As much as it sucks, you’re going to hear the word “NO” in life. That’s just the way it is. You’re not going to make the team. You’re not going to get that role in the school play. People aren’t going to like your idea. That guy or girl you’ve been crushing on is going to have zero interest in you. You’re not going to get the job.
Okay, well maybe all of these things won’t happen to you (or maybe they will… I mean, they’ve all happened to me), but I guarantee at least one of the situations rings true to you. And that’s fine.
In fact it’s more than fine. These “rejections” are basically the best things that will ever happen to you.
Whenever I don’t get a job (or a guy… or basically anything), I swallow my pride and tell myself it’s okay. There’s a reason for everything. If someone doesn’t want me, that’s fine. It just means that it wasn’t meant to be and I’m now that much closer to finding that special someone or something that does want me.
Basically, I would rather be rejected and put back on the path to finding happiness than strung along on a ride where rejection is in my future, whether I’m the one who is bound to be rejected or I’m the one who is bound to be doing the rejecting.
If I get rejected from a job, fine. They weren’t crazy about me, so why would I want to be crazy about them? Why would I want to go work for someone who “wasn’t sure” about me in the first place? That would probably just lead to me being unhappy in the future, finding another job, and eventually saying “no thanks” to that job who was originally hesitant to hire me. The same goes for a relationship. Would I want to date someone who wasn’t “sure” about me at some point in the time we had known one another? No.
There was a point back in college where I saw rejection as a challenge. When one of my ex-boyfriends pulled the plug on our relationship, I made it a point to get the guy to want me back. Not necessarily because I wanted him, but because I could not handle the thought of being rejected. I did stupid things — ridiculous things — to keep him involved in my life, but to my surprise none of it worked. All the while, if I just accepted the rejection to begin with, I could have spent all that time striving towards a relationship with someone else who did in fact want to be with me. I just couldn’t accept it at the time. I didn’t understand how I could get anyone else to want me, but that is the point of dealing with rejection after all.
You can’t let rejection get you down. You have to let it pick you right back up — higher than you’ve ever been before — and motivate you to get what you want.
Plenty of successful actors, artists, writers, and athletes have been rejected numerous times. JK Rowling (you know, the author of Harry Potter) was rejected 12 times for Harry Potter. Walt Disney was fired from the a newspaper because he supposedly “had no good ideas.” Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
What do these people have in common? They are three of the most successful people of our time. Rejection drove each one of them to achieve wild success and happiness. These people needed to hear the word “no” to understand the power of the word “yes.” They needed to feel the lows to appreciate the highs. And boy, did they do that and more.
Rejection helps you understand that you can’t always get what you want, but damn, you can try. And then you can try again. And again. And again. And you can KEEP trying until you get exactly what you want.
The process might not be easy, but guess what? “Easy” would not exist without “hard.” So toughen up. It’s a hard world out there, but eventually if you stick it out, you’ll get what you’re looking for.
So in the future, when your ideas get shut down or that guy or girl you’ve been crushing on claims to have zero interest in you, pull a Beyonce-esque hair flip and move on to the next one. When the going gets tough, don’t let it pull you down. Let it pick you up and inspire you to work harder and love yourself a little bit more.
After all, rejection fuels passion and passion is what ignites life. Without passion, we are nothing. So without rejection, we’re pretty much nothing too.
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