didn’t let assumptions and self-doubt weather their own potential. They didn’t overlook the reason for their rejection and neither did they stop working on their skills. They wanted to turn their rejection into strength and they were ready to face more and more rejections. Whether we turn our rejection into strength or failure is the only determination of our life. To get one step higher, we need to face the difficulties associated with it. Rejection is also one of those difficulties that take you one step higher.