Rejection is never really something we ever want to think about. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be perfect humans with no flaws and no down sights? Right? Wrong. Unfortunately, rejection is a part of life, even the most perfect person will be turned down at one point whether it be that perfect job or from that guy you have had a crush on for months.
The brain behind the most magical place on earth and countless childhood stories and movies, Walt Disney, was fired and told by his editor that he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” The author of the popular Harry Potter books was once fired because she would write stories on her computer all day. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a reporter because of her inability to separate her emotions from her stories. Thomas Edison struggled in school growing up and was even expelled.
All of these people have now accomplished in something that they once failed at. Just because someone can not see your potential does not mean it is not there.
It is easy to get caught up thinking about why we were turned down, what was wrong with us? What did we do wrong? And sometimes we can let the sting of rejection affect us so much that we forget that there are other possibilities out there. Or if we are aware that they are there, we become so scared to take a chance on them because we are afraid to feel the same feeling we felt when we were rejected for the first time.
I myself have felt this more often than I would care to admit. Something would not go my way and I would sit there and stir over what I could have done differently and what flaw the person or people that didn’t want to take a chance on me saw that I did not. I spent so much time doing this that it would take me awhile to rebound and chase after a new dream or possibility, until one day I decided that enough was enough.
I could either let rejection define me, or I could learn from what I was doing wrong and change it.
So here’s my advice of what you should do if you ever get rejected:
1. Don’t obsess over what could have been
You could spend forever thinking what if.. What if I had done this differently, what if I hadn’t done that.. What if, what if, what if. What good is it going to do to sit around and psychoanalyze the entire rejection? All it will do is make you feel worse about yourself, which brings me onto my next point.
2. Realize that everything happens for a reason
You didn’t get the job you wanted? So what? There are other jobs out there. That job that you wanted, you may not have been a good fit for anyways. That guy you thought you were head over heels in love with? Guess what: there are other guys out there.
3. Focus your energy elsewhere
Storytime: When I was a freshman in college I was obsessed with finding the perfect guy. I thought of every time I would meet someone as the new possibility at a relationship. It wasn’t until a few heartbreaks later and the decision to chase after my own dreams that I found the right one. I stopped searching for something that I couldn’t seem to find and started focusing on myself. The same thing happened most recently as I thought what I wanted was to be heavily involved in one area of my life, only to be rejected every corner I turned. At this point in my life I completely stopped focusing on myself and my dreams and started chasing after what I thought I wanted. After being rejected multiple times, the sting felt all too real. It would’ve been easy for that rejection to be a stopping point for me, but instead I chose to focus my attention on what I wanted out of my life. I started going to the gym more often and eating healthy, I started looking for internships and writing. Things I had stopped doing in order to chase after what I thought I wanted, I started doing again.
4. Take rejection as a learning experience
The most important thing you can do when you do get rejected is to learn from it. The most valuable thing you can do is if you are in a place where you can ask what you can improve on, do it! Take every rejection as an opportunity. After all there is always something we can all do better.
We will all get rejected at some point. Even the most perfect person, is imperfect in some ways. At the end of the day though it’s a matter of what you do with that rejection. Do you let it bring you down or do you rise above it, and learn from it?