Rejection – Regaining Confidence After the Pain

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Carline

Carline is an advocate for women's empowerment and environmental issues, such as plastic pollution and its effects. She is a passionate writer who wants to make a difference.

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Rejection after a job interview that could have been your dream job, or from a friend whom you’ve known the longest, or being ghosted by a person you’ve been dating for a while now can be difficult to handle.

All of these types of rejection feel the same – painful and brutal.  You feel dejected.

You start to question yourself, “Where did I go wrong?” “Was I enough?” 

What does rejection mean to you?

It means you have to keep going, you have to pick up where you left off. Pick up the broken pieces, then start fresh. 

However, it’s not healthy to ignore or invalidate your feelings. Sulk for a while, don’t put a lid on it. It’s important to go through all of the pain because it humanizes you.

What’s not good is if you stay in the sulking phase too long.  When you do this, your self-confidence is slowly shattering bit by bit.

If you’ve lost a sale, lost your dream job, were ghosted by a loved one, and you feel devastated, Sisterhood Agenda will help you regain your confidence and come back stronger than ever. You know what they say:   what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger! 

Get face-to-face with rejection and your emotions.

Detach yourself from what happened and think as if you’re a person looking at yourself from the outside.

Write it on a piece of paper using the third person pronoun. “Libby didn’t get her dream job today because ____.” 

Amy was ghosted by Adam because he was seeing another girl named Brooke.

State the logical reason, flat out. This is crucial. What you are doing is separating your emotions ad your reaction from what really happened. 

You’re digesting what happened, seeing what it’s all about, and making sense of it all.

Don’t be afraid to fail.

Failure is part of life and failure is better than regret.

Which would you prefer? Not trying in order to avoid rejection or trying everything before failing? The latter will give you experience and yes failure could be one of them. 

But the good thing is, it teaches you. The next time you try, you already know what you lacked the last time and this time, you’ll make it better.

Failing doesn’t automatically mean you’re a failure. 

Get out of your comfort zone.

Get your hands dirty and make yourself invulnerable by taking small risks each day.

You won’t like this but you may have to face your fears to overcome them.

Apply to a dozen jobs.  You may get several rejections until suddenly, these notices don’t affect you anymore. And the best part?

Rejections will be the catalyst for your burning desire to make it. By doing so, you are changing your relationship to rejection.

You will get better by facing it head-on and getting out of your comfort zone.  For example, Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity basketball team in his sophomore year in high school. If he gave up he wouldn’t be the best basketball player of all time. The rejection became the catalyst for him to work harder and not to give up on his dreams.

You are like Michael Jordan.  You too, experience rejection. It’s okay to cry your eyes out, but you have to learn from it, get back up, and get moving. 

One day this particular failure is a story you will mention in your speech for getting an award or being successful in your craft. Celebrate your shortcomings because they’re all a part of your journey.

Accept the rejection and focus on the good.

In every situation, (even when it’s devastatingly awful), there’s always a silver lining.

God or the Universe may be giving you heartache and pain right now because you are being prepared to have something better. 

When you got ghosted by a person you were seeing after five months, you may ask, where’s the silver lining in that? You found out early that he or she is afraid of commitment and/or emotionally unavailable before you’ve invested a lot in the relationship. That’s good.

You are being prepared for someone better who will come along. 

If it’s a job rejection, maybe you don’t know about it yet, but soon you might stumble on a job and get hired only to realize that it is way much better than the job that you got rejected from.

Things will fall into their respective places. This may be a bit cliche but I always find this one to be true and it’s greatly comforting.

Forget about what other people will say.

Here’s one of the hardest parts because even if we say that we don’t care what other people might think, in fact, we still do care. And that’s okay.  However, if you don’t do something about it, you will be a prisoner of other people’s opinion of you.

I would like to share with you my favorite quote from Bruce Lee:

“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing everything with logic. If words can control you, it means everyone can control you. Breathe and let it pass.”

We are only given one lifetime.  Be selective regarding things to care about. Ask yourself, is it worth it?  Should I let myself become deeply affected by his/her opinion of me?

At Sisterhood Agenda, we hope that you find this article about bouncing back from rejection useful.  If so, please pass it on!

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